The latest book by Bogusław Wołoszański is the past of the German Reich and USSR race from the USA in the field of air armaments and then rockets. The work is divided into a part devoted to German armaments (the Hitler Sword) and russian armaments (the Stalin Sword). The talk is accompanied by quite a few photographs, but – as it seems – a small little than in another works of the author. Traditionally, as in Voloszanski, we will not find any maps in the book, which should be considered a flaw.
Scientific work (almost)
The fonts and spacing between the lines are clearly larger than in the second part of "This Cruel Age". The factual footnotes are besides little many and little elaborate, but this full compensates for the main text, in which all method details and biographies could be included in the footnotes. Dialogues in "Kill America" are besides little than in another Voloszański books, and the way they are intertwined into the text and their content itself indicate, with large probability, that they are all authentic.
There is no bibliography in this volume, and traditionally besides no bibliographic footnotes. In fact, it's hard to realize why the author didn't decide to do this? The "Kill America" speech is simply a communicative characteristic of popular discipline works, and if it were put on a origin camera, the book could be. If Wołoszański utilized any primary sources to prepare the text, it could even be a technological work. Without all references, however, the volume can only be treated as a popular work and is not suitable, for example, to be invoked in another works. That's a shame, due to the fact that the book is truly great.
As with Voloszanski, the strength of the work is professionally reporting, cool, uninvolved style. The "narrational" grievances appeared only twice (p. 15, p. 159) erstwhile the author expressed his ideological prejudices and emotions accordingly, which is not only unprofessional but besides simply inelegant. To this should be added, which is alternatively an evenement in the case of Voloszański's books, "editional" gratings, as syntax errors, grammatical errors, etc., begin to appear in the final chapters. The deficiency of information about the year of work (!) is besides a compromising editorial error.
The book is not virtually equal. Wołoszański is clearly "strong" in the analysis of Nazi, Stalinist and Khrushchevski periods – here his speech is orderly, erudite, thoughtful. The communicative of decades after the Cuban rocket crisis begins to rip off, the continuity of the speech replaces the description of selected episodes, these descriptions become more general, sometimes even dated – it is clear that the author does not feel "at his own home" in these themes, there are no "overworked" ones, and he rewrites them from various studies, just to force the "narration" until the end of the Cold War.
How steel hardened
A completely average ending of the book does not diminish its value, however, due to the fact that much of its volume is covered by a description of events and processes which Voloszański is an extraordinary expert. erstwhile he writes about Germany, we know that he visited e.g. the Reich Chancellery, various industrial centres and polygons. erstwhile he writes about Russia and the US, we know that he read the most crucial thing that an analyst and Anglo-Saxon historiography gave the world. So we get not only the parameters and actual performance of various weapons and weapons components, but besides the past of the activities of constructors, industrialists and bureaucrats to realise the projects.
We follow the fight in German, russian and Yankee power and economy apparatus for the construction of strategical bombers, diving fighters, rocket and atomic weapons. The author points out to us the factors that have decided to abort sometimes promising projects but besides explains why – for economic, technological, natural materials reasons, the situation of war – it was impossible to realise others. The subject of Voloszanski's analysis is the improvement of air weapons and a navy capable of damaging targets in the second hemisphere, but its analysis is holistic, not limited to a selected part of reality, but based on premises from many different areas.
The temporal scope of Voloszanski's analysis in the case of long-range aviation, rocket weapons and atomic weapons fundamentally covers the period since the creation of these weapons. So we will find in the book many fascinating details about the improvement of the Yankee and German aviation manufacture during the interwar period. We will besides find comments on the aviation possible and military fleet of Tsarist Russia (and their reconstruction from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s), against which the author discusses the devastations committed in russian armed forces and manufacture by Stalin.
There are besides detailed descriptions of German projects utilizing submarines to effort to attack the American continent. The descriptions of akin Russian trials are weaker on this basis, but this is perfectly understandable, due to the fact that the author gained credit for his analyses concerning Nazi Germany. There is, of course, no present war in the Pacific and the possible of the US against Japan, which may obscure the general image of the improvement of marine and aviation technologies during planet War II, which the author cannot point out, as Japan clearly was never in the ellipse of its writing and reporting activities.
Another noteworthy motive in Voloszański's work is the detailed past of Yankee and russian atomic programs. The author besides briefly explains how plutonium, hydrogen and fusion bombs operate and illustrates their possible for destruction. It is simply a pity that he does not mention the possible of building the atomic weapons of Nazi Germany, which would surely be classified as the "sensation of the 20th century".
It is all the more unusual that Wołoszański – it is hard to measure to what degree rightly – a very large part of Yankee and russian achievements in aviation and rocket technologies is linked to the interception of German achievements at the end of the war and shortly after its completion. possibly his argument on the improvement of U.S. and USSR technology is not complete but the details of capturing the work of German scientists and involving the scientists and engineers themselves from Germany are rather extensive, detailed and rich in various curiosities (e.g. on the surviving conditions of German scientists imprisoned in Russia).
Irration of Germany
In general, the image emerging from the Vołoszanski speech is – for the revisionists position quo – rather depressing. Germany had no chance of defeating England or Russia due to the fact that they had no long-range aviation capable of destroying the industries of these countries. Additionally, English and Russian industries were more efficient than German and English technology was further advanced.
Germany could not scope the United States either, and Hitler's declaration of war to this country was completely irrational and resulted from the intellectual simplicity of the German leader. Even as part of their most ambitious projects, Germany was only planning to terrorize the U.S. population by bombing cities on the coast of that country, but industrial centres even in the large Lakes region were beyond their ambition. The German fantasies about excluding the US from the war have centered around strengthening the country's isolationist sentiments in society, which would lead to Roosevelt being disengaged from power.
It is besides interesting that Germany tries to influence the result of the 1940 U.S. presidential election – yet ineffective but focusing on strengthening Yankee isolationism and anti-Semitism. The defeat in this venture was based on, among another things, the deficiency of a German agentry in the United States, which Hitler did not let to grow so as not to provoke the American power to talk against Germany. “Killing America” Voloszański leaves us with the conclusion that Germany did not have an offensive strategy against the zaoceanic pier and their assessment of this country was completely false and grew out of ignorance.
Irration of Russia
As far as Russia is concerned, Voloshan has convincingly shown that not only the economical possible of the russian Union has given way to this U.S., but besides the technological possible of Moscow, as well as the amount and performance of weapons – at least until the end of the Cuban rocket crisis – remained grossly behind the possible of the United States. Russia did not have adequate good strategical aviation to actually harm the US in the event of war. It besides had incomparably little long-range rockets and their service was more time-consuming than the Yankees and entailed costs hard to bear for the russian economy.
The Cuban rocket crisis was a Moscow bluff. Khrushchev knew perfectly well that his country would then gotta lose the war with the US. atomic warhead missiles in Cuba were not intended to usage them to attack a North American competitor, but only to intimidate Yankees. However, the Yankees knew about the disparity of forces – from observing their planes and spy satellites over Russia and from information provided by their agent in the USSR Oleg Pieńkowski.
Kennedy did not take any chances, therefore, by “standing up” to Khrushchev: he knew that the USSR had to step down or lose harshly to the US. Death Major. Rudolf Anderson's U-2 aircraft shot down over Cuba was – as Wołoszański speculates – an component of provocation arranged by Fidel Castro – a young (then) revolutionary seeking to start a war. The image of the “world that stood on the brink of destruction” presented to us present in the historical mythology of the West and in works of Western pop culture specified as the (however very good) Roger Donaldson movie “Thirteen Days” (2000) seems to be falsified.
Wołoszański's descriptions of later times are more murky, when, as we know, russian possible approached the possible of the USA, but as we have already mentioned, these decades do not seem to be a field in which Wołoszański would decision with specified freedom as after the past of 1920-1960. So it is adequate to say that, according to Voloszanski, the U.S., somewhere in the late 1970-1980s (from the text it is hard to deduce, precisely erstwhile exactly) achieved (again) the ability of Russia to "hit the disarmer" and possibly win the war.
The request for rationality and Realism
I mentioned earlier that the conclusions of reading "Kill America" are rather depressing. It turns out that the erstwhile continental centres of force have reached at most the ceiling of regional powers, not actually able to hit America. However, their challenge to the Moloch from across the ocean was definitely premature and irrational: the revision centres lacked both their own possible and even adequate situational awareness – which led them to fatally disregarding the opponent (as in Hitler's case) or "counting for a bit of happiness" (as in the case of Khrushchev, who hoped the US would not announcement russian treatments in Cuba).
Every future offensive strategy against the Yankee tyrant of the earth must so presume what Germany did not want to make and what the Russians were incapable to develop—achieve supremacy in areas of military technology (marine, submarines, aviation, rocket weapons, orbital communication) and spaces (sea, airspace, space) where the thalassocrats dominate today. Until then, a frontal confrontation with the US should be avoided, as the conditions of any specified war would gotta dictate Washington and its Tallasocrat vassals.
Ronald Lasecki
(Bogusław Wołoszański, Kill America, Warsaw, [b.r.w.], p. 334.
