Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Let me start out by saying I am not a pacifist, have heretofore been unimpressed by Nicholson Baker's fiction, and that based on what I heard via word of mouth, I absolutely expected to loathe this controversial book. Instead I was very much surprised by it. Giving in very little to what Stephen King aptly terms "author intrusion" and instead allowing the figures from the pre-Second World War to speak for themselves and the too often atrocious acts of violence endemic in the era to sickeningly add to that, Baker provides a 566-page history lesson that is difficult to intelligently dismiss. Dealing largely with the time between the Great War and its sequel, the period that stood as a sort of mishandled entr'acte, Human Smoke makes its case of missed opportunity and human brutality with several thousand brief, hard-hitting vignettes, most of them ominously concluding with a cited date that sees history crawl ever closer to the maelstrom of the 1940's war. (Baker's line near the book's end pointing out that on December 31, 1941 most people who would die in the Second World War were still alive particularly rings tragically loud, and should give a reader pause.) What Baker got right was his research into events that constitute the seldom-told and rarely known history of the period "between the wars" which was itself a violent time of many minor wars and suppressions of colonized peoples (complete with chemical and biological offensives and firebombings of civilian populaces) all underscored by one missed opportunity after another to de-rail the high-speed rush toward global conflict. Baker also draws many unstated parallels to our world today, fully using history in its most important role as would-be master teacher. In route to the conclusion of his tragedy, Baker cites fascinating minutia found nowhere else: Hitler's pride in the blondeness of his underarm hair, Churchill's imperialistic bloodlust and his admiration for Mussolini, the fact that in his youth Rudolph Hess greatly resembled Clark Gable, Franklin Roosevelt's lifelong anti-Semitism. What Baker didn't get so right was his lack of acceptance of the fact that at times war, even a war that need not have been, is the path of lesser evil, and that when faced with a choice between submission to tyranny or self defense, the latter option is the only sane course to take. Also Baker's emphasis on the role of the United States as undue instigator of the Japanese aggression at Pearl Harbor began to irritate me very much. While again and again Baker cited American actions in the 1930's that met with Japanese disapproval, he seems to forget that by his own recounting the Japanese were by then already brutally at war, and that the island nation regarded eastern Asia and the Pacific rim as much rightfully its own as Americans of the previous century had looked on expansion to the shores of California as their manifest destiny. In short, while the Japanese may have been angered by US backing of Chi

Human Smoke is the most unusual book on World War II which I have read. The reason is the format. Award winning American pacifist author Nicholson Baker has told the grisly story by using a Wikepdia approach to his narrative structure. In succinct paragraphs he tells how the world entered the Dantean hell of World War II. A war in which over 50 million people died of battle, bombing, starvation, disease and execution. Baker's book is perfect for people who have limited time or short attention spans. It is a technique which would do well in textbook histories used in the classroom, Baker begins his book by looking at prewar Europe, Japan and the United States. He keeps his opinions to himself letting the paragraphs of current events at the time tell their own story. We learn among many other facts that: a. Great Britain failed in its policy of appeasement towards Hitler. b. Great Britain was not prepared in a military way to go to war with Germany to aid Poland in September 1939. c. Winston Churchill was a war hawk who called for war against the Reich. Churchill was no saint! Baker's intensive research reveals him as inimical to the work of Gandhi in India; the advocacy of poison gas against the enemy; the proponent of a blockade against German held Europe despite massive hunger and starvation among innocent women, children and other civilians. The reader will admire Churchill's tenacity and determination to defeat the Axis powers. Churchill was a complex genius! d. Hitler did not want to conquer the USA. He did want to rule continental Europe with England reigning over the seas and her colonies. Japan was to hold sway in Asia. e. Charles Lindbergh was an anti-semite and Nordic supremacist who led American First attempts to have the US follow a policy of isolationism. f. FDR worked behind the scenes to support Great Britain through his Lend-Lease plan. g. Baker tales the story of Quakers like Rufus Jones and Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick who were opponents of the war. Many went to prison for their refusal to be drafted and participate in a bloody holocaust. h. Hundreds of voices speak in these short snaps of the historical newsreel. The voices range from the evil cries of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin to Jews trapped in Germany such as Victor Klemperer. Holocaust victims, world leaders, famous writers such as Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Zweig all have their say. The book teaches us that the so called "good war" was an unspeakable tragedy with millions losing their lives. Baker's work will immerse you with the sights,sounds and actions that led the globe from peace down into the murky and bloody pit of total warfare waged with horrific modern weaponry. The book ends in December 1941 as America is sucked into war's maelstrom of death by the attack of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. As one who has read hundreds of books on World War II this is one I highly recommend and will use often in my own research on the war. The ti

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization is Nicholson Baker's history of the lead-up to World War II and the United States' involvement in it. Rather than provide a continuous, blow-by-blow account of things, Baker uses hundreds of brief news items, averaging perhaps half a page in length. These range from 1892 to the end of 1941 (the vast majority of the book deals with the thirties and forties). As Baker recounts a wide assortment of events, he has several questions in mind. As he states in the afterword (p. 473): "Was [World War II] a `good war'? Did waging it help anyone who needed help?" Ultimately, Baker challenges World War II as the exemplar of just war. Baker's prose is engaging. He quotes whenever possible, and doesn't editorialize much. The brevity of his entries keeps the book moving at a fast pace. Baker draws heavily from newspapers, diaries, memoirs and public statements, and ties each news item to a specific date. This helps keep the material honest. A lot of what Baker focuses on reveals another side of World War II, one many Americans aren't familiar with. Baker works to show that World War II did quite a lot more harm than it did good. Nevertheless, he at no time sympathizes with the Nazis - he accurately portrays how terrible they could be. Baker explores the warmongering side of Roosevelt and Churchill as well as Hitler. There is a side of the U.S. and Britain that he is keen to show, and some of the things these nations did might amount to shocking revelations for many people. World War II was brought about, to a great degree, by that great confluence of warmongers. -The United States sold arms to Germany and Japan in the 1930s. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with a great many other Americans and citizens of the world, was blatantly anti-Semitic. -Before the Holocaust, Germany spent years trying to ship the Jews out. Nobody, including the United States, would take them. While this does not mitigate the horrors the Nazis perpetrated, it is alarming that by and large the rest of the world didn't care what happened to the Jews. Certainly this helped cultivate the environment for the Holocaust. -The British blockaded continental Europe, and would not allow food shipments through, even food intended for starving citizens of occupied France. Herbert Hoover, the much-reviled, erstwhile president, fought tooth and nail for the food shipments. -For years, Roosevelt taunted and provoked Japan, hoping to lure them into striking first, so that he could bring the United States into the war without reneging on his campaign promises to keep the country out of war. -Bombing, a major war strategy for both sides, was notoriously imprecise. An unbelievably small percentage of bombs hit their intended targets. Additionally, both Germany and Britain deliberately, purposely and repeatedly bombed civilian targets. Human Smoke is recommended to those with an interest in World War II, and to those who bel

I can easily see why a lot of people would not like this book. The author does not tell you what to think. Or even directly what he thinks. It's as if you were reading newspapers and other bits from before WWII (all documented and in chronological order). Of course the selections have been chosen (one would not care to read random ones). It documents the efforts by many individuals to prevent the war and documents the confusion that must have been in the minds of many people at the time. Reading it causes you to realize how easy it is to know the right options, given you have hindsight. The book causes you to question how other history books are written, how the media controls opinion and reminds you that war is also an industry. I am not a pacifist and for me the book was a plea, if anything, to analyze the news around you.

The title of Nicholson Baker's book is evocative. Most obviously, it's an allusion to the horrible destructiveness of war, which renders human lives as fragile as smoke. Baker tells us (p. 474) that he got the title from Franz Halder, who once said that the smoke arising from Auschwitz was "human smoke." At another level, though, "human smoke" refers to the fog of war--or, in this case, the fog of the run-up to World War II--as well as the intentional and unintentional smokescreens, or myths, that hide the complex network of responsibility for war. It's to Baker's great credit that his book invites readers to think long and hard about both the human cost and the myth-making that justifies war. World War II is the test case focused on by Baker, and for obvious reasons. It's styled the "good war," and in most everyone's minds the good guys and the bad guys were clearly, unarguably distinct. But Baker shows, horrifyingly, that the anti-Semitism that exploded in Germany was an integral part of the thinking of both citizens and leaders in other countries. The Roosevelts in America and Churchill in England, for example, penned some pretty nasty things about Jews. In the late 30s, when the fate of German Jews was becoming increasingly obvious, country after country refused to accept them as refugees. All of this is documented with stark clarity by Baker. An arms race was going on among all of the major players, Axis as well as Allies, in the run-up to the war. The U.S. was consolidating military strength in the Pacific, a move that angered and threatened the Japanese. Britain and the U.S. were building and selling airplanes to other nations, includng Japan and Germany. Sabres were being rattled everywhere, and only some of them were in response to the growing German threat. The new weapons of war were being tested nonstop, and often against "barbarians" and "savages." The British tested incendiary bombs against Arabs, the Germans tested their weapons against Spaniards, the Italians tried theirs out on the Ethiopians, the Japanese against the Chinese, and the U.S. sold its weapons to all four nations and observed from afar. In the midst of all this, concerned citizens from the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany were denouncing the arms race, the racism, and the national chauvinism, and pleading for peace. There was actually a bill in the U.S. Congress to amend the Constitution to say that war could be entered into only after a national referendum (p. 78). American Quakers, led especially by Rufus Jones and Clarence Pickett, organized relief agencies and lobbied the American, British, and German governments for peace. All to no avail, however. The powers wanted war, and war was what they got. To read Baker's book is a harrowing experience. Criticisms that it selectively presents evidence miss the mark. Baker is revealing a side of history that almost never gets told. Criticisms that it preaches pacifism seem to come from ideologi