(This is the third of a five-part roundtable discussion on Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. For additional installments: Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five.)

Colleen Mondor writes:

Levi – all of your points are fascinating and quite thought provoking. I didn’t mention this before but Hitler was very much a product of WWI as well – there is some thought that he wanted a heroic moment he did not have; perhaps that partly led to his desire for power.

In regards to Perry and Japan – yes, I agree that the clash of West and East in Asia in the late 19th century had a huge impact on the rise of militarism in the Japanese government. The development of colonies in China affected Japanese concerns about Asian independence (for those of you wondering about the Vietnam War, it all starts with France moving into Vietnam during this period of rampant colonization.) But I don’t like to shed blame on America for Japan’s actions or Britain for Germany’s actions – I think in a lot of ways what we saw in WWII was an immense clash of titans…it is almost like the conflicting demands for power on the part of multiple countries around the world (what was Italy’s grab for Ethiopia except a desire to have a colony of its own?) forced an armed conflict. The only thing that could have stopped this (in my opinion) is a viable, reasonable treaty in 1919 and a strong and meaningful League of Nations. The world was not ready for that however, and we missed our chance.

It seemed to me that Baker wants to point the finger at someone or someplace – or reverse the typical finger pointing at Japan and Germany. Perhaps WWII is just still too close; we are still knee jerking to blame someone for a huge event that was the blame of everyone…(or a lot of people anyway).

I still resist the thought that a peace agreement with Hitler in 1939, 1940 or later would have been a viable option because I believe he (and his leadership) had too much invested in total victory…I point to the Russian invasion of how unreasonable Hitler could be. As to the Jewish question of what an earlier peace might have meant, I can’t help but think of Jo Walton’s marvelous alternate history novels, “Farthing” and “Ha’ Penny” which explore that very idea. What would life have been like without the Holocaust? We assume it would have been better but that is not necessarily true.

The first camps actually opened in 1933 (Dachau was one of them). They were not death camps as such but punishment or work camps and they were hell. Mauthausen opened after the invasion of Austria in 1938 – the slogan was “extermination by work.”

Sarah Weinman writes:

Colleen – you’ve definitely brought up some good points, but I there’s one you’re suggesting that I’ll have to disagree with. The impression I’m getting is that you posit that Human Smoke suggests peace with Hitler was a viable option. On the contrary, I think Baker makes the point – a very good one – that the warmongering, take-over-the-world attitude and brutal, pointless march towards war on the part of Hitler, Goebbels etc. was an even deeper, far more entrenched problem than Roosevelt and Churchill’s attitudes. We’re focused on the American and UK side because those are the sources Baker primarily pulls from. But those aren’t the *only* sources he references. Mary Berg’s story in the ghetto seemed a clear product of the Nazis, not a by-product of the Allied front, for example.

Perhaps if Baker had beefed up the early sections, concentrating more on the post WWI times and the sociocultural changes going on (another thing to think about: there’s hardly any mention of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover’s rise to power. What effect, if at all, did he have on the eventual American presence in the war? Probably not much, but I’m curious…) then the message that the roots of war on both sides stemmed so far back that pacifism as a viable movement had little chance to stop the steamroll would have been clearer.

Colleen Mondor writes:

This is where my confusion with Baker comes into play Sarah. Everytime I read a part that seemed included to make it clear that the war was going to happen regardless (like the one you mention) then something would be thrown out that seemed to hint at an alternative (like the comments suggesting if only Churchill would agree to peace all would be well or the same thing if only FDR would stop pushing the Japanese). So I circle back to that suggestion. That’s how I read it.

My complaint goes back to the choices made in putting the book together. I think it is an outstanding idea but I’m not sure that Baker had the focus (whatever he chose that focus to be) needed to pull it off.

Nick Antosca writes:

Hello everyone; I’ve met some of you in person and only know others by reputation, but it’s a pleasure to be involved in this conversation. I’m recovering from the near-delirium of bad cold and have just caught up on the discussion points so far.

I was particularly interested in Eric’s remarks about Churchill. I think we can all agree that Baker’s portrayal of Churchill is one of the most incendiary (so to speak!) elements of Human Smoke. It is clear that the man was willing to sacrifice human life in great quantities and it’s also clear that Baker has a visceral dislike for him (when he characterizes Churchill’s ideology with sardonic contempt, he can start to sound a little like Martin Amis: “Bombing was, to Churchill, a form of pedagogy–a way of enlightening city dwellers as to the hellishness of remote battlefields by killing them”). But I found Churchill also the most fascinating figure in the book, both in a historical context and, well, as a character. His motives were all wrong, he seems to have been congenitally deaf to human suffering, and his ideology was fed by notions of racial superiority–but in May 1940, his stubbornness and bellicosity were better bulwarks against Hitler than the relative levelheadedness of Chamberlain.

It’s one of the larger ironies of this story: Chamberlain seems to have been a reasonable, intelligent man who wanted peace, and Churchill something of a loudmouth war fetishist. But Churchill was the better man to stand up against Hitler–who was, as Levi said, “a frustrated politician, a failed leader, [and] a military flash in the pan,” but also an obsessive, irrational person with the resources of mass murder at his disposal. Diplomacy wouldn’t have worked. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that Churchill was intent on destroying his regime.

What I do think is plainly awful is the attitude expressed and displayed by both Churchill and Roosevelt toward civilian casualties. Is mass murder ever justified? (Is it morally defensible to kill 1,000 people if it will save the lives of 1,001?) Is there any difference at all between the bombing of civilian targets by the RAF and the bombing of civilian targets by the Luftwaffe. I don’t think so. Equally reprehensible is the indifference displayed toward refugees. (I was particularly struck by the small, ugly anecdote about Roosevelt’s joke to reporters regarding Hitler and “one of the few prominent Jews left in Germany” [417].) It’s not like any student of history wasn’t already aware of this, but still it’s a shameful episode to think about. What would have happened if America and Great Britain had actively welcomed those fleeing the Nazi regime? Would the Holocaust as we know have been prevented or radically diminished in scale?

And then there’s that persistent question that most of the preceding responses have in some way alluded to–was WWII a “good war”? What I took from Human Smoke was that it was half a good war. War with Hitler was necessary–although some indefensible tactics were used. War with Japan was not necessary–the attack on Pearl Harbor unquestionably required a military response, but the American escalation and provocation that preceded the attack were the actions of a nation that wanted war.

On another note, I wish the book had ended on Dec. 31, 1945 rather than 1941. I’d have been fascinated to read Baker’s account of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Levi Asher writes:

Sarah and Colleen, I agree that, to whatever extent Human Smoke has an actual point of view, it contradicts that point of view. I came to the conclusion that Baker (who loves to play with form, of course) was doing this intentionally, that he was constructing the book as a sort of “pointillism of facts” where the facts don’t have to necessarily
agree with each other or have any relation to each other.

So, for instance, the interpretation or “argument” I’ve been describing and engaging with is actually my own construction, though I think it’s a construction Baker laid out for readers to pick up. The only time Baker betrays a direct point of view is in the book’s very last sentence, when he says of various pacifists: “They failed, but they were right.”

I do think, though, that Baker’s point of view shows up here — I gather that he is a committed pacifist in the general tradition of Mahatma Gandhi. Which I think is about as good a stance as stances get, and this is probably why I like the book so much.

(Also, in response to Colleen, I also don’t want to slip into “blaming America”. That would miss the point. Nobody is saying Roosevelt and Churchill were worse than Hitler, by a longshot. But did they do as well as they could have done? It has to be asked.)

Okay, I better stop this rambling discourse …

Edward Champion writes:

There are many thoughtful points that Colleen brings up. So I’ll try to respond to a handful here.

Colleen complains about Human Smoke not possessing “an adequate discussion on the Treaty of Versailles.” In fact, the Treaty of Versailles is mentioned four places in the book. Baker’s most stirring citation is Hitler denouncing the Treaty of Versailles as “utterly intolerable” on p. 135. And if one wishes to dig up the standards here, Hitler’s antipathy to the Treaty of Versailles is also quite evident in William Shirer’s account. Thus, Hitler’s rise to power has very little to do with the Treaty’s specific conditions or the concomitant developments concerning its parties. The whole point here is that global ideology failed to consider and, in some cases, outright ignored pacificism. Regardless of the idealistic points set into stone by Woodrow Wilson and company (and we all know what happened with the League of Nations), Hitler was determined to posture in whatever manner possible to encourage an attack, painting England as the enemy and Germany as the victim. This is very much the “repetition” that Levi alludes to and something you will find in nearly any World War II historical volume. What Baker brings to the table here is how readily Hitler’s wartime bluster was eerily mirrored by Churchill. I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that, because Billy Mitchell’s 1924 prediction came before John Haynes Holmes’s antiwar play (presented in 1935), Baker is therefore wrong or does not know about Mitchell. But if we must split hairs, in 1924, the Nazi Party wasn’t around. Hitler wasn’t yet in a significant position of power. (Hell, the beer hall putsch had only just happened.) Baker’s point is that, despite Holmes’s play receiving considerable notice in both The Nation and The Times, most people chose to ignore it. This was not a matter of Mitchell being a historical soothsayer. It was a matter of arts and activism offering a reflective prism of what was happening during this particular time, and nobody paying attention (or perhaps enough attention) to a pivotal piece of culture that suggested what was happening across the pond. Not unlike Checkpoint, strangely enough.

I must also address Colleen’s “confusion” about the Madagascar section she cites on p. 204. It is abundantly clear that the latter Madagascar scenario involved Jews being transported to an island-based concentration camp, itself a whole-heartedly horrible scenario, and troubling given the unsuccessful negotiations with the French government in 1937 (see p. 67) to work something out for Polish Jews, which did not involve a concentration camp. I agree with Colleen that shipping Polish Jews from their homeland is an entirely terrible idea. But I think Baker’s references to Madagascar demonstrate that sweeping ideology causes a safer idea, however fey or insalubrious, to be taken to a deadly level. That had someone stopped this ideology from escalating into insanity and taken up this admittedly insane offer, a few Polish Jews might have been saved.
I suppose all this is why I see this book, to a large degree, as a very interesting preservationist polemic. We willfully ignore the ravings and rantings of the perceived wackos. But it may very well be that failing to listen to this sort involves something more pernicious.

More later.

Colleen Mondor writes:

Well I’ve been officially pounced on. A brief reply:

I wasn’t suggesting that Baker needed to know every little thing and I didn’t bring up Billy Mitchell thinking Baker should have known it. I brought it up the same way Sarah (and others) have brought up other names – there is a lot out there in other words, and it is always selective what you include or leave out. (I also used Mitchell only to agree with another email that the Americans had considered Japan a potential enemy decades before – I don’t recall suggesting at all that he needed to be in the book.)

As to the Treaty of Versailles, I didn’t mean that it wasn’t mentioned in the book but that it is big and there is a lot to it – a lot has little to do with Germany even. (It has much to do with Japan’s rise to power and China’s descent actually.) WWII came from that treaty – you write about the war then you need to write a lot about the treaty. I respectfully agree to disagree with you about Hitler’s rise to power being directly related to the condiitons set forth in the Treaty of Versailles. I think it was.

My confusion over Baker’s mention of Madagascar is not over what it was about, whether it would be successful or whether it was good or bad. I found the way that Baker would insert it occasionally into the text to be odd. Was he suggesting that the Jews would have been saved if Churchill agreed to peace after the invasion of Poland? And was he suggesting that this would be a real thing? I don’t know. If he only mentioned it once it would be just one more aspect of the history he wanted to share. By coming back to it several times he seems to want to make a point. Forgive me for not seeing it.

I’m done.

Robert Birnbaum writes:

I started to read the various opinions and profferings and found myself distracted by the cacophonous erudition on display—though I think it is neat that Gmail has assigned everyone’s name a different color.

So forgive me if I repeat or revisit some part of this polylogue but I am not reading the nearly 20 pages of commentary until I have fixed on some firm ideas of my own. Plus I am reading Jack O Connell’s The Resurrectionist and Alan Furst’s new opus — so many books, so little time. Thus my own meager contributions to this literary cosa nostra will be sporadic and fragmented

I am struck by my preference for Nick Baker’s essays and book Double Fold (and now (Human Smoke) — my dabbles into his fiction left me unsatisfied and—uh, let’s leave it at unsatisfied. This particular work, which caused me to recall Voltaire’s assessment of history (“the lies we agree upon”) and Eduardo Galaeno’s magnum opus Memory of Fire — a three volume fragmentary (that’s fragments of larger stories that can stand alone) history of the western hemisphere, drawn from all manner of sources, provokes from the outset by referring to the “end of civilization.” Civilization ended in late 1941 folks? Oh my.

This is not your father’s history or your grandfather’s. So some of the nitpicking I noted as I scanned the current accumulation conjures some unfortunate images (best left unsaid or I will certainly quickly assume the mantle of the rat in the cathedral. )Baker ‘s book ought not be faulted for not including this tidbit or failing to emphasize that event or person or document. What is an open and interesting issue for me is whether one could construct an alternate view of the same time frame with 500 or 600 other paragraphs.

Also, the dramatis personae in Human Smoke are sufficiently diverse to deflect any complaints that this is history as made and seen only by great men and women (and I commend Baker for going beyond Eleanor Roosevelt to represent activist women). Especially in his choice of non governmental voices— Gandhi, Isherwood, Klemperer, Mann, Einstein—and refraining from trotting out activist artists “tainted” by various Stalinist affiliations.

Isn’t it amusing to see how transparently fraudulent FDR was in any claims (in the 1940 re election campaign and after) to peaceful intentions— its not like George Bush invented misleading Americans. And for all of Churchill’s oratory and clever rhetoric and Bartlett’s filling quipping, his admiration for Hitler and Mussolini don’t put him in flattering light—not to mention his seeming indifference to human suffering

Is this a work of history? A literary pastiche? A hybrid codex of the pre WW II world? While I am not anathema to categorization and naming I think when we come across an stirringly original work assigning it a niche in our catalogue is the least of our tasks— assuming there is a hierarchy of interpretation.

One more thing (for now) how lacking in imagination the war -mongerers and generals were in the last global conflagration that they were not able to come up with neat phrases like “collateral damage” Part of the argument that Holocaust deniers throw down is that carpet bombing of Dresden and Hamburg and Tokyo were in every way as criminal and genocidal as anything the Nazis might have done. Try to convince any Americans (who haven’t read Slaughterhouse Five) of that. Actually, I’m curious were any Allied forces or leaders ever formally accuse of war crimes or atrocities (perhaps along the lines of the Soviet Katyn Forest slaughter)?

More TK.

(This is the second of a five-part roundtable discussion of Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. For additional installments: Part One, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five.)

Colleen Mondor writes:

Hi all – I’ve read the first round of responses from Sarah, Levi and Brian and I’m not sure that I can completely speak to each of the points that everyone has brought up (we are already going off in many directions!) but I do have some thoughts on the book that connect to some of what others have written.

First, I came to Human Smoke with no pro- or anti- Baker pov. I enjoyed Double Fold and that was the last Baker book I read – so I can’t speak to whether or not this is a response to any of his books.

For me personally, I was excited to read the book because I studied and taught this period of history for several years. I had high hopes for the book but was very disappointed.

I don’t think you can jump into the causes of WWII without an adequate discussion on the Treaty of Versailles, something that Baker does not give much attention. It lead directly to Hitler’s rise to power and also contributed (to a lesser extent) to internal difficulties in China which Japan took full advantage of. On that front, Baker does provide a lot of discussion on the sale of arms to China and Japan by the US which is very interesting and important but he fails to explain the backstory of Japanese designs on China, the acquisition of former German colonies in China by Japan as part of the Treaty of Versailles and the impact of Japanese encroachment on China such as the Mukden Incident in 1931. Japan had serious military intentions on all of Asia and most certainly saw the west as a threat. As Brian mentioned, (I think) the US did consider Japan a potential threat far before 1941. In 1924 Billy Mitchell, (Asst Chief of the Army Air Corps at the time) predicted nearly down to the minute how and why he thought Japan would attack Pearl Harbor. He was loudly dismissed, largely because the racist attitude of the day could not see any Asian nation as a threat against the west and because Mitchell himself had a lot of enemies in the military. (He was very outspoken.) But it is not outside the realm of believability to suggest FDR knew what might happen as far as a Japanese attack against America someday. But no one – no one – has ever found the smoking gun proof that he knew it was going to happen for sure. I think we believed Japan was a threat, but did not know an attack was going to happen on December 7th. Baker seems to suggest that FDR goaded Japan into a war they would have avoided otherwise. That seems very hard for me to believe based on what Japan did in China and elsewhere in the years leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack. (I refer to the Japanese government here – I do believe that most of the Japanese people did not want war with the US; but they followed their leadership.) Read Iris Chang and you will see the flip side to Baker’s assertions – what happened in Nanking is the not the act of a country looking for peace.

As for the German aspect of the war, there’s just so much missing here. (I thought Sarah’s point was key on this – everyone will know of something that is missing and perhaps you just can’t write this kind of book without expanding it hugely.) Baker seems to be suggesting again and again that if Churchill would have agreed to peace then Hitler would have stopped after Poland. But why should Churchill have believed him? He promised to stop after Austria, and after being given the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia, and after demanding and receiving all of Czechoslovakia. Plus, he knew that Poland had a treaty with both France and England that demanded an attack on one of those countries would result in a response from the other two. British honor was at stake after the invasion of Poland in terms of the worth of their promises – what would a treaty with Britain mean if Churchill did not respond to the Polish invasion as the treaty demanded? Baker does not mention any of this however, in fact he frames Hitler as a man seeking peace who is forced into war by Churchill. I don’t get it.

Having said that, anyone who has read about Gallipoli would agree that Churchill loved the idea of glorious war. I really think he was a man of his time in that respect – in many ways like Rudyard Kipling. Kipling changed of course after the death of his son but Churchill remained largely untouched in a personal way by war – he could still see it as a glorious thing after WWI. There is a lot about Churchill to draw on in terms of his published writings and articles about him but to me it seemed that Baker cherry picked too much here. His derisive comment about the miracle at Dunkirk is an example (187). He neglects to mention that over 100,000 French soldiers were rescued as well, effectively preserving the French Army to fight for the later formed Free French government. And as for his comments about the destruction of the bulk of the French Navy (205) this was indeed a very dark period in British/French history. But the French Navy had to surrender – the French government was now being led by a puppet government that answered to Hitler – they were the enemy. If the French Navy did not surrender then they would return to France (as they had just been ordered) and thus fall into German hands. There was a lot behind the decision to face the French fleet with force – and none of this was presented by Baker. (Here’s a more thorough view.) He makes it seem almost cavalier – yet the British made several attempts to have the fleet surrender. And surrender of that fleet was imperative as it was the 4th largest in the world and could not fall into German hands.

Honestly, I was confused a lot while reading this book. On the one hand he writes about German atrocities against the Jews but then suggests that if Churchill will agree to peace they will all be sent to Madagascar. (204) It disturbs me enormously to read (more than once) that if only Churchill gave Hilter Poland then the Jews would have been saved. I am no fan of the widely held myths of WWII (Greatest Generation, etc) but any one who believes that Hitler would be satisfied with Poland (after his previous broken promises) is incredibly naive. And pinning the lives of the Jews on Churchill smacks of German propaganda more than anything else. But then in the middle of all that Baker would have something from Victor Klemperer or elsewhere that seemed to suggest that the Jews were damned regardless. It seemed sometimes like the text was going in circles.

I liked the idea of this book and was very impressed by the research that was done to complete it. But it is very subjective – just as subjective as those books celebrating America’s action during the war are. The cynical part of me can not help but think that the book was written this way purely to get a reaction and not because it was the best (or most thorough) way to counter the celebratory myths of the war that have been published elsewhere.

Brian Francis Slattery writes:

Hello all again.

Cannot resist:

[Colleen wrote:] Read Iris Chang and you will see the flip side to Baker’s assertions – what happened in Nanking is the not the act of a country looking for peace… he frames Hitler as a man seeking peace who is forced into war by Churchill. I don’t get it.

These things bothered me as well. I think Baker assumes a good deal of prior knowledge of World War II and its causes in his book; Human Smoke doesn’t get into Versailles or any of the above because (I was assuming as I read it) it has been covered elsewhere. But Colleen’s point is really valid. I found the book an engrossing read because it embroidered and complicated the history I already had some grasp on. For someone with only slight less familiarity and of a certain frame of mind, this book would be a real mind-blower. But for someone who knew little about the period and was hoping to learn more–particularly about Japanese expansion into Asia–this book could be confusing at best and misleading at worse.

[Colleen wrote:] Honestly, I was confused a lot while reading this book. On the one hand he writes about German atrocities against the Jews but then suggests that if Churchill will agree to peace they will all be sent to Madagascar. (204) It disturbs me enormously to read (more than once) that if only Churchill gave Hilter Poland then the Jews would have been saved. I am no fan of the widely held myths of WWII (Greatest Generation, etc) but any one who believes that Hitler would be satisfied with Poland (after his previous broken promises) is incredibly naive. And pinning the lives of the Jews on Churchill smacks of German propaganda more than anything else. But then in the middle of all that Baker would have something from Victor Klemperer or elsewhere that seemed to suggest that the Jews were damned regardless. It seemed sometimes like the text was going in circles.

I think part of what we were seeing there was the book wrestling with the idea of pacifism and whether it could have prevented World War II. Baker writes in the afterword that the pacifists “failed,” which suggests that he thinks that under different circumstances, the pacifists could have succeeded: Perhaps, implemented as state policy
or spurring a mass movement, pacifism could have kept at least a couple of countries out of the war. Perhaps a widespread pacifist movement in Germany could have prevented it from going to war in the first place. Ultimately, of course, we can’t know. But as someone who isn’t a strict pacifist, I side more with Colleen than with Baker. Maybe pacifism could have kept the United States out of the war. But the closer one gets to Germany geographically speaking, the less likely it seems to me, and the more pacifism looks like capitulation. I don’t think vocal pacifism would have saved Belgium or Holland.

Ed Park writes:

A lot of interesting comments, and it’s already hard for me to maneuver (I wanted to say chime in re Ed’s take on objectivity, but Brian’s addressed that point; also re Baker’s take on Japanese aggression, but Colleen’s got that covered).

I. This book didn’t remind me of Markson’s novels (most of which exist in the realm of the notebook, the fragment, the disintegrating/re-formed voice) so much as it did Eliot Weinberger’s “What I Heard About Iraq,” a nonfiction piece I’ve been teaching to my students. I am interested in the technique of the cento, in the strategy of repetition. The voice in “WIHAI” is clear, impassioned but controlled, and relentless; practically every entry (most just a few sentences long) begins “I heard…” Two words, vexed to nightmare.

For Baker, the two words are “It was”: “It was April 6, 1917.” “It was the summer of 1932.” “It was February 9, 1939.” The strict chronology adds to the atmosphere of doom.

I heard it was.

II. We have now reached the point where we can’t say there’s a “typical” Nicholson Baker book, or even style. A Box of Matches tapped into the same well of observations found in his first two novels, but Human Smoke and Checkpoint bear little resemblance to his trademark hyperobservational mode, in which the authorial voice notices something small, seemingly insignificant, and spins that rarity into something universal. Like Perec, he seems to want to write every sort of book that it’s possible to write.

Jason Boog writes:

Dear Friends,

First of all, I’d like to say thanks to Ed for including me on this conversation between some of my favorite writers, both on and off the Internets. It’s a real honor to participate.

I’d also like to say thanks to Ed for asking this question: “what do you folks make of the cast of characters here?” On the surface it sounds like the easy essay question asked on a Literature 101 exam in college, but I think it’s one of the best ways to unpack this sprawling work.

This book is, among other things, about how writers influence the world during wartime. It’s a question that very few writers have picked up during the Iraq War, and I applaud Nicholson Baker for raising this question today. That contemporary, unsettling theme is what differentiates this work of literary non-fiction from the shelves of World War II history books that Levi Asher noticed.

For instance, we see the writer Christopher Isherwood struggling to change the violent course of events at key moments in the book. His heartbreaking response to critics of pacifism (and the literary crowd who mocked him for his stance) really shook me on page 163: “I am afraid I should be reduced to a chattering, enraged monkey, screaming back hate at their hate.” Many contemporary writers and artists have struggled with these bestial energies in the wake of September 11th, and Americans will cope with the twinned emotions of hate and revenge for the next century.

I think Baker picked Joseph Goebbels as the perfect foil to Isherwood’s ultimately unsuccessful character. We meet Goebbels as he is working hard on his novel, but he drops everything to join Hitler’s war machine. The newspaper reports and speeches he wrote as propaganda minister were horrifically effective. Goebbels chose the complete opposite path of Isherwood, and killed millions with the hate his writings generated.

While I agree with previous writers that Baker is writing how the peace movement failed, I think we need to focus on that contrast between a nearly-forgotten pacifist writer and the most famous Nazi propagandist. Isherwood’s unpopular, peaceful ideals seem very fragile when compared to Goebbels’ terrible body of work—but they illustrate the redemptive qualities of Baker’s new book.

The history books will mostly ignore characters like Isherwood, because they could do little to alter the momentum of World War II. Human Smoke does a magnificent job of resurrecting the most powerful pacifist writings of the time—from Mahatma Gandhi’s letters to Isherwood’s prose. Many of these writings would have faded to oblivion without Baker’s curatorial eye, and they have lessons to teach contemporary readers.

Baker’s book reminds writers and thinkers that we have our own set of moral decisions to make as we write about the Iraq War (and the larger question of instability in the Middle East). Do we permanently disengage like Isherwood or to fight to change minds like Thomas Mann’s expatriate messages to his German countrymen? It’s about time somebody started asking these tough questions, because the bloody conflicts of the 21st Century won’t go away.

Eric Rosenfield writes:

Hello all,

Well, I have to say I didn’t expect the round table to get quite so involved quite so quickly–Ed just announced game on at 11 o’clock last night and here we are with the tenth long, involved email.

I want to disagree with Ed’s statement that every narrative requires a “a capable crew of good guys and bad guys”; I think most good narratives are more complicated than that, and real people can’t be divided into good and bad so easily, and I think Baker makes this case quite well. Take, for example, Churchill.

So you understand where I’m coming from, my father saw the film Young Churchill when he was a kid and ever since has practically idolized the man. My childhood was filled with anecdotes about Churchill’s wit and how the man bravely saved us from Hitler (“never have so many owed so much to so few” etc). But then we’re Jewish and it’s very easy for Jews to think highly of anyone who fought Hitler.

Churchill’s portrayal in Human Smoke isn’t particularly flattering and the Churchill who falls over himself to compliment Mussolini, cheers on the bombing of natives in Africa and the Middle East and thinks of the Jews as a bunch of Communists is a far cry from the Churchill I grew up hearing about. But at the same time, he’s portrayed as a brilliant orator, a charismatic and someone willing to make hard decisions for the cause of war. I agree with Colleen that Baker isn’t objective, but he does tell us that Poland and England had a mutual defense treaty, he does tell us that the French navy was ordered to surrender. He does tell us that Churchill, who despised Stalin, did everything he could to help Stalin’s war effort against their common enemy. Churchill is not a cartoon. And I disagree with Colleen that Baker is suggesting that Hitler and Churchill should have made peace after the conquest of Poland; that Hitler wanted the peace is indisputable, but I’m not sure the inclusion of that information is an indictment of Churchill’s decision to keep fighting.

The bigger question here is the question of two war practices used by the British (and then the Americans) over and over again: the food embargo and the bombing of civilian targets. These two realpolitik methods of conducting warfare are still used today; I remember having a heated argument with someone who accused Bill Clinton of being a mass murderer because he helped push through the UN embargo of Iraq, and Clinton’s bombs in Bosnia were killed many civilians. Baker might have been trying to get me to think that these methods are inhuman, and he may be right, but as I read on the main conclusion I came to was this is simply how war is conducted. Indeed killing civilians though siege and embargo and blockade goes back to Roman times and before; not only is it not new, but I don’t there there’s ever been a time in history when these methods were not employed in the cause of warfare.

Which is all to say that the American pacifists in the run up to the war were probably right in calling war mass murder. At the same time we are told about Hitler’s atrocities toward the Jews and Japanese atrocities in the Chinese mainland, and through all the talk of pacifism and Gandhi and civilian casualties all I could think of as I read on was that these people have to be stopped by whatever means necessary. It even occurred to me (and horrified me that it would occur to me) that if, after the war ended, we had turned around and dropped a nuclear bomb on Russia, we might have been able to bring down the Communist government in one fell swoop and stopped Stalin from killing the millions of people that he killed (many of whom were Jews). I think it’s worth peering through our instincts to recoil from the notion to consider whether or not the world would have been better off.

This then, for me, is the primary question posed by Human Smoke. Is mass murder ever justified? And, if so, can we live with ourselves afterward?

Colleen Mondor writes:

I think Brian and Jason raise some interesting questions about the message on pacifists and pacifism that Baker is exploring. As Brian suggests, there was the possibility of a pacifist movement to have an impact – but I think the better time was back in WWI. In that war pacifism would likely have had a much larger impact as there were no real “bad” guys and in many cases no one could explain why the war was being fought. (Even the leaders were largely unable to respond when Woodrow Wilson put forth that direct question.) It would have been interesting to see what connections the pacifists in Baker’s book had to WWI. Vera Brittain is the only one I have any real knowledge of and she lost her brother, fiancee and best friend in the war. She long acknowledged that WWI is what made her a pacifist. (I highly recommend her book on that war, Testament of Youth.) Christopher Isherwood’s father died in WWI; Chips Channon served with the Red Cross during WWI. I think a lot of their thoughts about peace could be very well have been rooted in the realities of war they saw/knew/felt.

I don’t think it is fair to say that the pacifist movement failed in WWII though because it was not the kind of conflict that allowed much discussion for meaningful peace. (Two aggressor nations bent on domination with the military support to back them up.) Also you have to consider that while many Europeans had learned the lesson of war as hell in WWI most Americans had not – our experience in WWI was much less. To some degree Americans still embraced the glorious war idea that Europe had already learned was a lie. So we weren’t so willing to listen to calls for peace. And as far as Germany, their anger over the Treaty of Versailles was too raw among too much of the population – they felt they were owed something in response to how they were wrongfully treated and most of the country’s leaders were unwilling to let that go.

I guess what I’m saying is that you could very well frame an interesting argument around what the pacifists learned in WWI, and what they tried to accomplish in WWII. Baker might have been trying to do this, but I don’t think he tells us enough or perhaps gets distracted by following other threads in his narrative. It’s almost like he tries to be too many things to too many people (or present too many ideas) in this book to keep any coherence. (I think Jason’s comment about comparing Isherwood and Goebbels is interesting and would have made for a great article or book.)

Eric: I based my comment concerning Churchill and peace negotiations following the invasion of Poland on several passages in the book:

Goebbels wrote in his diary. “In any event, it is the English who must decide whether the war is to continue.” p 151

>From Victor Klemperer: “On the other hand, England-France appear to believe in the prospects of a long war, since the peace offer seems to have been rejected.” p 152.
Cyril Joad’s thoughts on p 154

The suggestion on p. 168 that the Germans had no plan to invade Norway until forced by British action in March 1940. That is simply not true – see this for a good overview of the big picture about why the port of Narvik was needed by the German navy and how long the Germans had considered plans to invade Norway.

P 185 – “Hitler’s aim was to ‘make peace with Britain on a basis that she would regard as compatible with her honour to accept.'”

P 204 – “It was contingent, though, on peace with Churchill.”

And on and on and on. Baker seems to characterize Churchill all too often as a warmonger (and I don’t disagree that he did believe in glorious war – I’ve already acknowledged that) who furthered the war rather than ending it as Hitler wanted. And yet we know now (from Hitler’s broken promises before Poland and with Stalin) that Hitler’s promise of peace was never to be trusted. Thus the book reads as unbalanced to me – it is almost as if Baker is trying too hard to remove Churchill (and Roosevelt) from any heroic position that history might still be affording them – at the expense of truth.

Levi Asher writes:

So much to say.

To Colleen, about Japan and the motivations behind the Pacific war and Nanking — well, I just read a rather astonishing book called Breaking Open Japan: Commodore Perry, Lord Abe, and American Imperialism in 1853 by George Feifer (in fact, this book’s
myth-smashing about Japan/USA relations really primed me for the myth-smashing in Baker’s book). According to this book, Commodore Perry’s military humiliation of Japan in 1853 was a deeply traumatic event for the entire nation, and began a century of military/economic dominations that led directly to Pearl Harbor. The USA’s track record
in fair dealings with Japan from 1853 to 1941 is fairly similar to its track record with Native Americans. Nothing can forgive the horrors of Japan’s Korean occupation or Chinese occupation, of course. But it is a notable fact that Japan had lived in relative peace for more than three centuries before Perry arrived in 1853.

Brian, you say that pacifism wouldn’t have saved Belgium or Holland. True, especially because the Nazis were at their peak of success at this time. But what about later, when the British blockade and air raids had been taking their toll, when the Nazis failed to muster the resources to invade England and thus realized that, long term, their prospects were bleak? I like it that Baker doesn’t let us rest with easy answers in this book. Yes, we all agree that appeasement didn’t work in 1938. And it wouldn’t have worked in 1939 and probably not in 1940. But by 1941, the evidence seems to indicate that an armistice could have been established. Would this have been good or not? I don’t know, but we do know that the decision to pursue unconditional surrender came at a great cost. The Holocaust death camps, for instance, did not exist until the end of 1941, well after the peak of Hitler’s strength.

I went back to a bookstore today to look at some more World War II books (and I picked up the classic text, William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for a refresher read). One thing that caught my eye was, separate from the World War II military books, a long shelf and a half of books about Adolf Hitler. I thought about our popular image of Hitler as some kind of dark cartoonish uber-evil human monster. Of course he seems to have been exactly that, and with a bad haircut too. But still, I have always felt (and, as an ethnic Jew, this feeling has always possessed me in a strange way) that it runs against my common sense that, in any situation, real or abstract, the Other can be evil without this evil being somehow shared, common.

John Lennon once sang “I don’t believe in Hitler”, and I know exactly what he means. Oh, I know Hitler is real, and I can recognize his face. But one thing I like about Baker’s book is that he shows Hitler as what he also really was — a frustrated politician, a failed
leader, a military flash in the pan who managed to control an impoverished nation and a chaotic small empire for a few years as it all crumbled slowly around him. According to Human Smoke and other sources, Hitler was only in control of his fate before September 1, 1939. From that point on, he was stuck in Churchill’s slow, methodical grind, just as the outclassed Japanese were stuck in America’s slow, methodical grind in the Pacific. So, now, we ask — why did the grind have to be so slow, and why were cease-fires or peace talks never a possibility? I think this is one of the more concrete questions Nicholson Baker asks in this book, and even though I don’t know enough
to know the answer, I do know that the question must be asked.

Finally … I’m glad that Jason brings Iraq and September 11 into this. It may be worth thinking of Human Smoke as a “September 11 book”, partly because increasingly positive imagery of World War II (Ken Burns’ The War, etc.) has seemed more popular than ever since that day. I also think that, like Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (with which Human Smoke shares a lot, including Burton Wheeler), this book may or may not have been written as an indirect commentary on the Bush/Cheney administration, but even if it wasn’t, the shoe sure seems to fit.