Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You... by James F. Dunnigan

Product Description

Dirty Little Secrets of World War II exposes the dark, irreverent, misunderstood, and often tragicomic aspects of military operations during World War II, many of them virtually unknown even to military buffs. Like its successful predecessor, Dirty Little Secrets, Dunnigan and Nofi's new book vividly brings to life all theaters and participants of the war. Revelations include:

- The real death count for the war, and why it has never been previously released.

- The "new age" general who refused to smoke or drink, who lived on a vitamin-enriched diet, who opposed animal experimentation, and who regularly consulted his astrologer.

- How equipment developed for the war led to such modern high-tech innovations as "smart bombs," electronic warfare, and nuclear missles.

- The lackadaisical relationship between Germany and Japan throughout the war.

- Tricky bits of information about the lingering effects of the war -- like the thousands of live shells and mines that are still buried in Europe and off the East Coast of America.
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #299284 in Books
* Published on: 1996-03-14
* Released on: 1996-03-14
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 416 pages

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
There aren't many "dirty secrets" in this addictively readable book. Really, it's a compendium of fun facts about horrors arranged in bite-size prose bits and written under the influence of lead author Dunnigan's favorite book, Will Cuppy's irreverent historical classic The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. The minichapters have titles like "Killer Vegetables and the Farts from Hell" (at 20,000 feet, gas caused by eating cabbages expanded, killing airmen). Did you know that every single German spy who infiltrated England became an Allied double agent? That MacArthur, Churchill, and Roosevelt all descended from one Sarah Belcher of Taunton, Massachusetts? That World War II killed about 100 million, or five percent of humanity? That a Russian was 100 times likelier to die than an American? (A USSR boy born in 1923 had an eighty-percent chance of dying by 1945.) We learn the origin of the term "rock & roll" (all weapons firing on automatic), the superiority or stupidity of tracer bullets, Göring's air-war policy, and U.S. troop-replacement policy. Some will argue with this book's rather simple answers to complex questions--was Chamberlain smart to cave to Hitler in the Munich pact because it bought a year to build planes and invent radar, which won the Battle of Britain? Other books come to different conclusions, but few so ably honor the master of snappy history, Will Cuppy. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly
This book is only partly about "dirty little secrets"; it is mostly a collection of unfamiliar information about the war, presented in some 300 briefs. Typical of the entries in these entertaining pages is a succinct account of the German "counterfeit offensive," in which an attempt was made to flood Britain with fake pound notes; and a comparison between American and German armies at squad, battalion and division level. In the intriguing trivia section, one learns that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was related to President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and that participants in the battle for Guadalcanal included a 12-year-old American sailor. As to the dirty little secrets, here are a few examples: Australian stevedores deliberately obstructed the U.S. war effort at times; disease was responsible for nearly half the war deaths; Allied bombers caused far less damage to the enemy than is generally supposed. Dunnigan is the author of The Complete Wargames Handbook; Nofi wrote Napoleon at War. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Don't be misled by this book's title. There is nothing dirty or secret to be revealed here. Dunnigan (How To Make War, Morrow, 1983. rev. ed.) and Nofi, a former editor of Strategy and Tactics magazine, apply the same format of their earlier history of the Cold War (Dirty Little Secrets, Morrow, 1992) to World War II to produce a book containing about 300 infobytes of little-known or obscure facts about the war-everything from the venereal disease rates of the American forces to a description of the only ice cream-making ship in the U.S. Navy. The text is divided into eight broad sections, most devoted to the European theater of the war. One does not approach this book for specific information; just open it to any page and begin reading fascinating fact after fact. A comparable title is Karl Roebling's Great Myths of World War II (Paragon Pr., 1985). World War II is a hot topic among readers today, and this book would make an excellent addition to most public library collections.
Richard Nowicki, Emerson Vocational H.S., Buffalo
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Customer Reviews

Nothing "secret" in this book1
The title of this book can easily mislead folks into thinking that it contains little-known information about World War Two. It doesn't. I didn't find ONE bit of information I'd not already read about is real history books. Maybe the author(s) believe no one else knows about WW2, but the fact of the matter is that the book is nothing more than a collection of basic stories from the war that even the most casual student of the conflict is already aware of. Possibly a good book for a pure novice (who'd be better off with one of the Dummies or Idiots books), but this book is a waste of money for anyone who knows about the war.

It's no secret that this book isn't very good2
"Dirty Little Secrets of World War II" is a relatively recent (1990s) book that -- judging by its title -- should tell us something interesting that we don't know already about the war.

The trouble with this book is that its information isn't well-researched (the bibliography is a ghost town) and it isn't very well-written, either. Also, a lot of the purported "secrets" are no secret at all, and have been pretty well known facts for decades prior to this book's publication (i.e, the "secret" that Adolf Hitler was a non-smoking, teetotaling vegetarian with a tendency toward mysticism, or that, at the end, the Nazis used 15 year old Hitler Youth kids as soldiers).

Furthermore, what few "secrets" there are in this book often aren't very interesting.

Added to that, there are many instances in this book where the authors are just plain wrong, which is inexcusable considering that this book was written in the 1990s. For example, when discussing aviation fuel for RAF and Luftwaffe fighters during The Battle of Britain, the authors make the claim that the Hawker Hurricane was "the equal" of the Bf-109E, and that the Supermarine Spitfire was "superior," and that the RAF's better aviation fuel made the disparity that much greater.

WRONG. The Hurricane was recognized early as totally inferior to the Bf-109 barring turning circle and ruggedness by the RAF tacticians, who tried as far as possible to avoid letting the Hurricanes mix it with the Messerschmitts. This is a well-known fact backed by research, and not a random claim by men who didn't do their research. As to the Spitfire, independent Luftwaffe and RAF evaluations of captured aircraft more or less confirmed what everyone already knew -- and STILL knows -- that the Bf-109E and Spitfire Mks 1 and 2 were very closely matched, with neither being able to claim outright superiority. As far as the fuel situation, this is an interesting claim, but a claim is one thing -- backing it up is another, and the authors fail to do so. Sorry.

Later in the book, the authors claim that the AK-47 assault rifle was "modeled after" the German SG-44 of 1944.

WRONG. The outward appearance of both rifles delineate a superficial resemblance, yet the firing mechanisms of both rifles were different. A well known fact that the authors should have researched.

The authors make the claim that Operation Market Garden (Allied airborne operation over Holland in September 1944) landed "right on top of two crack SS panzer divisions."

Had these guys bothered to open a history book (either in English OR German), or even bothered to watch "A Bridge Too Far" they'd have found out that the two "crack divisions" mentioned in their book were not the elite, prepared divisions hinted at in the text, but rather shattered, depleted, severely understrength units recovering after a lengthy commitment on the Eastern Front.

The author make the claim that Soviet fighters' armament of "2 12.7 mm machine guns and a 20mm cannon" was light compared to the Bf-109.

... Whose standard armament was 2 13 mm machine guns and a 20 or 30 mm cannon, making the armaments relatively equal.


These are just a few out of many, many instances where the well-informed reader is left scratching his or her head.

Where are these guys getting this information?

They have their right to have an opinion, but they're stating things like they're researched facts, and they're not.

The authors also make frequent statements that make no sense. For example, they claim that the "crew of a B-17 and its personal equipment would weigh only 1 ton."

Okay, so let's estimate that all ten crewmen were on the light side at only 150lbs. Then factor in their oxygen, their heavy suits, their flak vests, and other sundries.

Comes to a lot more than 2000 lbs.

Also, the book is written in this irreverent, smart-alecky tone that may jar with some readers, because it isn't clever or witty and the repeated, obvious attempts at levity are really annoying.

The book gives the impression that it will be a serious, scholarly volume that can take its rightful place alongside other respected works, but it just goes to show us the old aphorism holds true -- you can't judge a book by -- well, you know the rest.

Unfortunately, the authors don't seem to.


Skip it.

More trivia than secrets3
This book is best suited for the history buff, as it contains pages (and pages, and pages, and pages) of world war 2 trivia. Unfortunately, the so called "Dirty Little Secrets" are few and far between. The lay reader will lose interest as the signal-to-noise ratio for the non-afficianado is just too low.