[STARMAN 352ND]

Controversial World War II book questions 'just war' - CNN.com

[dilligafocau]

"Baker said he was surprised and shocked at the way Churchill responded to Hitler's attacks on Poland and other neighboring states by launching a relentless bombing campaign against German cities as well as a blockade that was designed to starve the enemy into submission."

This guy likes to compress history, it was 2 years before any serious bombing over German cities was commenced, then there was the little matter of the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz over Britain's major cities which started Sept '40.

As for blockades, what did this idiot author think the German U-boats & battleships were trying to do in the Atlantic...catch fish??

This guys entitled to his opinion, and so am I.....he's a nutjob!

[Cardinal]

Originally Posted by dilligafocau

"Baker said he was surprised and shocked at the way Churchill responded to Hitler's attacks on Poland and other neighboring states by launching a relentless bombing campaign against German cities as well as a blockade that was designed to starve the enemy into submission."

This guy likes to compress history, it was 2 years before any serious bombing over German cities was commenced, then there was the little matter of the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz over Britain's major cities which started Sept '40.

As for blockades, what did this idiot author think the German U-boats & battleships were trying to do in the Atlantic...catch fish??

This guys entitled to his opinion, and so am I.....he's a nutjob!

You're being overly kind there DilliG, tell us what you REALLY think!

Seriously though, what bothers me the most is that there will be some who actually believe and are influenced by what this guy has written, even though it is without proper historical context or factual substance and is clearly the product of a deep lack of understanding and respect for the study and research of history .

[Captain Eddie]

Pat Buchanan holds the same views. I like Pat, but, in this case, like this auther HE is an absolute nutjob also!

[Epapazian]

I hope this genius gets to work on the Korean War, The First World War, The Crimean War, The Napoleonic Wars, etc. etc. I suspect that all of these and many others were avoidable also. So what? Also, what took him so long to figure it out? WW II ended a long time ago and he looks like he's been around for a while too. Could it be that there's a hidden agenda behind this book?

[flyXwire]

Originally Posted by Captain Eddie

Pat Buchanan holds the same views. I like Pat, but, in this case, like this auther HE is an absolute nutjob also!

Both Pat Buchanan and this nutjob are NAZI apologists, imho....nuff said!

[1250ships]

The Wall Street Journal had a pretty scathing review of this book. Carnage and Collage - WSJ.com An excerpt:

What is so distressing about this is that readers with limited knowledge of the war may accept "Human Smoke," because Mr. Baker provides so little context along the way. The book is cut-and-paste history that never pauses to explain the background for a speech or protest or military mission. A Vichy spokesman rails against the "ravaging of great French ports" by Allied attacks, calling it "savage" and "impossible to accept," but there is nothing in the book about what the collaborationist Vichy government was and only passing mention of the fact that those French ports were by then home to the German U-boat fleet.

Mr. Baker gives uncritical treatment to Western newspapers and Nazi press organs alike. Thus we get anti-British diatribes from the Volkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of National Socialism, and none other than Joseph Goebbels is offered as a character reference for Churchill: "This man walks over dead bodies to satisfy his blind and presumptuous personal ambition."

The result is an often infuriating catalog of moral equivalency. Mr. Baker leaves the impression -- one cannot say that he "believes," since he is never quite explicit -- that Roosevelt's preparations for war with Japan were as bellicose in character as Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and that the Allied failure to help Jews in the early years was as bad as the Nazis' dispatching them to the gas chambers.

If Churchill and Roosevelt are Mr. Baker's villains, his heroes are the pacifists who tried to stop war. Gandhi makes several appearances, certain in the belief that the German people would in time rebel against Hitler. "I want you to fight Nazism without arms," he wrote in an open letter to the people of England. Aldous Huxley weighs in: "We have all seen how anger feeds upon answering anger but is disarmed by gentleness and patience." Mr. Baker's implied lament is that such calls for restraint went unheard.

But of course Huxley and Gandhi were wrong. One can excuse them; they were, after all, making their case at the war's beginning. Many of Mr. Baker's pacifists -- Auden and Einstein, to take a famous pair -- had abandoned restraint by 1941. Even Gandhi, who abhorred violence in any circumstance, acknowledged that "if ever there could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified." The difference for Mr. Baker, and the rest of us, is that we have the benefit of hindsight. We now know -- indeed we have known for six decades -- what effect "gentleness and patience" had on the enemy at hand.

[mustangdriver]

What an idiot.

[Captain Eddie]

Originally Posted by mustangdriver

What an idiot.

Mustangdriver, I like your style.....short, sweet, and to the point!

[jim]

Smug arrogant stupidity.

I have nothing but contempt for this fool.

Yeah like poor old Hitler was a misunderstood philanthropist that only wanted to be loved !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep we should have tried the passive approach, WAIT A MINUTE didn't we try that when he sent his nice little soldiers into Poland , Austria , Czechoslovakia , etc etc.

Actually the concentration camps were in fact holiday camps.

Well he is entitled to his opinion, after all the right to freedom of speech came at a huge price, I wonder if we lived under Nazi rule he would have that freedom, Oh well yes of course he would, Hitler would have liked him.

GRRRR, were are my blood pressure pills.