Tag: WW2

Human Smoke

Human Smoke is by the novelist Nicholson Baker, who has written some very touching and outrageously silly books which I’ve enjoyed tremendously. But Human Smoke is not a novel, it’s a sort of experiment in collage, cobbling together diary entries, letters, news reports, and speeches from dozens of sources leading up to and during World War II and the Holocaust. Unlike his novels this work is not touching or silly. It is deeply troubling.

I’m familiar with only two comparable works. One is Baker’s other non-fiction experminet, called Baseless, which focused on the Korean War. In that book Baker investigated the possibility that the US had covertly employed biological weapons against civilians and soldiers during the conflict, and kept a sort of personal journal of his process, his reactions to government secrecy, what it was still possible to find out, and what was likely down the memory hole. Another work similar to Human Smoke is Charles Reznikoff’s Holocaust, a work of poetry created through the artful rearrangement of fragments from witness testimony at the trials of Nazis. I used Reznikoff’s text when I taught Hitler’s rise to power and the Holocaust to public school students.

I’ve read a few dozen books about the second World War, and about Nazi Germany, and about Hitler and the Nazis, about Churchill and FDR, and probably also a few hundred articles along the way. On top of that are the countless documentaries, television shows, news reports, literary works, memoirs, and feature films, etc. Human Smoke is troubling because I learned new things which made me uncomfortable. I had to question my own assumptions that I had the narrative straight, that I knew that story pretty deeply for an amateur who was not a trained historian and yet who had the heavy responsibility to teach it to young people and guide them as they explored the topic. Of course I like when I have to challenge my assumptions–that’s the entire point of the reading life.

I’d long questioned and critiqued what I was taught in high school about US involvement in the war. I was taught that the US intervened to stop the Holocaust and save Jews, and that the US military won the war. Previously I’d known that this was not true and was largely propaganda instead of history. The Soviets defeated the Nazis in Europe, with help from the US. 4 out of 5 Nazis killed by the Allies were killed by the Soviets, and overwhelmingly the Soviets did the heavy lifting and endured the heaviest losses. The US of course did the hard work in Africa and in Italy, and paid a huge cost in Normandy. They did all the ghastly work in the Pacific as well. I don’t minimize the losses or the sacrifice of the United States in the war. But we were outright lied to about why the US intervened when I was a teenager. We were also misinformed about the USSR and its role.

Human Smoke reveals things about Roosevelt and Churchill and their schemes and their tactics which are extremely distasteful. Some of them I knew before, others were grotesque revelations. At a time when heroes are needed badly in the West, you won’t find them here. Again we are confronted with the problem long presented in the western democracies–there are no good guys in power, only somewhat less bad guys. The pacifists are the only worthy ones in this book.

A History of France

I wanted to refresh my general knowledge of French history before focusing in detail on a few eras, regions, and personalities. A History of France seemed a good place to start. John Julius Norwich had written quite readable histories of Byzantium and European monarchs, and his father Duff Cooper was Churchill’s liason with the Free French during WW2, and later was Ambassador to France from the UK. I thought this book merited a try.

There is way too much history in this short and readable history. We start with Julius Ceasar and his campaigns in Gaul, and progress through 2000 years up to Charles DeGaulle. But this is a fun read, written by a lifelong Francophile, and it did what I hoped it would–reminded me of the proper sequencing of early monarchs and refreshed my knowledge of the 100 years war and 30 years war and the long deeply intertwined relationship of France and England. The cast of characters is immense of course, and Norwich is particularly good at bringing them to life, from Eleanor of Acquitaine and her sons to Joan of Arc to Napolean 3.

I must say that even immediately upon finishing the book I can’t differentiate all the King Louises and King Charleses. There are too many of them to remember. But Norwich brings them to life and situates them in the context of their times and analyzes their impact on the entirety of French and European history.

Like many English (and Americans) of his era he seems to truly admire but also to have not inconsiderable contempt for Charles de Gaulle. But a historian worth his or her salt can hold two contrary opinions in his or her mind at once and still manage to get the job done. I had to laugh out loud when De Gaulle tells Churchill that the French people regard him as a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, and Churchill says “we had to burn the first one.” History is so much fun, except when you have to live through it.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

The town where I grew up in the 1970s was still, in many ways, actually in the 1950s. In Stewartstown, PA The Beatles were long-haired hippy freaks who hated Jesus, anyone to the left of Barry Goldwater was a Communist, and guys still hung out in their denim overalls by a potbelly stove in the feed store. My grandfather, who was almost totally bald, walked two blocks to the barber’s to get his “ears lowered” and hung out with the gents there for a couple hours. Our neighbor one house south of us on Main St was Mrs. Hersey.

Mrs. Hersey wore dark blue or black dresses which covered all the way to her neck, to her wrists, and to her ankles. The dresses were finely made and very austere, but there was elaborate white lace at the neck and on the sleeves. She also covered her hair in the traditional manner of churchwomen in that region at the time when she was outside or when she was hosting company. She would summon me to the fence between our yards when I was four or five years old. “Master Godfrey how do you fare today?” She always referred to me as “Master” followed by my last name, and addressed Christmas cards to me in the same manner (I think I still have one of those). After a bit of conversation she would hand me a small paper bag of chestnuts.

Mrs. Hersey didn’t have a living room like everyone else, she had a parlor. But the parlor to my at the time little mind just seemed like an old-timey living room. There were glass oil lamps with globes and wicks which had been converted to electric lamps. The glass was infused with different colors like mauve or mint green, often swirled with white foamy glass and sparkle flakes. Her parlor reminded me of the interiors in old western movies. There were doilies under everything: hard candy dish full of root beer barrels, the lamps, family pictures. And every table was covered with a cloth to boot, as were the chairs, which also had lace at the top and on the arms.

In Stewartstown I had the freedom to go anywhere unsupervised, and my friends and I did so. Favorite haunt was the old town cemetery directly behind our house, but we roamed widely and often for hours at a time without adults or elder siblings. We had this freedom because of the old ladies in town, who knew everyone and everyone’s brood and everyone’s business. From their front porches and from chairs hidden behind front window curtains they somehow divined all the latest gossip. But the old ladies kept an eye on us, took us in when we tumbled by on the sidewalk, came out with Band-Aids when someone fell, and in certain circumstances might deliver a stern lecture, a warning to call our moms, and occasionally, dealt us a smack.

I used to love visiting with the old ladies. They were all born around the turn of the 20th century and had seen so much–imagine they’d all had horses and horse carts when they were teenagers? They told wonderful stories and told me about my grandparents and father when they were all young people. When my parents got divorced and my mom and sister and I moved in with my maternal grandparents in a different small Pennsylvania town, I continued the tradition of visiting old ladies. My grandma would give me a sack of veggies from her garden and say “Take this up to old Mrs. Kent and tell her $1.20 please.” I’d tie the plastic bag to my bike handlebars and ride off. Mrs. Kent had more hair on her chin than on top of her head, and wore simple house dresses with a full body apron as she sat in her rocker and told me about the photos on her tables, or about her knick-knacks, or about that one time she got a train to Baltimore, or about her long-gone husband. Then she’d give me some shoefly pie and $1.20 in coins to take back with me.

All of this as prologue to show I’ve often delighted in the company of old people, and truly treasure my opportunities to do so when I was a very young lad. And this novel by G. B. Edwards reminded me so much of my visits with old folk back in the 1970s and early 1980s that I felt a profound nostalgia, despite never having been to Guernsey Island.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page came to my attention recently as I was scanning my bookshelves and planning future reads. I’d read a couple articles lately about Guernsey Island and some controversies about its time under German occupation and what exactly happened in the labor camps there. I picked it up to read as a secondary novel (I typically have a primary novel and a secondary going at the same time (and also a primary non-fiction and fiction going at the same time (and routinely a primary novel in French as well))) and with regular 6-8 page chapters finished it off in a couple months.

What a pleasant and interesting old chap Ebenezer Le Page turned out to be. And what a lens through which to see the changes in an island culture over the early 2/3rds of the 20th century. Ebenezer of course is not an old man throughout the novel, but the novel is told by old Ebenezer who is writing his memoirs. If you are a fan of plot and excitement, this is not a novel for you. If you like to visit old folk and set a piece and hear what they have to say–you may well enjoy this book. I particularly enjoyed Ebenezer’s run-ins with Liza and actually laughed out loud reading them. But we get his entire life story and his interactions with friends and family as the island where he lives moves from the 19th century and into the 20th and through the world wars.

Surprisingly, there are gay characters in the book and it’s interesting to note Ebenezer’s mindset and reactions to them. And Ebenezer remembers some details of the Nazi occupation of Guernsey which continue to be controversial. I particularly enjoyed learning about the patois of the island with its mixture of French and English cultures and languages. There is a useful dictionary in the back!

I was genuinely sad to reach the end of this novel–that rarely happens in life, even when you read a lot of great stuff.