Human Smoke

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

"ARTHUR 'BOMBER' HARRIS, of the Royal Air Force, got off the /Queen 
Mary/ in New York. It was April 25, 1938.
    Harris had commanded bombing expeditions in India, Iraq, Palestine, 
Kenya, and Uganda. Now he was in the United States to buy airplanes. He 
went to Washington, D.C., and then he visited the Lockheed factory in 
Burbank, California. There, he and his team looked over the Model 14 
Super Electra airliner, which they thought would suit British needs 
well, with some adjustments---a big bomb bay and some machine guns. 'To 
my astonishment,' Harris wrote, 'only twenty-four hours later a car 
arrived to fetch me out to the Lockheed works, and there I saw a mock-up 
of all our requirements in plywood, fitted complete in every detail, 
with two alternative noses hinged onto a real aircraft all ready for our 
inspection.'
    The British Air ministry ordered two hundred planes. It was, 
according to /The New York Times/, 'the largest foreign order ever 
placed with an American Aircraft company.'" (p. 84)


On 11.08.2015 12:30, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
> "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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