Human Smoke by Nichoson Baker

[Nam Le]

Nicholson Baker’s “Human Smoke” is a pacifist interpretation which describes events that lead to World War II. These events were mainly about the suffering of Jews under the German’s regime, the background about the decisions joining the war of leaders of the US and Britain. According Mr. Baker’s opinions, joining the war of United States against German was a wrong decision. Furthermore, Roosevelt and Churchill, who are the leaders of United States and Britain, were no better than Hitler as grand architects of history’s most destructive war. In the other hands, France made a good choice for staying out of the war. In short, his opinion about World War II was a meaningless fight which causes the loss of many lives.
Besides the events that lead directly to the World War 2, the author also describes some activity of anti war individual such as Jeannette Rankin, a Republican congresswoman from Montana. She the only one who cast the vote opposed the declaration of war against Japan.
The book was a collection of events that were presented as small paragraphs. It begins with the prediction of Alfred Nobel that his explosives had ability to stop all the wars in 1892. The chain of events ends in December of 1941 with Mihil Sebastian’s journal. The United States entered the war not so long after that.
Events and incidents are presented out of context, with no authorial commentary and separated by a big empty space. I think the purpose of author is to let the readers take a break, so they can think about what they just read. One thing interesting about this book is it has absolutely no comments from authors. However, even with no commentary or arguments for his point, I was forced to step by step believe in what the author want me to believe. The whole book is like a big picture of the world before World War 2, and each of them is a piece of that picture. Putting these pieces together is really an enjoyable work to do. The author really did a good job on editing this book
This book is very well written, and the author’s point of view is really understandable and makes sense. However, in my opinion, it is a little bit not fair. He discusses the cause and the consequences of the war without mentioning about its positive effects. Wars are really bad, but sometime we need it to create peace. It would be a great book if the author step out, and try to look at the issue from another side.
This book opposed the decision of the leaders of US and Britain to join to war. This point of view may alienate people whose suffered painful experience with German and Japan in the past. These experiences are not something that can be forgotten easily.
This book is really a good book for people to review about what happened that lead to the World War 2. Everybody knows about the consequences of World War 2, which is extremely terrible. Nobody likes that. The book leads the readers to believe the war could be prevented by just negotiation. This helps the readers more carefully in the way in resolving the conflicts. Any unsolved conflict could lead to really bad results.
The book is best fit for the first principle of BW, which is “War is obsolete”. In the afterword section, the author expresses his question, which is whether the war helped everybody who needed help. This is his main theme, and he used a lot stories from sources such as newspaper articles, diaries, memos, memoirs, and public proclamations to prove his point of view.

Question
1) If the US negotiated with German in the past, and the US didn’t step into the War, how do you think this would affect the war? Could World War 2 be avoided by just negotiation?
2) What do you think the big white space between the events in the book do? Do these spaces help you in reading the book? Or are they just annoying?
3) Mention some of the positive sides of World War 2 if there’s any.
4) What is the meaning of the title Human Smoke? What does the author try to imply here?

[Peg Francis]

ANOTHER REVIEW:

This book is unique in style and substance, and would seem to fit in well with the Beyond War organization's first credo, "War is Obsolete". It's not a bad read, except sometimes for the squeamish, and Baker has organized the 474 pages in a roughly chronological progression of paragraphs. (Private thought: am I getting too hardened to horror?)

His style of editing the many hundred quotations, selection of letters, newspapers, diaries, and other primary documents, substantiating his account of the lead-up to WWII, then its progress on many political and military fronts, gives a good look at this section of history.

For a serious scholar, the lack of an introduction, chapters, index, unity of place or topic would likely make it too hard to use as a reference. For the general reader, particularly one dedicated to ending wars, it certainly gives a close, intelligent look at the mind-set of political leaders, military leaders, industrial leaders, religious leaders, influential socialites, Jews and pacifists. (Private thought: were anti-war leaders and conscientious objectors really as prominent as Baker has shown them?)

He has many substantiated references on the mental condition of a number of leaders, including William Churchill, Adolph Hitler, President Franklin Roosevelt, German top generals, pacifists and others. An number of quotations from these men are hard to get sense from, even given the context, perhaps showing lack of linear thought -process. Hitler was in obvious poor health for years, as were others. (Private thought: were sick old men running most of the world?)

Before and during this war, there was a lively group of pro-negotiation supporters, and they did have some very ligh-leve meetings, although with little influence in the larger picture. The Beyond War organization might consider setting upo someone to comb through this book to collect the many references to the work for peace that was going on. Perhaps this has been done, and Isherwood, Quakers, Gandhi are likely all documented.