Human Smoke

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

"AN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER published a book called /The War in the Air/. 
The officer, David Garnett, was also a novelist and a publisher---he was 
part of the Bloomsbury group. Now, however, he was doing war work.
    Garnett wasn't, he said, an advocate of terror bombing---not because 
it's wrong but because England didn't have enough airplanes to 
terror-bomb properly. 'For bombing to be effective against civilians it 
must inspire abject terror and despair,' Garnett wrote.

/  I can conceive that in 1943, when Britain has achieved a tremendous 
air superiority, the ruthless bombing of the war-weary population in 
Germany on a far more gigantic scale than has been experienced by any 
British city may well be the most effective way to bring about a German 
revolution. By butchering the German population indiscriminately it 
might be possible to goad them into a desperate rising in which every 
member of the Nazi party would have his throat cut.//
/
Garnett said that he'd had the pleasure of examining a Boeing Flying 
Fortress: 'We need two or three thousand such aircraft,' he said. It was 
September 1941." (p. 388)

A very recommendable read!

On 11.08.2015 09:22, Dave Monroe wrote:
> Human Smoke
> The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
> By Nicholson Baker
>
> [...]
>
> Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of
> the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s.
> Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented
> sources—including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches,
> memoirs, and diaries—the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated
> moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses
> of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the
> gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.
>
> [...]
>
> http://books.simonandschuster.com/Human-Smoke/Nicholson-Baker/9781416572466
>
> Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
> is a 2008 book by Nicholson Baker about World War II. The book
> questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid the
> war at all costs but were forced into action by Hitler's unrelenting
> crusade. It consists largely of official government transcripts,
> newspaper articles and other documents from the time with Baker
> interjecting commentary only occasionally. Baker cites documents that
> suggest that the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom
> were provoking Germany and Japan into war and that the leaders of
> those two nations had ulterior motives for participating. Baker
> dedicates the book to American and British pacifists of the time who,
> in the book's epilogue, he states had it right all along: “They
> failed, but they were right.”
>
> [...]
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Smoke
> -
> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>
>

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