- A review by Professor Bryan Ranft of Vol.I (1st ed.1982) appeared in International Affairs Vol.59/1 (Winter 1982) which indicated that it was an interesting project, but that he was looking to future volumes to cover the full technical aspects of Admiral Wenneker’s activities in Japan. The full review can be seen at <academic.oup.com/1a/article-abstract/59/1/113/2405192>
2. Vol 2-3 feature in a BBC Newsnight programme in 1985/6 which examined the events surrounding the capture of the liner Automedon by the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis in October 1940, which led to the seizure of the UK Cabinet paper outlining the possible response to Japanese aggression in South-east Asia. The enquiries identified evidence of suppression of the knowledge of the loss, possibly by Churchill himself, and led on to a considerable amount of debate about the impact on various countries at that time.
It has been seen as a major catalyst for the criticisms of the Far Eastern POWs Association about Churchill’s responsibility for the loss of Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma and Singapore and the horrendous treatment of captured UK forces. A study by Arthur Lane is available on the net- <www.fepow-community.org.uk/arthur lane/html/automedon.htm>- and there are further criticisms developed by the late John Costello and the late James Rusbridger alleging that Churchill’s primary motivation was to bring the USA into the war against Japan. There is, however, no evidence in the public domain to sustain allegations of the kind that knowledge of an impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was withheld by the UK. Former officers of the Joint Intelligence Committee, including Sir Julian Ridsdale for example, have attested to the fact that the absence of the Japanese Combined Fleet from its home ports was wired to Washington via secure cable links. The loss of the UK battleships and of Malaya and Singapore was linked among other reasons to the utter failure of the RAF to provide an adequate number of modern aircraft capable of countering Japanese naval aircraft and of failing to supply adequate radar equipment capable of covering the sea areas beyond Malaya where the fleet units were sent. Only one Dutch submarine managed to sink a Japanese troop transport off Kota Bahru, but only after Japanese troops had been disembarked. This all happened in spite of an extremely accurate prediction by the War Office in 1941 of how the Japanese forces would successfully achieve the capture of Malaya and Singapore overland, even though the War Office had been warned in advance by Indian Army officers who had been seconded to the Japanese Army how dangerous an encounter with it was likely to prove.
3. Employing mainly German, but also some Japanese, Soviet, UK and US sources (but significantly also Vol.4 of the War Diary) a study was made of ‘The Imperial Japanese Navy and the North-South Dilemma’ for the collection by John Erickson & David Dilks, eds.: Barbarossa. (Edinburgh UP, 1994): ch.8. This examined Soviet relations with Germany and Japan between 1930 and 1945 and demonstrated how Hitler was fixated on the opinions of the Japanese Army and downplayed the influence of the Japanese Navy in Japanese defence and foreign policy with the result that by 1943 he simply did not believe a word of Japanese policymakers until 31 May 1943, when he was briefed by a Japanese Imperial Delegation headed by General Okamoto about the inability of the Japanese Army to undertake offensive operations against the USSR alongside existing commitments in the South-west Pacific, China and Burma/India.
- A review by the late Alan Clarke in the Daily Telegraph of 18.6.1994 referred to a ‘whole new range of theses – one of the most interesting being the interplay of the Japanese factor’.
- A review by Bradley Smith in Intelligence & National Security (1995): 361-2 states: ‘Chapman’s essay, however, is a dazzling achievement in the new art of documented intelligence history, and it throws much light on German and Japanese intelligence-gathering on the USSR, as well as on the shifting relations between Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow, London and Washington.’