At the beginning of this splendid volume, there is a map of the world marked with the locations of the events in the twelve chapters. The map provides a visual representation of the sweep of the book, which covers developments across the vast spaces of the Second World War. Shots in the Dark is a geographic and methodological tour d'horizon of current scholarship on the conflict and a valuable guide to the present and future of Second World War research.
This project reflects the efforts of the North American branch of the Second World War Research Group (SWWRGNA). The SWWRGNA is a member of a UK-based international network of researchers that formed a decade ago. Most of the authors involved in this project are early- or mid-career scholars engaged in a range of academic and professional activities. The book reflects the diversity of new scholarship on the history of the war.
The volume begins with a brief forward by Robert Citino, who reflects on the changes that have shaped the field of military history, broadly construed, over the past few decades. With characteristic verve and brevity, Citino calls upon Second World War scholars to “read the work of other scholars who disagree with us or use analytical categories with which we may not be comfortable” (x). He acknowledges a fact that is quite apparent in the volume's essays; that the story of the war is no longer primarily written from the perspective of diplomatic or operational history.
Instead, editors Jadwiga Biskupska and Sara B. Castro propose to examine “how the long, global Second World War changed nearly everything about the institutions, armies, and societies that fought it …” (1). Drawing from several thematic workshops, they focus the volume on three themes: institutional adaptation, the totalization of war (by which they mean the militarization of civilians), and cultural transformation. The essays are organized thematically, a decision that they argue allows us to see overarching trends that transcend geographic and methodological boundaries.
The chapters comprise a panoply of interesting scholarship. No single review can encompass the scope of the work, so I will concentrate on a few particularly compelling examples that may be of interest to readers of this journal. One of the most striking elements of the book is the near absence of operational military history. Jeff Rutherford's engaging study of the German 4th Mountain Division's role in the invasion of Yugoslavia, which he calls a “prelude to Barbarossa,” resembles a more traditional military history approach.
If operational history is notable by its absence, there is a striking abundance of examples of the history of intelligence. Six of the twelve chapters focus largely or in part on the role of intelligence agencies, networks, and agents across the global war. There are some real gems here. Katrin Paehler tells the extraordinary story of Hildegard Beetz, a woman who managed to parlay her career in the SS foreign intelligence service into a relationship with American intelligence after the war and then a career as a political journalist in the Federal Republic of Germany. The story of Beetz's “personal and political Zeitenwende” (278) is not only a gripping read, but a superb case study to elucidate the shifting dynamics of national security interests across the postwar decade.
Likewise, Sara B. Castro highlights the importance of Americans who grew up in missionary families stationed in China to the war effort there. These Chinese-speaking “mish kids” played a critical role on the staff of General Stillwell's military mission, particularly in fields like intelligence. As Castro shows, the apparent dominance of a self-consciously Protestant worldview fueled suspicion among observers in the Chinese Communist Party, possibly weakening the American ability to mediate in the civil war that followed Japan's defeat.
There are also essays that resist easy categorization, but that reflect the intellectual diversity of the field. Elena M. Friot's excellent chapter explores the ways that Americans re-imagined the catastrophic military reversals of the first months of the Pacific War as defeats that revealed “the epitome of what it meant to be an American soldier,” (224) placing them in the tradition of Bunker Hill, the Alamo, and similar engagements. Cameron Zinsou incisively examines the experience of the city of Montélimar in southwest France during the “Phony War.” By tracing the multi-valent and cross-cutting communication of power and authority between different actors in the city, Zinsou connects the experience of inhabitants of a provincial French city across what appears to be the caesura of defeat, collaboration, and occupation following the Summer of 1940.
Perhaps inevitably for a volume like this, the chapters are only loosely connected to each other. The book's subtitle, which promises “experimentation, success, and failure,” speaks to the breadth of the essays therein. While many of the chapters are quite good, they don't always hang together. It would be difficult to assign the entire volume to a class, though sections or individual essays would complement undergraduate or graduate teaching about the war.
More than anything, this volume showcases the state of the field in Second World War history. The results, one must conclude, suggest that the field is healthy, productive, and growing. It is telling that several of the included authors published monographs about their topics between the time that this project began and the date of publication. This is not a criticism, but an invitation for readers to delve more deeply into the scholarship presented here. Scholars or interested readers who want an overview of where we are or where we are going will profit from this book and from the network behind it.
