Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of the Civilization.
By Nicholson Baker/ 566 pages/
Nicholson Baker takes on one of the biggest most expansive events of the twentieth century with this book that is sure to spark debate and renewed interest in the subject. This is not your ordinary history of the Second World War, there is no thesis, no grand point explicitly laid out for the reader, he even disregards chapters. Instead Mr. Baker lets us make the moral judgment ourselves by giving us snap shots of events, two or three paragraphs each telling both forgotten and infamous moments that led to the bloodiest conflict in human history.
By Nicholson Baker/ 566 pages/
Nicholson Baker takes on one of the biggest most expansive events of the twentieth century with this book that is sure to spark debate and renewed interest in the subject. This is not your ordinary history of the Second World War, there is no thesis, no grand point explicitly laid out for the reader, he even disregards chapters. Instead Mr. Baker lets us make the moral judgment ourselves by giving us snap shots of events, two or three paragraphs each telling both forgotten and infamous moments that led to the bloodiest conflict in human history.
If Mr. Baker has a point he is trying to make it is that the train had run off the rails long before the start of the war. He cites fear of change, exhaustion over the First World War and worldwide depression, isolationism, racism and pure greed, on all sides, as the primary cause of the most terrible conflict in human history. Figures long mythologized like Churchill and FDR are taken to task, not for rumored biases but for statements that are readily available in the public record.
The author also tells us about the true hero’s of the era, not the men who picked up guns behind banners of nationalism, but the nonviolent resisters, the anti-imperialist, the average people who saw what was coming. In all honesty, I had never known about the American Quaker groups in Berlin trying to acquire safe passage for German Jews in the early days of the Nazi regime, the impact of Mohandas Gandhi on the war, or the monstrous ways the British Authorities treated the occupied peoples of Sudan and Mesopotamia during the 1930’s.
The author also tells us about the true hero’s of the era, not the men who picked up guns behind banners of nationalism, but the nonviolent resisters, the anti-imperialist, the average people who saw what was coming. In all honesty, I had never known about the American Quaker groups in Berlin trying to acquire safe passage for German Jews in the early days of the Nazi regime, the impact of Mohandas Gandhi on the war, or the monstrous ways the British Authorities treated the occupied peoples of Sudan and Mesopotamia during the 1930’s.
As a person brought up on books like Band of Brothers, Guadalcanal Diary, or the films of John Wayne, I know that this book is going to raise a few eyebrows. Baker is an unabashed pacifist and in Human Smoke he pulls no punches, there is no room for good and evil in stark black and white terms. Everything becomes ambiguous, just shades of grey. I recommend this to anyone with an open mind and an interest in the subject of the war who are tired of the normal list of battles and generals.
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