I take issue with how Nicholson Baker presents Human Smoke--very little of the book is shown in context, and he oversimplifies the start and duration of World War II, focusing on the violence and atrocities committed by the participants and often reducing the war to a series of bombing raids where Germany attacked legitimate military targets during daylight hours, while Great Britain targeted civilian populations at night, but like so many others have pointed out, Baker is not a historian, and his book shouldn't be taken as pure history. He writes his book in small, trivial anecdotes, quoting from an array of sources and presenting them in chronological order. Baker's position is a moral one--and, by extension, an emotional one--and Human Smoke is intended to raise moral questions. His inversion of roles--presenting Adolf Hitler as a peace-seeker and Winston Churchill as a warmonger--is troubling. We can easily label Baker as a Nazi sympathizer (he's not--his sympathy lies with the pacifists), but this only misses the point. He's not only blurring the line between good and evil--so much so that one wonders if there was ever a line to begin with--but he's challenging what we're taught about World War II. And he does so to devastating effect.
In light of what we know, it's easy to contextualize World War II, and we can safely take a moral stance on it. We say, The ends justify the means, but Baker asks, Do they ever? Pacifism wasn't the answer to armament. Gandhi's calls for peaceful resistance would've achieved nothing. To let the Nazis march across Europe, promulgating Aryan racial superiority and leaving millions dead, without lifting a finger, is akin to standing by while your neighbor is beaten and raped right before your eyes. But keep in mind that history is taught and presented in retrospect. As the war raged, how was the world to know the consequences of non-action? The Nazis certainly didn't announce their plans for the Jews, or the condition of concentration camps (much of the extent and horror of Nazi policies didn't come to light until the Nuremberg trials), and with good reason; in Human Smoke, Germany, like the Allies, believes it has the moral high ground. (And, if we're to take Baker at face value, would the anti-Semitism of Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt have roused them to stop the Nazis from exterminating the Jews?) Instead, Baker presents the Allied and Axis powers in their respective moral positions, with an emphasis on hegemony. Churchill, determined to fight the war to the last man, rebuffs all of Germany's attempts at peace. Hitler attacks "cowardly" Great Britain in retaliation. About Jewish refugees, the constant question for the Allies isn't how to save them, but how to avoid taking responsibility for them. Both sides were equally guilty of war crimes. Instead of showing World War II as a war of ideals, Baker presents it as a war of pride.
Winston Churchill, taking his office as prime minister and minister of defence, offered blood, toil, tears, and sweat. What was his policy going to be? Very simple: war--war against "a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime." What was the aim of waging war? To win. The House gave him an ovation. Catching the eye of an aide as he walked out, Churchill said: "That got the sods, didn't it?"
As history, Human Smoke is disappointing. Baker doesn't explicitly demonize the Nazis--in fact, there's very little commentary from him--and he only shows the immediate result of certain battles and decisions. The Allies, contrary to longheld belief, are shown to be bloodthirsty, trigger-happy anti-Semites. The Axis nations try to keep the war contained, without prolonging it. (After learning about the Lend-Lease Act, wherein a neutral United States sold arms to Great Britain with the stipulation that the arms be returned or replaced after the war, and after hearing about America's "peacetime draft," an irritated Hitler gives a speech stating that he has no quarrel with the U.S., and warns Roosevelt to stay out of the war.) The purpose of Human Smoke is twofold: to show how war can bring even the most democratic governments to the brink of totalitarianism, and to give voice to the pacifists who, remembering the horrors of World War I, strenuously argued against fighting another long war. In retrospect, neither world war achieved its ideological objective--making the world safe for democracy. And, as Baker argues, that was never the war's goal to begin with.
