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

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

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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 63 reviews view larger image
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Pulitzer, Here I Come

In Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker has written his most "important" work. The narrative, using short footnoted snippets and vignettes, primarily taken from the NY Times and the Herald-Tribune, is both powerful and evocative. The accounts range from 1892 (Alfred Nobel) straight onto New Year's Eve 1941-1942.

Some surprises: Winston Churchill and FDR come off badly through much of the book, and Herbert Hoover comes off as a more honest and balanced former President! Hitler, ever the villain comes off as an (surprise surprise!) unstable (and often exasperated) leader; optimistic one day, peaceful the next, apocalyptic the day after. Stalin is mostly invisible in this book.

Baker details the accounts of previously unknown pacifists, who were severely outnumbered. Charles Lindbergh is depicted as someone who had some Nazi sympathizing messages, but it's hard to say that he was a conspirator of any magnitude (see Philip Roth's most recent alternate history novel).

Whether you agree with the author or not, this is an original approach to the horrible period that led to an even more horrible period.

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Is war ever necessary?

The title of Baker's book comes from one of Hitler's "restive but compliant generals," Franz Halder. Imprisoned at Auschwitz at the end of the war, Halder saw "flakes of smoke blow into his cell. Human smoke, he called it."

And therein lies the problem and the challenge for Baker, who dedicates his book to the war's hardworking pacifists. "They failed, but they were right," says Baker. But how does he illustrate that this "good war" was no such thing? That there is never any such thing as a good war?

The book is a massive project, though less than 500 pages long. Working from newspaper accounts, speeches, memoirs, letters, diaries and some secondary sources like the books of Martin Gilbert, a British-Jewish historian and official biographer of Churchill, Baker has organized a chronological assemblage of events and reactions leading up to WWII and ending in December 1941 after the US entered the war. There are 70 pages of source notes.

Some entries are only a paragraph or two; others are several pages. A kaleidoscope of viewpoints, the book creates strong impressions of those behind the war, especially Churchill, Hitler and FDR, and those (unlike its leaders) who suffered.

Readers will be familiar with much - casual, widespread anti-Semitism, Roosevelt's desire to get the US into the war, Churchill's determination to win at all costs, Japanese atrocities in China, Hitler's rabid racism. But the building detail and the personal context of many of the pieces creates a strong emotional involvement and a grim, suspense-like tension.

The overall feeling is one of growing momentum but all along the way there are moments when, maybe, things could have been different. Sparks of resistance, reluctant armies, voices counseling reason. The leaders' pronouncements, in contrast, are designed to inflame.

But as Baker creates a feeling of sadness and sympathy for all those civilians Churchill ruthlessly, passionately, consigned to bombs or starvation (he believed civilian suffering would hasten the war's end) the quotes from Hitler and his henchmen are so awful it is difficult to see how even Gandhi could prescribe nonviolence.

From the earliest days Hitler makes it clear his intention is world domination. " `There should be only three major powers in the world' Hitler said. ` the British Empire, the Americas, and the German Empire of the future.' " This was 1934.

Hitler's intent to rid Germany of Jews - through fantasy euphemisms of deportation to Africa, Palestine, Madagascar and the Dominican Republic - gave rise to a constant foment of increasing hatred, culminating in "the final solution."

In 1938 Gandhi wrote, " `My sympathies are all with the Jews. If ever there could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.' " But there could never be a justifiable war. Gandhi counseled Germany's Jews to passive resistance, unto death.

In 1941 the commander of Auschwitz calmly describes the first gassing of 900 naked Russian prisoners who thought they were to be deloused. Later, he wrote, " `I must even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest,' he said, `for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon, and at the time neither Eichmann nor I was certain as to how these mass killings were to be carried out.' "

Churchill's bloodthirsty ruthlessness is scary - from the first glory is a more important concept to him than human life. Reflecting on Britain at the brink of war: " `There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end.' " No wonder the Brits got rid of him the minute the war was over.

But none of the leaders, dispassionately disposing of civilian and military lives, can hold a candle to Hitler's monstrousness. In the end, Baker convinces this reader that war is always horrible and never moral and the people should guard themselves against emotional manipulation and hold their leaders to account. However, some wars, however horrible, are necessary.

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A different view.

An insightful, provocative look at World War II, the lead up to it and its horrific ending. The writing is terse. Facts and data are presented without editorializing to great effect. My concept of what transpired during those years has been changed significantly.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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