Nicholson Baker’s HUMAN SMOKE

A Brief Review of Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke

I did not open Human Smoke with an open mind about the origins of the Second World War. My strongest conviction about the Second World War, namely that the war was perhaps the only one the United States fought for the right reasons in nearly 200 years, are still intact. Yet Nicholson Baker effectively challenges all readers to at least open their eyes to the possibility that the actions of the Allied nations were not uniformly moral in the run up to the war. Undoubtedly, the western democracies held the moral high ground before and during the war. Human Smoke reminds us how slippery a moral slope these nations were on.

Baker is an unapologetic pacifist. He quotes numerous other pacifists that were living contemporary to the origins of the war. Human Smoke is written in episodic style in lieu of more traditional narrative history. Thus, Baker’s pacifist leanings and his style are likely to be too nonconformist for many reviewers. This book isn’t a comprehensive look at the beginnings of the war. Yet, this episodic style provides Baker with the opportunity to quickly change topic without transitions or linking narrative. The end result is that a great deal of complementary information is presented to readers in short compact pieces.

The run-up up to the war was an unmitigated disaster. This was not just because Germany was unrestrained by the rest of Europe. Contributing to the disaster, according to Baker, was a distinct lack of compassion on the part of leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill who failed to compassionately help the oppressed escape Europe. The Nazi hate machine made it very clear from the beginning that life as the Jews of Europe knew it would be drastically different.

 

Compounding disaster was the fact that even after the war began in 1939, Baker reminds us, there were opportunities to try and bring the world back from the brink. These opportunities were uniformly missed. Once the war began the sheer folly that was strategic bombing brought death to innocent civilians in unprecedented numbers without an appreciable effect on morale.

If you’re interested in reading about moral equivalence and war, or are willing and desirous of challenging some of your core precepts about good vs. evil and the beginnings of the Second World War, this is certainly a book you will remember.

-Jeff Demers

 

 

Tags: churchill, nicholson baker, roosevelt, second world war