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Loading... Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilizationby Nicholson BakerLibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A disappointment, although a masterful collection of "soundbites" before the term came into use. How anyone can conclude, as the author does in his "Afterward", that the pacifists were right is beyond me. In a world with a Hitler, pacifism leads only to death. If the Pacifists had prevailed there would be no Jews left at all. I am also concerned about the books treatment of pre-war Japan. Reading only this book one would believe that the peace loving Japanese were forced into war by the conniving west. The single greatest atrocity of the era, the 1937-38 Rape of Nanking with over 300,000 casualties is dismissed with a single soft pedeled sentance. Japanese documents make it clear that Japan had decided on a war of conquest in the late twenties, and nothing America or England could have done, save perhaps abject surrender, would have changed that. The book contains much we should all read and know, but it is not an accurate account of resistance to monsters not faced in many generations. (  ) joysgood | Nov 11, 2009 |  Picked this up at work. Baker sets out to correct some of the myths that led to WWII.A collection of primary and secondary source accounts from papers, diaries, etc. that illustrate the build up from WWI to WWII. Hitler, of course, was a madman, but Churchill and FDR don't exactly come off smelling like roses. A lot of attention is given to pacifist movements throughout the world and how they were ultimately crushed by the blood lust of war. I was particularly disturbed by the US's positioning to go to war with Japan as early as 1934. (  ) francomega | Jul 18, 2009 | Fascinating and Frightening LTuckerHistory | Feb 26, 2009 | A fascinating collection of brief articles, arranged in chronological order, covering the years leading up to WWII and the first part of the war. Most articles are drawn from either a contemporary account, or the memoirs of a contemporary observer--and most deal with topics, events, or aspects of key personalities that deviate from the received narrative of the years in question--generally from an anti-war perspective. Yes, the selection process for the information presented was biased; but that is, in fact, the whole point of the book--to offer the reader a view of these events, firmly rooted in fact, that differs from the version we're generally familiar with. The book also functions as an introduction to quite a number of interesting memoirs--many written by some less well-known participants--that could keep a reader of history and biography busy for some time. ( ) one | Jul 25, 2008 | A very interesting look at "The Beginnings of World War II", as the sub-title says. The style is unusual. It's a collection of snippets of information, quotes, anecdotes, etc, in chronological order. Most are just a paragraph or two; few are longer than one page. While it's not an anti-war book per se, it does appear to concentrate on things which make the reader question the justification ofr World War II. It is very selective and misses out much that might support the war, but in my view that is justified as the accepted myths of the war are well known and widely publicised. The counter arguments have received very little attention elsewhere, so this is a welcome attempt to redress the balance. It contains some classic quotes. Far from being a clear cut case of good chaps v evil blokes, the book raises complexities and ambiguities. These include the ambuguity of all nations towards the Jews; the strong feeling by many that Communism was the greatest of all enemies; the pervasive influence of the arms industry; the games that all the great powers were playing; and much more. All in all, an excellent book, and a valuable resource for those who wish to explore non-violent solutions to conflict. ( )2  johnthefireman | Jun 20, 2008 | 
 Was Sir Winston Churchill an oafish, bloodthirsty, sadistic, hypocritical, anti-Semitic alcoholic? The American novelist Nicholson Baker—whose previous works have been about phone sex and masturbation—certainly seems to think so, for Human Smoke is intended as nonfiction. The book has been lauded by the Irish novelist Colm Tóibin in a New York Times review—“riveting and fascinating”—and even the normally sane Simon Winchester has described it as “a quite extraordinary book—impossible to put down, impossible to forget.” Yet once one works out the sly techniques by which the author tries to persuade the reader that Churchill was a foul warmonger, the book is anything but. It uses the technique of juxtaposing bald quotations, ripped out of context, to try to place Churchill on the same moral plane as Adolf Hitler. . . . A curious torpor overcomes this reader about half way through this book, due to the sheer inexorability of the bias; if it had been more nuanced, better researched, or more intelligent, then interest might have been sustained, but no. Sometimes the sheer ignorance of some of Baker’s statements reignites interest: “If Hitler moved East, England would have no war to fight.” The author clearly believes that Britain should have accepted Hitler’s offer of peace with Britain in August 1940, not realizing that it was an obvious trap designed to facilitate his coming invasion of the USSR, for which he was contemporaneously ordering his senior Wehrmacht Staff to plan. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Baker would have done better to stick to phone sex and masturbation rather than to undertake this foray into nonfiction. The book ends in December 1941, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor as a result of President Roosevelt’s supposed “provocations” of Tokyo. Needless to say Baker concentrates . . . on the “dozens” of Honolulu civilians who fell victim to “misfiring American anti-aircraft shells”.
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