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WORK TITLE: The Plots against Hitler
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://dannyorbachenglish.wordpress.com/
CITY: Jerusalem
STATE:shishi
COUNTRY: Israel
NATIONALITY:
https://dannyorbachenglish.wordpress.com/about/ * http://www.bu.edu/ihi/fellows/external-fellows/danny-orbach/ * http://scholar.harvard.edu/dannyorbach/home
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Tel Aviv University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 2006; studied at Tokyo University, 2007-09; Harvard University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian and writer. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, senior lecturer for history. Has worked as a teaching fellow and as a fellow at Boston University’s International History Institute, Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and as a research fellow in the Japan Foundation.
MIILITARY:Intelligence operative, Israeli Defense Force, three years.
WRITINGS
Contributor of chapters to academic books and articles in academic journals, including Holocaust and Genocide Studies, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Japan Forum, Journal of Military History, European Studies, and the Journal of Japanese Studies. Author of a Web log, The Owl.
SIDELIGHTS
Danny Orbach is an Israeli historian and writer. After finishing a three-year stint as an intelligence operative with the Israeli army, he graduated from Tel Aviv University and studied at Tokyo University before completing a Ph.D. at Harvard University. Orbach has worked as a teaching fellow and as a fellow at Boston University’s International History Institute, Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and as a research fellow in the Japan Foundation. He later became a senior lecturer for history and East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Orbach has published chapters in academic books and articles in academic journals, including Holocaust and Genocide Studies, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Japan Forum, Journal of Military History, European Studies, and the Journal of Japanese Studies.
The Plots against Hitler
Orbach published The Plots against Hitler in 2016. The account looks at the resistance movements in Germany between 1933 and 1945 that sought to neutralize or assassinate Hitler. Orbach draws on histories from survivors of these resistance movements, their family members, and archival records from multiple countries to piece together the numerous attempts made against Hitler, from the infamous Operation Valkyrie plot to the smaller and lesser known plots that countered Nazi dominance. The book also reveals how the head of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Canaris, was involved in some of these plots. In writing this account, Orbach aims to unmask the motivations of these various resistance movements and plots, placing them in moral and ethical contexts. Orbach paints the members of the resistance as exceptional individuals who, despite their criminal acts, were operating for the greater good.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly said that The Plots against Hitler “is a fascinating story of courage and an excellent study of the struggle of individuals to act morally and honorably.” In a review in Library Journal, Harry Willems reasoned that “this fresh look at the German Resistance will be appreciated by students” who are interested in the history of World War II. Booklist contributor Daniel Kraus found that “despite a dry dissertation style, Orbach succeeds in painting an affecting picture.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor said that “Orbach is thoughtful and careful in portraying a rebellion against evil that ended ‘honorably, perhaps, but in utter failure.'” The same reviewer called the book “a dense but gripping look at a historical counternarrative that remains relevant and disturbing.” Writing on the Jewish Book Council Web site, Jack Fischel mentioned that “the collaborators failed to prevent the excesses of the Hitler regime and the unique genocide known as the Holocaust. Disheartening as the story may be, The Plots against Hitler is a riveting read well worth picking up.”
Curse on This Country
In 2017 Orbach published Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan. The account looks at the actions of the Japanese Army since the Meiji Era in the late nineteenth century to highlight the way the military leaders regularly overthrew foreign governments, disobeyed military commanders and civilian leaders, and committed political assassinations up until their disbandment at the end of World War II. The action of these military leaders stood in stark contrast to the strict punishment laid out against anyone guilty of committing an act of military disobedience since the Meiji Era with its code that forbade the military to interfere in politics. Orbach starts by examining the emergence of the shishi warriors who held high personal aspirations and essentially replaced the samurai of the previous Edo Period. Orbach goes on to show the numerous revolts by the military against the government. Orbach points to a young and inexperienced emperor as one of the reasons for a lack of solid and centralized military leadership. Into the twentieth century, Orbach highlights the Japanese military’s involvement in plans to assimilate Manchuria and later the formation of the conspiratorial Cherry Blossom Society.
Writing in the Japan Times, Ray Tsuchiyama explained that “Orbach’s narrative speaks time and time again of missed chances in Japanese governance that would have prevented the hijacking of a nation and the terrible miscalculations, without clear strategic analysis of dire consequences, that followed.” Tsuchiyama also noted that “it is a book that draws on multilingual primary sources with an innovative reinterpretation through a 21st-century military and political lens that connects historical incidents, especially on the late Tokugawa shishi and their outsized influence on 20th-century Japan.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2016, Daniel Kraus, review of The Plots against Hitler, p. 26.
Japan Times, April 22, 2017, Ray Tsuchiyama, review of Curse on this Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan.
Kirkus Reviews, August 3, 2016, review of The Plots against Hitler.
Library Journal, June 15, 2016, Harry Willems, review of The Plots against Hitler, p. 88.
Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2016, review of The Plots against Hitler, p. 60.
World War II, January-February, 2017, review of The Plots against Hitler, p. 73.
ONLINE
Harvard University Web site, https://www.harvard.edu/ (June 11, 2017), author profile.
International History Institute, Boston University Web site, http://www.bu.edu/ihi/ (June 11, 2017), author profile.
Jewish Book Council Website, http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/ (June 11, 2017), Jack Fischel, review of The Plots against Hitler.*
Danny Orbach
History Department
(email)
Curriculum Vitae
After serving for three years as an intelligence operative in the Israeli army, I completed a BA (summa cum laude) in Western History and East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Afterwards, I have studied for two years (2007-9) as a research student in Tokyo University under a Japanese state scholarship. Currently, I am a PhD Student at Harvard University, working on comparative history of military revolts and political assassinations in Japan, Germany and elsewhere. Other fields of interest are messianism and revolutionary violence, illegal military orders, military disobedience, atrocities in wartime and the formation of revolutionary networks.
I have also served as a teaching fellow and section leader for Prof. Niall Ferguson and Prof. Andrew Gordon, and as an external fellow in the International History Institute, Boston University, the Davis Center for Russian and Euroasian Studies, Harvard University, and as a research fellow in the Japan Foundation, Tokyo.
In July 2009, following the 65 anniversary of the assassination attempt on Hitler, I have published my first book, Valkyrie - German Resistance to Hitler in Hebrew (Yedioth Ahronot Press), followed by more than ten academic articles, in-house and peer-reviewed. In addition, I own a bi-lingual blog, the owl, on history, contemporary politics and other subjects. Most of my posts are in Hebrew, but several were translated to English. For the Hebrew version of my blog, click here, and for the english section -here.
Danny Orbach
Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on US-Japan Relations, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University and a senior lecturer for history and East Asian Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Education
Harvard University, Cambridge MA
PhD in history (modern Japan)
Dissertation: “Culture of Disobedience: Rebellion and Defiance in the Modern Japanese Army, 1860-1931”. Advisors: Professors Andrew D. Gordon, David L. Howell, Niall Ferguson, Cathal J. Nolan
Tokyo University – Monbusho scholarship research student, 2007-9
Tel Aviv University – BA, summa cum laude, General History and East Asian Studies, 2006
Research Interests
Modern Japanese History
Modern Chinese History
Military History
History of Counterinsurgency
History of Disobedience
Dynamics of Atrocities in Wartime
Publications
Books
Curse on this Country: Japanese Military Insubordination and the Origins of the Pacific War (Cornell University Press, forthcoming in spring 2017)
The Plots against Hitler (New York: Houghton Mifflin, Eamon Dolan Books – forthcoming October 2016)
——————- Uccidere Hitler (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri – forthcoming September 2016)
——————- Valkyrie – New expanded edition (Yedioth Ahronot Press – forthcoming October 2016)
Valkyrie – Ha-Hitnagdut ha-Germanit le-Hitler (Valkyrie: German Resistance to Hitler), (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronot Press, 2009.
Articles and Book Chapters
“Imperialism through the Mirror: Japan in the Eyes of the SS and the German Conservative Resistance”, in Sven Saaler. ed., Mutual Perceptions in German-Japanese Relations: Images, Imaginings and Stereotypes (forthcoming)
“The Other Prussia – General von Tresckow, Resistance to Hitler and the Nature of Charisma”, Tel Aviver Jahrbūcher fūr deutsche Geschichte (forthcoming, October 2016)
“‘By not stopping’: The First Taiwan Expedition (1874) and the Roots of Japanese Military Disobedience”, The Journal of Japanese Studies 42: 1 (Winter 2016), pp.29-55.
“The Kyūjō Incident: A Night-time Coup in Tokyo”, in David Chandler, Robert Cribb, and Li Narangoa, eds., End of History: 100 Days that changed the World (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2015).
(With Mark Solonin), “Calculated Indifference: The Soviet Union and the Plan to Bomb Auschwitz”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 27 (2013), pp.90-113.
“Black Flag at a Crossroads: the Political Trial of Kafr-Qasim (1956-8): Dynamics and Consequences”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2013), pp.491-511.
“Tyrannicide in Radical Islam: Sayyid Qutb and Abd A-Salam Faraj”, Middle Eastern Studies (November 2012), pp. 961-972.
“A Japanese Prophet – Eschatology and Epistemology in the Thought of Kita Ikki, Japan Forum 23:3, 2011, pp.339-361.
“Criticism Reconsidered: The German Resistance to Hitler in Critical German Scholarship”, Journal of Military History 75:2 (April, 2011), pp.1-26.
“Japan through SS Eyes: Cultural Dialogue and Instrumentalization of a Wartime Ally”, European Studies Vol. 7 (March, 2008), pp.115-131.
Peer reviewed translations of the above:
“Japan mit der Augen der SS gesehen” (Vorwort and Deutsche Übersetzung von Harald Kleinschmidt) (Japan seen with the Eyes of the SS: Foreword and German translation by Harald Kleinschmidt), (in German), OAG Notizen (May, 2008), pp.12-31.
“Hidat Hacoah Hademoni – Tadmiyot Yapaniyot Baraich Hashlishi – Dialog Tarbuti ve Instrumentalizatsia” (The Riddle of Demonic Power: Japanese Images in the Third Reich: Cultural Dialogue and Instrumentalization), (in Hebrew) Historia – Journal of the Israeli Historical Society, vol.22 (Autumn 2008), pp.29-73.
“Mitsvat Lo Tirzah Be-mered Ha-Taiping: Teologia ve-Yisuma Halacha Le-Ma’ase” (‘Thou Shalt not Kill’ in the Taiping Rebellion: Theology and Practice), (in Hebrew) Zmanim, vol.104 (Autumn 2008), pp.90-105.
“Ha-Zamir ve-ha-Lotus – Jalal A-Din A-Rumi ve-ha-Buddhism” (The Nightingale and the Lotus – Jalal Al-Din Al-Rumi and Chinese Buddhist Thought), (in Hebrew) Jamaa 16, 2007, pp.63-83.
“Fata Morgana o Re’i Akum: Historionim ve-ha-Hitnagdut ha-Germanit le-Hitler” (Fata Morgana or a Crooked Mirror: ‘Critical’ German Historians and the German Resistance to Hitler), (in Hebrew), Zmanim (Summer 2005), pp.-84-95.
“The Israeli Translation Controversy – what about and where to” (with contributions by Yuval Wellis and Yuval Kfir), in Thomas Honneger, ed., Tolkien in Translation: Text and Film (Zurich: Walking Tree Publishers, 2004), pp.53-66.
Invited Academic Broadcasts
“Cultures of Disobedience: Assassinations and Rebellions in the Imperial Japanese Army”, Harvard Horizons Symposium, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Qm0_N5egI
“The Anti-Nazi Coups that Failed, 1938 and 1944: Did They Have a Chance?”, Military History Series, Boston University, 3 March 2011. Broadcasted in WBUR, Boston’s NPR: http://worldofideas.wbur.org/2011/03/20/anti-nazi-coups
Fellowships and Awards
Harvard Horizons Scholar, 2014. A special program of Harvard University, in which eight students from different disciplines are being selected annually to presented their projects to a larger audience.
Harvard University, Derek Bok Center Distinction in Teaching, 2014 and 2012
External Fellow, International History Institute, Boston University (2012 to present)
Japan Foundation Research Fellow, 2012 -13
Graduate Student Associate, Davis Center for Russian and European Studies, Harvard University, 2010-11
Yaavetz’s Award for outstanding students, History Department, Tel Aviv University, 2006
Wolf Foundation Award for outstanding students, 2006
Japanese Education Ministry (Monbusho) scholarship for research students, 2006
Rector’s Award for academic excellence, Tel Aviv University, 2005
Bosh Foundation Award for Jewish studies, 2004
General Examination Fields
Modern Japanese History (Meiji to the end of WWII), Early Modern Japanese History (Tokugawa to Meiji), Modern and Early Modern Chinese History (Qing Dynasty and modern China up to the Cultural Revolution), Military History (1600 to the present)
Position Papers
“General Hans Oster, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Dr. Hans von Dohnanyi and their efforts to save Jewish lives during the Second World War”: A research for the Righteous among the Nations Committee, Yad Vashem Holocaust Research institute, Jeruslaem. This research led to the endowment of the title “righteous among the nations” to Dr. Hans von Dohnanyi
Conference Papers
“Reemergence of the Samurai: The New Wave of Political Violence in Japan’s ‘Postwar'”, presented at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 2, 2014, Washinton DC.
“Networks of Fencing: Anatomy of Conspiratorial Networks in Bakumatsu Japan (1853-1868)”, presented at the Israeli Graduate Students Conference in East Asian Studies, 4 June, 2012, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv.
“Colonialism through the Mirror: Japan in the Eyes of the SS and the National Conservative German Resistance”, presented at ICAS Conference, 25 June, 2013, Macau, China, and the
OAG International Symposium, “Mutual Perceptions in Japanese-German Relations: Images, Imaginings and Stereotypes”, 10 December, 2010, OAG House, Tokyo, Japan.
“The German Resistance Movement and the Holocaust: A Reassessment”, presented at Yad Vashem Guest Research Seminar, 26 November, 2009, Jerusalem, Israel.
“The Reception of the German Resistance in Israel: Hans von Dohnanyi as a Case Study”, presented at the German Studies Association Annual Conference, 9 October, 2004, Washington DC.
Teaching Experience
Harvard University, Program in General Education, Cambridge MA
Teaching Fellow, “Political Justice and Political Trials” (Professor Charles S. Maier), Spring 2014.
Taught two sections, graded papers and exams.
Harvard University, Program in General Education, Cambridge MA
Teaching Fellow, “History of American Democracy” (Professor David A. Moss), Fall 2013.
Advised students, graded papers and exams.
Harvard University, Department of History, Cambridge MA
Teaching Fellow, “20th Century Japan” (Professor Andrew D. Gordon), Spring 2013.
Taught one section, graded papers and exams.
Harvard University, Program in General Education, Cambridge MA
Teaching Fellow, “Western Ascendancy: the Mainsprings of Global Power from 1400 to the Present” (Professor Niall Ferguson), Fall 2012.
Research Experience
Harvard University, Department of History, Cambridge MA
Research Assistant to Professor Andrew D. Gordon and Prof. Erez Manela in the preparation of the course “Forced to be Free: Americans and Occupiers and Nation Builders”, Spring 2013.
Languages
Hebrew: native.
Japanese: six years of Modern Japanese, fluent in reading and speaking. One year of Classical Japanese, including 19t century texts and early Meiji language.
German: fluent in reading, experience of 11 years in translation and research.
Chinese: 4 years of modern Chinese.
Russian: one year and a half of modern Russian.
Arabic: intensive military course of modern and classical Arabic. Higher-intermediate speaking and ability to use original sources for research.
Persian: intermediate speaking and ability to use modern Persian sources for original research.
About Me
My name is Danny Orbach, and I am a historian and a PhD candidate. My speciality is coup d’etats, military revolts, political assassinations and rebellious networks in Japan, China, Germany and the rest of the world. At the moment, I am studying, teaching and writing my dissertation in Harvard University.
Those of you who can read Hebrew are welcome to visit my home blog, where you can find numerous articles on history, literature and politics. The English version of the blog will focus on historical and political issues, especially Middle Eastern politics and the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As a rule, a new article will be published every saturday. Guest postings are an option. If you are interested, please contact me by mail.
If you are interested in my research on military rebellions, here you can listen to a lecture that I gave in Boston University on the German resistance to Hitler, broadcasted in National Public Radio. My academic profile is here.
My email: dorbach@fas.harvard.edu
The Plots Against Hitler
World War II. 31.5 (January-February 2017): p73.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 World History Group, LLC
http://www.historynet.com/
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THE PLOTS AGAINST HITLER By Danny Orbach. 432 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. $28.00.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
An in-depth look at the anti-Nazi underground in Germany and the conspirators' efforts to end Hitler's reign. The book covers the birth of a close-knit group of resisters, its expansion into a broader conspiracy network, and its culmination in the well-known July 1944 operation led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
The Plots Against Hitler
Publishers Weekly. 263.33 (Aug. 15, 2016): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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The Plots Against Hitler
Danny Orbach. HMH/Eamon Dolan, $28 (432p) ISBN 978-0-544-71443-4
In this comprehensive history, Israeli historian Orbach scrupulously analyzes the resistance movements that opposed the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. His superb research includes interviews with resistance survivors, family members, and relevant records from archives around the world. It is a balanced history of the resistance that covers the famous Operation Valkyrie plot, but gives equal treatment to the other serious attempts to resist the Nazis and assassinate Hitler. For many readers the extent of the resistance efforts of Admiral Canaris (head of German Military Intelligence), among others, will be surprising. This book is unique in that Orbach attempts to determine the motivation of the resisters in moral and ethical terms. He explains that most historians have either idolized the resisters as heroes or condemned them as self-serving criminals. Orbach sets the record straight when he concludes that the resisters to Hitler's Nazi government were imperfect but in most cases exceptional human beings who reacted with action to the criminal deeds of the Nazis. Likely to become the definitive general history of the subject and the starting place for all future research, Orbach's work is a fascinating story of courage and an excellent study of the struggle of individuals to act morally and honorably. B&w insert. Agent: Andrew Lownie, Andrew Lownie Literary (U.K.). (Oct.)
Orbach, Danny. The Plots Against Hitler
Harry Willems
Library Journal. 141.11 (June 15, 2016): p88.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Orbach, Danny. The Plots Against Hitler. Houghton Harcourt. Oct. 2016.432p. ISBN 9780544714434. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780544715226. HIST
In this account, historian Orbach (fellow, Weatherhead Ctr. for International Affairs) explores the psychological, social, and military dynamics of the network of groups who tried to assassinate German politician and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler between 1938 and 1943. The author uses newly discovered diaries and documents to characterize the attempted murder plots, notably the Oster Conspiracy in 1938, led by Gen. Hans Oster; and Operation Valkyrie in 1944, headed by Officer Claus von Stauffenberg in 1943. Owing to chance or miscalculations, Hitler managed to avoid death at the hands of these high-ranking officials. Another recent work addressing this topic is Philip Freiherr Von Boeselager et al.'s Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot To Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member. VERDICT This fresh look at the German Resistance will be appreciated by students of World War II history.--Harry Willems, Great Bend P.L., KS
The Plots against Hitler
Daniel Kraus
Booklist. 112.19-20 (June 1, 2016): p26.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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The Plots against Hitler. By Danny Orbach. Oct. 2016. 432p. Harcourt, $28 (9780544714434). 940.53.
Few historical hooks are as sharp as the aching what-ifs of the various plots against Adolf Hitler's life. Orbach's 10-years-in-themaking debut sets out to be the definitive record of every significant assassination attempt by Hitler's own countrymen, most involving Abwehr agent Hans Paul Oster. Though Orbach cautions not to lionize the conspirators--some agreed with Nazi goals, just not Hitler's helmsmanship--it's difficult not to catch one's breath at Oster's tenterhook probings for recruits or to share his angst at every near-miss, from a beer-hall explosion that Hitler evades by minutes, to a sharpshooter assault on a parade that gets canceled, to a bomb inside a liquor bottle aboard Hitler's plane that doesn't trigger. It all leads, of course, to Claus von Stauffenberg, the dashing, eye-patched, would-be savior whom Orbach presents as, indeed, a man of heroic bent, and whose famous suitcase bomb came mere inches from doing the job. Despite a dry dissertation style, Orbach succeeds in painting an affecting picture of a network--nearly a movement--struggling to save the country against its own ingrained principles of obedience.--Daniel Kraus
THE PLOTS AGAINST HITLER
by Danny Orbach
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A robust history of the German conspiracy against Nazism.
Orbach (History and East Asian Studies/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) combines intellectual inquiry with thriller dynamics, explaining that “resistance to Hitler…is a field in which historical arguments are not purely academic but wrought through with passions.” The author acknowledges both the admirable aims and ultimate shortcomings of the conspirators, arguing that their story, culminating in Operation Valkyrie in 1944, is deceptively complex, while the plotters’ moral standings remain subject to competing interpretations. Today, he notes, many doubt “not only the moral integrity of the conspirators and their motives but their military skill as well.” Orbach counterbalances this by examining the connections between principal figures as the Nazis took hold of German society. Initially, defiance developed among conservative iconoclasts from the military and the nobility. The author uses organizational theory to explore how resistance to totalitarianism moved from such secretive “cliques” to broader networks, potent but more vulnerable. Of these early groups, “most…were never involved in opposition to the Nazi regime, but a tiny portion went through a process of revolutionary mutation in the opening months of 1938.” A planned coup nearly occurred that year, during Hitler’s aggression against Czechoslovakia, but it fizzled out following appeasement. As one plotter noted, “never, since 1933, was there such a good chance to free Germany and the world.” Amazingly, a disgruntled lone wolf nearly killed Hitler the following year, an event that stands in ironic contrast to the increasingly labyrinthine networks. Orbach tracks the conspiracy’s rise and fall over several years; some participants were motivated by spiraling defeats on the eastern front, others through witnessing genocidal acts. The charismatic Claus von Stauffenberg linked the military, bureaucratic, and civilian cliques into a “wheel conspiracy”; unfortunately, its efficiency permitted the Nazis to punish most plotters following his failed bombing of Hitler’s hideaway. Orbach is thoughtful and careful in portraying a rebellion against evil that ended “honorably, perhaps, but in utter failure.”
A dense but gripping look at a historical counternarrative that remains relevant and disturbing.
Pub Date: Oct. 11th, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-71443-4
Page count: 432pp
Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3rd, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15th, 2016
The Plots Against Hitler
Danny Orbach
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2016
432 Pages $28.00
ISBN: 978-0544714434
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Review by Jack Fischel
Although there are a number of scholarly books on the planned assassination attempts against Adolf Hitler, Danny Orbach’s The Plot Against Hitler provides a definitive history of the anti-Nazi underground’s efforts to overthrow the Nazi dictator.
The attempt to assassinate or at least capture Hitler began as early as 1938, when the Führer annexed Austria then threatened to invade the Sudetenland in disregard for the fear expressed by a number of his generals that it would bring Germany into a new war with Great Britain and France. Hitler’s triumph at Munich showed the weakness of the British and France in confronting Germany, thus encouraging him to pursue his policy ofLebensraum (“living space”) to acquire by conquest territory in Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union. Orbach details the concerns of German military leaders, civilian officials, and theologians who feared that Hitler was leading the nation down the path to destruction and consequently sought to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi leadership. Certainly the war against the Soviet Union, especially after Stalingrad, drew these forces together, as did the Nazi treatment of the Jews in Germany and later mass murders in Eastern Europe. One of the conspirators, Carl Goerdeler, the High Mayor of Leipzig, defied racial laws directed against Jews and even refused to remove a statue of Felix Mendelsohn which was located in the city square; Lt. Colonel Henny von Tresckow, a former follower of the Nazi regime, was horrified at the Nazi crimes against the German Jews and considered Kristallnacht an unforgivable act of barbarism. Assigned to fight against the Soviet Union in 1942, Tresckow was furious that Jews were being murdered all along the front and demanded of his superior that he use force against the SS Einsatzgruppento halt the slaughter. Subsequently, Tresckow along with others including the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and the charismatic Claus von Stauffenberg, were important conspirators in the 1944 plot. Stauffenberg became the leader of the plotters and it was he who planted the bomb that nearly killed Hitler. All of those involved in the failed 1944 plot were eventually hunted down and executed.
Why did these conspirators risk their lives? According to Orbach, reasons ranged from saving Germany from an obvious defeat to fear of Allied retribution—especially from the Soviets—to the Holocaust, which turned religious Christians, especially, against a leader who broke all the tenets of their faith and code of morality.
The German anti-Nazi resistance plotted “honorably, perhaps, but in utter failure,” Orbach concludes. “Its members were able neither to prevent the outbreak of war nor bring it to an early end. Notwithstanding all of their efforts and sacrifice, most Germans still followed Hitler to the bitter end.” Against their bad luck, as well as careful planning among dedicated German patriots, the collaborators failed to prevent the excesses of the Hitler regime and the unique genocide known as the Holocaust. Disheartening as the story may be, The Plots Against Hitler is a riveting read well worth picking up.
‘Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan’: Of insubordination and the road to WWII
BY RAY TSUCHIYAMA
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
APR 22, 2017 ARTICLE HISTORY PRINT SHARE
In “Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan,” multi-lingual Hebrew University senior lecturer Danny Orbach tracks nearly 80 years (1860-1936) of the influence of the Imperial Japanese Army’s officer class on Japan.
Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan, by Danny Orbach.
384 pages
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS, Nonfiction.
Based on Japanese-language primary source research as well as other original documents in four other languages, Orbach details how members of the officer class conducted overthrows of foreign governments, political assassinations and repeated insubordinate actions against Japan’s military and civilian leadership. Orbach argues that the Japanese Army acted contrary to orders and policy on many occasions beginning in the Meiji Era (1869-1912), becoming a cult of disobedience that pushed Japan into the disastrous Pacific War.
All of this was despite the fact that, from the founding of the Meiji “national” armed forces, the Imperial Rescript mandated loyalty to the Japanese nation-state, with clear instruction not to “meddle in politics.” What’s more, Japan’s 1880s penal code called for severe punishment for any act of military disobedience — but apparently this did little to thwart rebellious activities.
Starting in the 1860s, Orbach examines the origins of shishi, “warriors of high aspirations.” Flourishing in kendo clubs and urban entertainment districts, the shishi occupied a space somewhere between the “old” samurai of the feudal Edo Period (1603-1868) and the “new” Meiji Era nationalists.
In 1865, Shinsaku Takasugi, a Choshu clan (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) samurai, was celebrated as a shishi success story after he organized an improvised mixed force of samurai and peasants against a Choshu collaborationist government, defeating the shogunate forces. Takasugi showed that a reckless, impromptu assault could yield victory, and this narrative formed the basis for a shishi ideology: purity of motive over clear strategy.
During the 1870s, the most significant domestic rebellion against the new Meiji state came from Saigo Takamori, a disaffected general whose clan was based in southern Kyushu. To Orbach’s military eye, Saigo made many strategic mistakes that doomed his rebellion. Paradoxically, like the 1930s military rebels that were to come, Saigo saw himself as a loyal retainer of the Emperor, although he besieged the Meiji army garrison in Kumamoto Castle. Without arms, food or ammunition, the Meiji forces managed to overwhelm the rebels, and Saigo’s forces surrendered.
Orbach leverages his European perspective to analyze Japan’s “supreme prerogative,” a Meiji import from Prussia consisting of an army leadership triumvirate: the chief of general staff, the army minister and the inspector general. Orbach points out that whereas in Germany a strong Kaiser ultimately made military decisions, Japan had the relatively “weak” young Emperor Meiji, creating at the center of power what Orbach calls a “hazy center.” For this reason, the German military never developed a culture of insubordination; in Japan, the “supreme prerogative” used the name of the Emperor to usurp power.
During the late 19th century, plots and insubordination led by Japanese military officers flourished outside of Japan, and Orbach details these, including the 1895 assassination of Korea’s Queen Min. Alarmed by such reckless actions, the Japanese government recalled the Japanese conspirators from Korea. A court acquitted the group, setting the pattern of a lack of punishment, even for regicide, for conspirators.
In another 1928 example, Imperial Army Col. Daisuke Komoto hatched an audacious plan to accelerate the incorporation of Manchuria into the Japanese Empire by assassinating Zuolin Zhang, a Manchurian warlord. With local Imperial Army units he succeeded in this operation in “complete defiance of Japanese government policy.” Zuolin Zhang’s violent end did not result in Japanese expansionist outcomes, however, as the conspirators had done no planning. Komoto left the Imperial Army without punishment.
Meanwhile the London Naval Disarmanent Treaty, which was viewed by the Japanese officer class as weakening Japan’s military power, was one among many grievances that acted as a catalyst for the formation of the Sakura-Kai (Cherry Blossom Society), Japan’s “first cross-army conspiratorial group.”
What made the Sakura-Kai-led mutiny of Feb. 26, 1936, (known as the “2-26 Incident”) exceptional was that the leadership came not from generals and colonels, but from members of the lower officer ranks, who rose to assassinate civilian leaders to open the way for a military-dominated, Asia-expansionist government.
The mutiny forced senior generals to take responsibility by retiring, and this thrust mid-level officers up the rank hierarchy. Fearing further attacks, the civilian government raised the military budget, causing the army to simultaneously become stronger as an institution and weaker at being able “to control its younger officers to act independently in the field (overseas).”
The next year, young army officers triggered a battle with Chinese nationalist forces at the Marco Polo Bridge — escalating into a full-blown Sino-Japanese war. The army’s merger with the civilian government was personified by Gen. Hideki Tojo’s appointment as prime minister. At the Tokyo War Tribunals, Marquis Koichi Kido declared that military insubordination was a “curse” that brought on Japan “the misfortunes of war, defeat, and occupation.” After Japan’s surrender, the “supreme prerogative” was dissolved and the Self-Defense Forces remain under strict civilian government oversight.
Orbach’s narrative speaks time and time again of missed chances in Japanese governance that would have prevented the hijacking of a nation and the terrible miscalculations, without clear strategic analysis of dire consequences, that followed.
It is a book that draws on multi-lingual primary sources with an innovative re-interpretation through a 21st-century military and political lens that connects historical incidents, especially on the late Tokugawa shishi and their outsized influence on 20th-century Japan.
Sunday, 23 April 2017, 03:18:55 AM
'Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan': Of insubordination and the road to WWII
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In 'Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan,' multi-lingual Hebrew University
In “Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan,” multi-lingual Hebrew University senior lecturer Danny Orbach tracks nearly 80 years (1860-1936) of the influence of the Imperial Japanese Army’s officer class on Japan.
Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan, by Danny Orbach.
384 pages
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS, Nonfiction.
Based on Japanese-language primary source research as well as other original documents in four other languages, Orbach details how members of the officer class conducted overthrows of foreign governments, political assassinations and repeated insubordinate actions against Japan’s military and civilian leadership. Orbach argues that the Japanese Army acted contrary to orders and policy on many occasions beginning in the Meiji Era (1869-1912), becoming a cult of disobedience that pushed Japan into the disastrous Pacific War.
All of this was despite the fact that, from the founding of the Meiji “national” armed forces, the Imperial Rescript mandated loyalty to the Japanese nation-state, with clear instruction not to “meddle in politics.” What’s more, Japan’s 1880s penal code called for severe punishment for any act of military disobedience — but apparently this did little to thwart rebellious activities.
Starting in the 1860s, Orbach examines the origins of shishi, “warriors of high aspirations.” Flourishing in kendo clubs and urban entertainment districts, the shishi occupied a space somewhere between the “old” samurai of the feudal Edo Period (1603-1868) and the “new” Meiji Era nationalists.
In 1865, Shinsaku Takasugi, a Choshu clan (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) samurai, was celebrated as a shishi success story after he organized an improvised mixed force of samurai and peasants against a Choshu collaborationist government, defeating the shogunate forces. Takasugi showed that a reckless, impromptu assault could yield victory, and this narrative formed the basis for a shishi ideology: purity of motive over clear strategy.
During the 1870s, the most significant domestic rebellion against the new Meiji state came from Saigo Takamori, a disaffected general whose clan was based in southern Kyushu. To Orbach’s military eye, Saigo made many strategic mistakes that doomed his rebellion. Paradoxically, like the 1930s military rebels that were to come, Saigo saw himself as a loyal retainer of the Emperor, although he besieged the Meiji army garrison in Kumamoto Castle. Without arms, food or ammunition, the Meiji forces managed to overwhelm the rebels, and Saigo’s forces surrendered.
Orbach leverages his European perspective to analyze Japan’s “supreme prerogative,” a Meiji import from Prussia consisting of an army leadership triumvirate: the chief of general staff, the army minister and the inspector general. Orbach points out that whereas in Germany a strong Kaiser ultimately made military decisions, Japan had the relatively “weak” young Emperor Meiji, creating at the center of power what Orbach calls a “hazy center.” For this reason, the German military never developed a culture of insubordination; in Japan, the “supreme prerogative” used the name of the Emperor to usurp power.
During the late 19th century, plots and insubordination led by Japanese military officers flourished outside of Japan, and Orbach details these, including the 1895 assassination of Korea’s Queen Min. Alarmed by such reckless actions, the Japanese government recalled the Japanese conspirators from Korea. A court acquitted the group, setting the pattern of a lack of punishment, even for regicide, for conspirators.
In another 1928 example, Imperial Army Col. Daisuke Komoto hatched an audacious plan to accelerate the incorporation of Manchuria into the Japanese Empire by assassinating Zuolin Zhang, a Manchurian warlord. With local Imperial Army units he succeeded in this operation in “complete defiance of Japanese government policy.” Zuolin Zhang’s violent end did not result in Japanese expansionist outcomes, however, as the conspirators had done no planning. Komoto left the Imperial Army without punishment.
Meanwhile the London Naval Disarmanent Treaty, which was viewed by the Japanese officer class as weakening Japan’s military power, was one among many grievances that acted as a catalyst for the formation of the Sakura-Kai (Cherry Blossom Society), Japan’s “first cross-army conspiratorial group.”
What made the Sakura-Kai-led mutiny of Feb. 26, 1936, (known as the “2-26 Incident”) exceptional was that the leadership came not from generals and colonels, but from members of the lower officer ranks, who rose to assassinate civilian leaders to open the way for a military-dominated, Asia-expansionist government.
The mutiny forced senior generals to take responsibility by retiring, and this thrust mid-level officers up the rank hierarchy. Fearing further attacks, the civilian government raised the military budget, causing the army to simultaneously become stronger as an institution and weaker at being able “to control its younger officers to act independently in the field (overseas).”
The next year, young army officers triggered a battle with Chinese nationalist forces at the Marco Polo Bridge — escalating into a full-blown Sino-Japanese war. The army’s merger with the civilian government was personified by Gen. Hideki Tojo’s appointment as prime minister. At the Tokyo War Tribunals, Marquis Koichi Kido declared that military insubordination was a “curse” that brought on Japan “the misfortunes of war, defeat, and occupation.” After Japan’s surrender, the “supreme prerogative” was dissolved and the Self-Defense Forces remain under strict civilian government oversight.
Orbach’s narrative speaks time and time again of missed chances in Japanese governance that would have prevented the hijacking of a nation and the terrible miscalculations, without clear strategic analysis of dire consequences, that followed.
It is a book that draws on multi-lingual primary sources with an innovative re-interpretation through a 21st-century military and political lens that connects historical incidents, especially on the late Tokugawa shishi and their outsized influence on 20th-century Japan.