‘Human Smoke’ purports to be a history of events leading up to World War II. It is, in fact, a pacifist’s manifesto – but one so skewed and bizarre that it prompts a knee-jerk reaction from the least bellicose. World War II presents, to most, a clear-cut example of horrors that justify military intervention. For Baker, it is not the heroic retaliation against which all other missions should be judged, but a colossal mistake that cost the lives of millions. Oh, and it’s mainly Churchill’s fault.
If you’re not familiar with this view, don’t be alarmed. It’s constructed in deliberate contrast to the usual understanding of events, and it would be wrong to say that it’s entirely uninteresting or unnuanced. For Baker, Churchill is a petulant and blustering boy-man, whose infatuation with war games extended to playing with real lives. Roosevelt is an anti-Semite and a xenophobe, whose views cemented an immigration policy that caused the deaths of stranded refugees.
Each of these extremes contains some truths, and one of the jobs of good history is to make us question the mythology of the powerful. But this is not good history. It consists of short snippets, most centred on a quotation from a historical figure and labelled with a specific date. Baker completely submerges his voice, choosing to let the juxtaposition of quotations speak for him.
The absence of a historian’s voice doesn’t mean there is no author present, and in his invisibility Baker commits unpardonable wrongs. He suggests a parallel between the UK internment camps of German citizens, mainly Jews, and Nazi concentration camps. He implies that because there was anti-Semitism elsewhere in the world, the Nazi’s was different only in degree, not in kind. Re-examining wars of the past can teach us about mistakes to avoid in the future. But blundering past real evil with blinders on risks worsening the burden for those who always bear it: the weak and the wounded, the truest pacifists at heart.
