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

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization | Nicholson Baker | The good war?

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Human Smoke: The B...

	Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization Nicholson Baker Simon & Schuster, 2008 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 59 reviews view larger image
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A very important book - read, then think, then evaluate

This book is easy to read, and can be read at any pace. The contents lead one to get a new perspective on how critical decisions leading to war are sometimes can be made. Some reviewers do not seem to have read it with an open mind, which is a shame; there is a lot to absorb here and to think about. There is no particular conclusion to be drawn, no one-sentence summary, no simple answers. Highly recommended for someone seeking wisdom and nuanced exploration of the way we get into these horrific wars.

The good war?

That WWII was good and just has gone nearly unquestioned since it ended, but Nicholson Baker challenges the conventional wisdom. American war advocates over the last 55 years have superimposed Hitler's face on those we were to hate -- Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein - justifying interventions, embargoes, and the occupation of a country that didn't attack us. Baker's book is timely, especially since Churchill has lately been venerated by neo-cons who fear the West will appease the enemy known to them as Islamofascists. And many of the terms are familiar - sanctions, detentions, internment, and place names like Basra and Fallujah.

Using some of the novelist's craft, particularly foreshadowing and subtle irony, Baker brings individuals up close, showing small details and curious turns of phrase that in a history book might be reduced to footnotes. It works well. As the format reads something like a string of time-stamped video clips, younger people should find this book accessible. It has the immediacy of Capote's "In Cold Blood" stretched over a much wider canvas.

Is the book a paean to pacifism, as some critics complain? I don't think so. World leaders, war planners, and the innocent victims of that planning are prominent, but Gandhi, Jeannette Rankin, Christopher Isherwood and a few other pacifists get some attention. Irritated that anti-war voices get any mention at all, some readers may also be uncomfortable with Baker's selection of comments and speeches from Churchill and Hitler that are nearly identical in their bellicosity, that show both men as intensely mercurial. But Baker includes near the end that the previously anti-war Albert Einstein finally backed the war effort, although he fails to mention how Charles Lindbergh reconciled his former isolationist animus after the U.S. entered the war. Speeches by Lindbergh and Senator Burton Wheeler show them in sync with Nazi propagandists who claimed American Jews inordinately influenced U.S. policy even in light of the zealousness to provide war materiel taken on by corporations such as Boeing, General Electric, Allis Chalmers, and the motor company run by Henry Ford, a man nobody would mistake as friendly to Jews.

Only in the afterword does Baker claim openly that the pacifists were right. He could have made an even stronger case by including commentary from poets Robert Lowell, Kenneth Rexroth, and William Stafford who served prison terms for their conscientious objection to the war.

I wonder, finally, if Baker was motivated to write the book because he had his eyes on the next big war, the one with the nuclear exchange, the one that will truly be the war to end all wars, and human civilization. Nobody will be around to say the pacifists were right.

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Didn't Churchill Save Western Civilization?

This is a book that grabs you by the collar and kicks you in the butt.

World War II has always had an inevitability in our viewpoint. Hitler hated everybody and wanted to rule Europe and destroy the Jews and if it hadn't been for Churchill and Roosevelt we'd all be speaking German right now. Baker's genius is that he can walk that tightrope right between Hitler and the Western leaders. He can insinuate that Churchill and Roosevelt wanted war more for how it was be advantageous to their countries rather than saving Europe and the Jews and still not come out appearing sympathetic to Hitler. Hitler's monstrousness is never questioned here. What is questioned, in an almost journalistic style of writing, is the sainthood of Allied leaders.

Much of the conclusions that some reviews may claim Baker comes to are really conclusions your brain reaches because you cannot avoid the facts if you read enough of them.

This is an important book that will reverberate for years.

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Compelling, Thought-Provoking, But Not Quite Convincing

Do you remember the original Chico Vasquelez skit on Saturday Night Live? At Mets training camp, Bill Murray profiles the comeback efforts of Chico (Garrett Morris) despite his aging body and the resentments felt by old teammates because of the tell-all book Chico wrote in the off-season: "Bad Stuff `Bout the Mets." The "bad stuff" ends up being things like, "Ed Kranepool: Always take up two parking spaces."

"Human Smoke" is sort of "Bad Stuff Bout the World War Two Allies." And as such it's sobering, riveting stuff, practically an anti-history of the war's build-up and early years. Baker is selective in his detail, often highlighting stories of brave pacifism or efforts to organize relief to Eastern Europe--efforts largely crushed by the demands of total war. It's a very different mosaic of events than we're used to reading about. As the author admits, it's far from comprehensive. Major events can be passed over fleetingly. And character is presented in only the lights Baker chooses. Churchill is essentially painted as a bellicose racist with an ongoing interest in developing poison gas weapons. No stirring speeches here.

The book projects such a peculiar vantage point that it manages to be fresh and compelling. I think most readers will begin to wonder why the author picked particular nuggets. Baker never comes right out with a thesis, but if he did it might be something like "If your way of fighting evil makes you do evil things in turn, then maybe it's wrong to have that fight." He presents some compelling pacifist arguments of the time, (as well as some less convincing islolationist points) . Ghandi looms large and sagacious.

Many readers are likely to have an instant knee-jerk reaction to the thought that pacifism could have somehow stopped Hitler. The thought may seem laughable. But it won't be by the time you finish "Human Smoke." Maybe--probably--you won't be persuaded. But you'll have thought about it longer and harder than you will have ever done.

And yes, racism is much worse than taking up two parking spots.

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