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Spies, Lies, and Disguise: The Daring Tricks and Deeds That Won World War II by Jennifer Swanson
panda_incognito's review against another edition
1.0
This informative book covers a number of different espionage, sabotage, and deception efforts that the Allies made during World War II, and it should appeal to a fourth through eighth grade audience. Unfortunately, even though this is a kid-friendly source with lots of information, this book's oversimplifications, occasionally erroneous statements, and inappropriate tone require me to denounce this as a problematic resource on WWII.
In the foreword, the author begins in an overly chatty style and provides an extremely brief explanation of the war. She says, "Well, there was this dictator named Hitler. Nobody thought much of him as he was gaining power, but then that power went to his head and he decided he wanted to take over the world." Only the first sentence of that is REMOTELY accurate.
Yes, there was a dictator named Hitler, but his master plan of taking over the world predated his rise to power, and he rose to power because people did think a lot of him. Many Germans were so taken and overwhelmed by Hitler's rhetoric that they embraced him as a Messiah, and many who found his racial, social, and political ideas disturbing supported him anyway because they were so desperate for the "work and bread" that he promised after grinding postwar poverty and the Great Depression. They hoped that he was just a demagogue, and that this was just empty rhetoric. Germans who actively resented Hitler's rise to power and thought very little of him were in the minority.
She could have phrased her statement to say that few people on the international stage thought much of Hitler, but this would unfortunately be inaccurate as well. Many Westerners thought that Hitler's rise to power was a positive development for Germany, especially economically, and Americans who lived in Germany often felt positively towards social changes there. Charles Lindbergh, who visited Germany, was impressed with Hitler and even appreciated the aircraft aspect of his military build-up. In terms of national leaders, Winston Churchill was one of the only significant figures who fully recognized the danger that Hitler posed.
This author's oversimplification is pure misinformation, and the fact that this is a children's book makes it even more unacceptable. Children's authors have a duty to present history accurately even within a simplified form, and even though Hitler's rise to power is incredibly complex, I just boiled down the basics to two paragraphs. It's not okay for this book to teach children that many Germans didn't herald Hitler's rise with joy. It's not okay to make it look like the world recognized what a threat he was, when it absolutely did not.
Also in the foreword, this author refers to Hitler persecuting "people who were LGBTQIA+," which is ludicrous. Hitler targeted gay men. His regime almost never targeted lesbians, since Germans did not view them as a political threat to Germany, and people who were medically intersex or lacked sexual desires were not considered to be degenerates. This author just slapped down a series of letters without even thinking about how they relate to history. Does she really think that the Gestapo went around Germany rounding up asexual people because they lacked active sex drives? Good grief. As for transgender people, I would expect that the Nazis persecuted them, but I am not sure. I have never come across any details about it in my reading, and my last several minutes of research have not turned up clear answers.
However, even though I don't have concrete information to offer regarding the treatment of transvestites and gender-non-conforming people in Germany, the author's statement is still false and misguided. Because the Nazis persecuted homosexual men based on anti-sodomy laws, this book's attempt to be inclusive to a whole list of sexual minorities is untrue, misleading, and trivializes the horrendous experiences of the thousands of gay men who experienced torture, slave labor, horrendous medical experiments, and death in concentration camps.
Outside of the foreword, my primary complaint is that this author has the AUDACITY to make it sound like Stalin was progressive. She uses this word to describe the USSR's enlistment of female pilots to help the war effort, and she praises this without providing the slightest context for who Stalin was. MILLIONS of people died under his regime, but hey, he let girls fly planes, so let's call him progressive! The lack of context and nuance are disgusting. You can praise the bravery of the Nightwitch fliers without making it sound like the USSR was a great place to be.
This book is overly chatty, talks down to children through constant repetition and the assumption that they can't understand the war's stakes, oversimplifies the war to the point of telling lies, and trivializes the brave efforts of the men and women who helped the Allied cause. Part of this is through the writing style, part of this comes through the cartoon illustrations, and part of this comes through the author's incredibly misguided choice to make puns and engage in wordplay about people's sacrifices. For example, she ends one chapter by saying that it's too bad that the hundred and forty conspirators in the Stauffenberg assassination plot couldn't "execute" their plan properly. I have read in such detail about this plot and the people involved in it that I saw red. This is NOT okay. This is not something to be playful and cutesy about.
Still, this book was not entirely terrible. I learned some new things, read chapters that rang true to my preexisting knowledge, and found many of the photographic reproductions fascinating. However, because of this book's egregious historical errors and inappropriately playful tone, I would not recommend this book to anyone who lacks a solid knowledge base about WWII already. Some of the chapters in here are great, and this book covers lots of fascinating historical facts and risky spy maneuvers, but even though some of the material is completely sound, there are better books about the war that won't set children up to believe false things about the past.
Sources:
[b:Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power|12643146|Hitlerland American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power|Andrew Nagorski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344390075l/12643146._SY75_.jpg|17755640]
[b:Lindbergh|272507|Lindbergh|A. Scott Berg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386920577l/272507._SY75_.jpg|262763]
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/persecution-of-homosexuals-in-the-third-reich
History File. “The Rise of Hitler, Part One.” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTeIu2mMeuA
History File. “The Rise of Hitler, Part Two.” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26XsANjgjU
IBP Films Distribution. “Russia’s War – Blood upon the Snow [02-10] The Night before Midnight.” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIftxKNKRw4
ITV. “A New Germany (1933–1939).” YouTube, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=0b4g4ZZNC1E
While fact-checking myself for this review, I read the article "Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939–1943," but I read it through my academic library and cannot share a public link.
In the foreword, the author begins in an overly chatty style and provides an extremely brief explanation of the war. She says, "Well, there was this dictator named Hitler. Nobody thought much of him as he was gaining power, but then that power went to his head and he decided he wanted to take over the world." Only the first sentence of that is REMOTELY accurate.
Yes, there was a dictator named Hitler, but his master plan of taking over the world predated his rise to power, and he rose to power because people did think a lot of him. Many Germans were so taken and overwhelmed by Hitler's rhetoric that they embraced him as a Messiah, and many who found his racial, social, and political ideas disturbing supported him anyway because they were so desperate for the "work and bread" that he promised after grinding postwar poverty and the Great Depression. They hoped that he was just a demagogue, and that this was just empty rhetoric. Germans who actively resented Hitler's rise to power and thought very little of him were in the minority.
She could have phrased her statement to say that few people on the international stage thought much of Hitler, but this would unfortunately be inaccurate as well. Many Westerners thought that Hitler's rise to power was a positive development for Germany, especially economically, and Americans who lived in Germany often felt positively towards social changes there. Charles Lindbergh, who visited Germany, was impressed with Hitler and even appreciated the aircraft aspect of his military build-up. In terms of national leaders, Winston Churchill was one of the only significant figures who fully recognized the danger that Hitler posed.
This author's oversimplification is pure misinformation, and the fact that this is a children's book makes it even more unacceptable. Children's authors have a duty to present history accurately even within a simplified form, and even though Hitler's rise to power is incredibly complex, I just boiled down the basics to two paragraphs. It's not okay for this book to teach children that many Germans didn't herald Hitler's rise with joy. It's not okay to make it look like the world recognized what a threat he was, when it absolutely did not.
Also in the foreword, this author refers to Hitler persecuting "people who were LGBTQIA+," which is ludicrous. Hitler targeted gay men. His regime almost never targeted lesbians, since Germans did not view them as a political threat to Germany, and people who were medically intersex or lacked sexual desires were not considered to be degenerates. This author just slapped down a series of letters without even thinking about how they relate to history. Does she really think that the Gestapo went around Germany rounding up asexual people because they lacked active sex drives? Good grief. As for transgender people, I would expect that the Nazis persecuted them, but I am not sure. I have never come across any details about it in my reading, and my last several minutes of research have not turned up clear answers.
However, even though I don't have concrete information to offer regarding the treatment of transvestites and gender-non-conforming people in Germany, the author's statement is still false and misguided. Because the Nazis persecuted homosexual men based on anti-sodomy laws, this book's attempt to be inclusive to a whole list of sexual minorities is untrue, misleading, and trivializes the horrendous experiences of the thousands of gay men who experienced torture, slave labor, horrendous medical experiments, and death in concentration camps.
Outside of the foreword, my primary complaint is that this author has the AUDACITY to make it sound like Stalin was progressive. She uses this word to describe the USSR's enlistment of female pilots to help the war effort, and she praises this without providing the slightest context for who Stalin was. MILLIONS of people died under his regime, but hey, he let girls fly planes, so let's call him progressive! The lack of context and nuance are disgusting. You can praise the bravery of the Nightwitch fliers without making it sound like the USSR was a great place to be.
This book is overly chatty, talks down to children through constant repetition and the assumption that they can't understand the war's stakes, oversimplifies the war to the point of telling lies, and trivializes the brave efforts of the men and women who helped the Allied cause. Part of this is through the writing style, part of this comes through the cartoon illustrations, and part of this comes through the author's incredibly misguided choice to make puns and engage in wordplay about people's sacrifices. For example, she ends one chapter by saying that it's too bad that the hundred and forty conspirators in the Stauffenberg assassination plot couldn't "execute" their plan properly. I have read in such detail about this plot and the people involved in it that I saw red. This is NOT okay. This is not something to be playful and cutesy about.
Still, this book was not entirely terrible. I learned some new things, read chapters that rang true to my preexisting knowledge, and found many of the photographic reproductions fascinating. However, because of this book's egregious historical errors and inappropriately playful tone, I would not recommend this book to anyone who lacks a solid knowledge base about WWII already. Some of the chapters in here are great, and this book covers lots of fascinating historical facts and risky spy maneuvers, but even though some of the material is completely sound, there are better books about the war that won't set children up to believe false things about the past.
Sources:
[b:Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power|12643146|Hitlerland American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power|Andrew Nagorski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344390075l/12643146._SY75_.jpg|17755640]
[b:Lindbergh|272507|Lindbergh|A. Scott Berg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386920577l/272507._SY75_.jpg|262763]
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/persecution-of-homosexuals-in-the-third-reich
History File. “The Rise of Hitler, Part One.” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTeIu2mMeuA
History File. “The Rise of Hitler, Part Two.” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26XsANjgjU
IBP Films Distribution. “Russia’s War – Blood upon the Snow [02-10] The Night before Midnight.” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIftxKNKRw4
ITV. “A New Germany (1933–1939).” YouTube, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=0b4g4ZZNC1E
While fact-checking myself for this review, I read the article "Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939–1943," but I read it through my academic library and cannot share a public link.
mimela78's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Wanted some courageous readers who don’t mind a little deception, trickery, and subterfuge. If that sounds like you then this just might be the book for you. It takes a look at the role that espionage played in helping the allies win World War II (WWII). Each chapter starts off with a wanted poster describing the attributes of what will be covered in that chapter. The wanted posters were my favorite part of the book. This book covers large operations such as Dynamo, Mandrel, and Overlord to smaller acts such as the plan to poison all the cows in Germany with anthrax. Night witches, codebreakers, code talkers, and inflatable tanks all play a big role in this book. There are a combination of drawn illustrations and real photos from the time period. This helps to visualize the actions being described. Scattered throughout are covert clues (interesting side facts about the topic being covered) and highlights of real heroes of WWII. The author’s final note is a nice touch reminding readers that war is not fun or glamourous and is best avoided. There is a an index for finding a specific topic quickly along with a brief bibliography for the reader who wants to continue exploring this side of WWII.
amdame1's review against another edition
2.0
What would be engaging content is impacted by text that feels condescending in tone. The author's attempt to be witty and conversational comes off as patronizing and oversimplified. I also can't agree with using the word execute when talking about an assassination attempt or referring to Stalin as progressive simply because he used his female pilots. There is also inaccurate information in the book, both in some of the facts and in some of the wording. For example, he generalizes about Hitler's vendetta against all LGBTQIA when we only know for sure that he targeted gay men; the animals that died from the anthrax test were sheep not cows, the active time period for one of the spies is incorrect, etc. The worst part is the intro description of Hitler. It sets the stage from the beginning with the wrong information and tone. The author clearly is passionate about the subject and is trying to get young people interested in the topic as well, but misses the mark.
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