Human Smoke explores the roots of war through the lens of World War II. Using newspaper articles, diaries, letters, memoirs, and official documents, the author, Nicholson Baker, assembled hundreds of discrete vignettes into a compelling narrative that should dispel numerous myths about the early days of the "Good War." The evil of the Third Reich hardly needs more exposure, but this book offers further insight into the warped and perverse ideals that drove Hitler and his followers.
What surprised me in this book was the depth of the racism that motivated Winston Churchill. If you took speeches that Churchill made, and substituted the word "Jew" for "Hun" you might be hard-pressed to know that you weren't listening to Hitler. It was the British that began the indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population of Germany, for which "the Blitz" was retaliation.
And lest you think the European arm of the war was about freeing the Jews, guess again. Churchill's 1941 blockade of food, medicine, and clothing to the German-occupied countries caused the death of thousands and thousands of civilians, many of them Jewish refugees that had been expelled from their homes. Not to mention the Jewish refugees that were rounded up and imprisoned in concentration camps in England, because they were Germans too and might hold German sympathies.
Then there were the refugees that actually made it onto ships and escaped the carnage in Europe. The United States and countries of the British Commonwealth [i.e. Empire] enforced strict quotas as to how many refugees would be accepted every year. There were many instances of ships carrying refugees turned away from port after port. In some documented cases the ships were actually shelled at sea, killing most of their passengers.
(I remember my mother once telling me that the blame for the war between Israel and Palestine lay with Britain and the United States, for turning their backs on Jewish refugees. I had no idea of the magnitude.)
While Churchill is lusting for the blood of Huns, FDR is actively fomenting the Sino-Japanese War while tightening the noose around Japan, hoping to provoke them into an attack on the U.S. The attack on Pearl Harbor, when it came, was not a surprise. It was fully expected and the date that it occurred was anticipated, so essentially the 2000+ people that died in the attack were used as bait.
Baker also shows the profiteers: the arms manufacturers, the scientists and academics who saw war as a cash cow for their research, the opportunists (like Wisconsin native son, Frank Lloyd Wright, who thought the total destruction of those old European cities was a good thing, so that new cities could be built following a new plan -- his. What a weenie.)
The other thread of the story that Baker tells -- one that has not been told enough -- is that of the pacifists who actively resisted the war by working for diplomatic solutions, by defying Churchill's blockade to feed the starving population of Europe, by going to jail rather than fighting. Gandhi figures prominently, as do Clarence Pickett, Herbert Hoover, and Rufus Jones of the Religious Society of Friends. He mentions the Socialist Party and its leader Norman Thomas, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters' League. Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin is lauded for casting the lone dissenting vote against joining the war. Many other individuals are mentioned as well, people in many countries.
Baker does not draw any parallels between his narrative and current events as we are experiencing them, but the parallels are clear. Just as the seeds of World War II were sown in World War I, we see the seeds of the Viet Nam War being sown during World War II. Violence begets violence, that is the message of this book.
Invariably when one is a pacifist, someone will say, "Yeah, but what about World War II?" Baker did impeccable research and presents reams of evidence that World War II was not inevitable, that like all wars it was motivated by a lust for power and profit, predicated on propaganda and lies.
Baker dedicates
Human Smoke to "the memory of Clarence Pickett and other American and British Pacifists. They've never really gotten their due. They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right."
I highly recommend
Human Smoke. It is not a pretty book, many parts are painful to read, while others will infuriate. It is, however, in a format that is quite easy to read and I think you will find it absolutely compelling.
