Under A Darkening Sky, The American Experience in Nazi Europe 1939-1941 -- By Robert Lyman

 

Robert Lyman is one smart Kiwi. The New Zealand native, and one-time major went to that path least taken by most everyone else. He researched and wrote about those happenings in Germany, and Europe, that might have been covered largely between 1939 and 1941 then but were swept out of mind once the U.S. entered the war after Pearl Harbor.

There was plenty of American involvement in those obscured days leading up to WWII. Too much for me to cover here. 

And Lyman's Under A Darkening Sky was up to the task. His writing could be fast and action-packed, or more fact-filled and carefully informative. He's good, and I want to read more like this explosive cheapy I found down low at Ollie's some time ago. I need to quit hiding good books from myself.

Lyman also made it personal, bringing in testimony from people I grew up watching on TV like younger versions of Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith. This was some very good journalism. 

Important to a story which happened so many years ago were the summaries. The Battle Of Britain in 1940, still called the Blitz there in London, noted the community approach shown by most Londoners.

Lyman put it like this, in Sevareid's words:

"When this all over, in the days to come, men will speak of this war, and they will say, I was a soldier, or I was a sailor, or I was a pilot; or others will say with equal pride: I was a citizen of London."

I lived in London, studying for my master's, and saw the markings and scars from this fight from 2001-through most of 2002. Very moving.

Lyman summed up that period of seemingly endless Nazi victories very well in one sentence.

"Early successes in the East and West not because of Wehrmacht brilliance but because Germany's neighbors naïvely believed that the Great War had been fought to end all wars and failed to protect themselves."

There's still a lot of potential for more books, movies, and such in these pages. I believe Herman Wouk's The Winds Of War captured some of it. If I was teaching anywhere, I might approach my department chair with this book in hand. It's many years after the facts, but a young freshman journalist would immediately improve by reading it.

I also noted that there is a city in Ukraine bearing the author's name. Maybe that's a connection we'll read about someday.