BS: WWII unjustified?

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Peace
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 02:25 PM

The reason they wouldn't seems to be because the camps tied up troops whom they thought Germany would employ elsewhere. Right.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Peace
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 02:21 PM

The Jewish ambassador from Poland--Free Polish forces--committed suicide to protest the Allied refusal to bomb the extermination camps.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 02:17 PM

Joe Offer, minor correction, if I may.

The Holocaust was 'never' a justification for World War II. The German anti-Jewish laws and persecutions were largely ignored in Europe and elsewhere. WWII began in 1939 when France and Britain had had enough of Hitler's invasions of neighboring countries. But that had nothing to do with treatment of Jews in Germany and controlled territories.

Mass deportations of Jews to work camps such as Auschwitz began in 1940. From 1940 - 1941, about 1 million Jews were killed in various camps; the Final Solution was then implemented in early 1942 and continued until the Nazi defeat in 1945.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:53 PM

It's funny that Pat Buchanan's new book is entitled: "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War." I think it just came out as well.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:52 PM

"Imagine it happening to your own towns and cities...on a daily basis. Imagine it being done by some other nation like China or Russia, and imagine how you would feel towards them...and how fervently you would support your own government's retaliation and defense efforts in that circumstance."

Some of us don't have to imagine it LH. We were three thousand miles closer to it, and remember it only too well.

I was too young for evacuation, and spent the whole of the Blitz period in London, so I have abiding memories of trips down to the nearest Underground Station, the family cowering under the staircase when the raid came too quickly for us to go to the shelters.

I remember when I was four years old, and out shopping with my mother, watching in amazement all the shop windows flying into the shops as a doodlebug ( V1 ) landed about a quarter mile away. I remember my mother picking glass out of my hair for ages, after we got home.

And you know what? I still don't think it was an unjust war.

Just consider this. As Teribus said above, the first bombs WERE dropped by Germans on London. Passive diplomacy had been tried several times, and at each point Hitler owned a little bit more of the world.

Where then do you draw the line?

Sudetenland?..........Nope!
Czechoslovakia?.......Nope!
Poland?...............
Holland?..............
Belgium?..............
France?...............
Dover?................

The guy is taking over the western world. There is no question of stopping him without a fight, the only choice you have is WHEN TO FIGHT!

Would you wait until he's standing among your daffodils, bashing your front windows in?

NO YOU BLOODY WOULDN'T!

Neither did we, and before I feel sympathy for the people of Germany, I want to know what happened to the screaming multitudes raising right arms and chanting "Sieg Heil" at pre-War rallies.

They went for thir victory whole heartedly, and lost. Then of a sudden you start to hear "Well, of course we were all against him". Sorry mate, but it won't wash.

The bottom line is, we would have had to fight sooner or later, and we were fighting against the author of Blitzkreig, and if the lightning struck back they've no cause to complain.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:49 PM

Unjustified? Hell no!

Unavoidable? perhaps.

Mistake one - The unduly harsh penalties assessed against Germany in 1919.

Mistake two - Well not a mistake, really...deep world wide Depression.

Mistake three - Inaction of League of Nations while Germany increased its Navy beyond allowed treaty limits; likewise airpower and army.

Mistake four - Inaction of League when Germany intervened in Spanish Civil War.

Mistake five - Inaction when Germany annexed Austria, the Anschluss. (Well Hitler was Austrian, after all).

Mistake six - Acquiescence of the German takeover of the Sudetenland.
and Chamberlain's 'Peace in our Time'.

Had Hitler been confronted at anytime, and especially at mistake 3, perhaps WWII might not have occurred.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:47 PM

Britain had a treaty obligation to keep.

When Poland was invaded, Britain was honour bound to declare war on Germany.

This might not make sense to some, and the situation might seem to have been engineered to cause a war, and then each acident or incident used as an excuse to escalate the violence.

Appeasement of Germany was - in my opinion, an error. Germany was going bad internally long before it started the liebensraum (spelling?) expansion.

As has already been pointed out, the German government thought that Britain would not oppose them. We certainly held many of the same attitudes, anti semitism was only one - but Germany was detaining its intellectuals, and running on strong but strange idealistic lines for years.

I have often wondered how WWII was put off for so long, why Germany had to push so hard and so long to get the full attention of the rest of Europe.

All I can think of is that American isolationism allowed Germany to believe that it could win a European war. Enough Europeans agreed with them, so their governments were putting off the inevetable believing that Germany would dominate Europe from the second half of the 20th century onwards.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:12 PM

The warfare happened for the reasons it always does. Several large imperial powers found their interests conflicting in Europe and elsewhere...and they eventually got around to fighting each other over it.

None of the great powers got into it to prevent the Holocaust...although there was unquestionably genuine moral outrage over what the Germans were doing, and rightly so!

War itself is a great evil and an outrage. War IS a Holocaust. Not sometimes. Every time.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: irishenglish
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:08 PM

Ok, look...sorry Joe and LH...I was trying to tread lightly here. And I took it as a thread about WWII and not Iraq, etc. Joe, your point is a good one, and I don't have a ready answer for that.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:58 PM

The Holocaust was an unspeakable evil, and the Allies should have done far more then they did to prevent it.

But the Holocaust was not a justification for World War II, just as the evil of Saddam Hussein is not a justification for the war in Iraq. If these evils were justfication for warfare, then why didn't warfare stop the evil?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:58 PM

That's right, irishenglish, and that's why I consider the Germans (meaning their high command) to have been the absolute worst of the 2nd World War's war criminals by a large margin. And I consider the Japanese (meaning their high command) to be next on that list after the Germans.

When you have unscrupulous and brutal commanders at the top of any command system, the poison works its way inevitably down the links of the chain.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: irishenglish
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:51 PM

LH, I take your points about the Allies, and you raise a good point. And please, what I'm about to write is absolutely no indictment upon you (just want to be clear that I'm not being accusatory!), but the Allies, never systematically murdered millions of people in concentration camps.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:49 PM

World War II was the reason I didn't file for Conscientious Objector status in 1970, since I believed that WWII was one circumstance where it was justified for "our side" to go to war. At the time, a Conscientious Objector had to believe that all war was immoral in all circumstances, and I couldn't believe that - although I saw the Vietnam War as immoral.

As I grew older, I began to see shades of grey more clearly than the black and the white, and I became stronger in my pacifism. I began to believe that even though good people might go to war in good conscience, I could still hold out for the higher ideal of peace under any circumstances.

I'm sure that many of those who condemn Human Smoke believe that pacifism is hopelessly unrealistic. Some "patriots" seem even to view pacifism as immoral. I think it's essential for us to have pacifists to remind us that we must always have the deepest reluctance to go to war; to remind us that "our side" will do many horrible and immoral acts in the course of even the most justifiable warfare; and to remind us that most soldiers of even the most evil enemy are innocent children of loving parents.

There may be necessary wars, but there is no such thing as a just war. How can there be justice, when masses of innocent people are killed on both sides? Over the last couple of decades, I've lost my belief in Absolute Truth. I can see truth in the ideal of pacifism, and truth in the patriotism of those who believe they have to fight an evil enemy. I think Human Smoke deserves serious consideration.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:43 PM

That would be an intriguing project, Peace, but not an easy one.

How about a book proving that the American Revolution never happened at all, and another one debunking the invention of the belly button?

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Def Shepard
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:40 PM

Peace said, "IMO, someone with the time should write a book proving that WWII never happened at all"

the potential author could probably get a government grant to off-set costs and other expenses.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: Peace
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:39 PM

IMO, someone with the time should write a book proving that WWII never happened at all.

Subject: RE: BS: WWII unjustified?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:37 PM

As an antidote, I recommend reading George MacDonald Frazer's "Quartered Safe Out Here". Especially the intro. I'm fairly leftie too.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:35 PM

Agreed, Mark. Mussolini was a minor malefactor in comparison to Hitler, Stalin, and the Japanese. He was an unsavory, brutal man in many ways, and an abuser of power, but he was not in that same class of being a major committer of war crimes.

There was a strong tendency toward fascism in all the western nations in the 30's...as well as in Japan...and the Soviets had their own form of what I would call extreme socialist fascism too, which was as bad as any of the others, maybe worse. I regard the British, French, and American societies of the late 30's as having had quite strong fascist undercurrents, instincts, and sympathies...but when war broke out between them and the Germans (who were even considerably more fascist) then the Allies took upon themselves the righteous mantle of official anti-fascism, as if they had no such tendencies themselves! ...and they've been wearing that fig leaf over their own naked ambition ever since.

That was convenient in a propaganda sense, but it was far from totally honest or true.

The present British-American Axis in the world is decidedly fascist in my opinion, and it is behaving quite a bit the way Hitler did in the late 30s with its illegal little wars in small countries and its illegal prison and torture facilities for prisoners that it holds without trial, and its increases in domestic surveillance of its own populations, and its abrogations of civil rights in that regard.

All wars are unnecessary (at the inception), but they happen because people abuse power and try to take things that are not rightly theirs. At a certain point in the process...from the point of view of those being attacked...the war then becomes both necessary and absolutely unavoidable.

For the Poles, obviously, in September '39, that was the case. They had to fight to protect themselves against German aggression, and the whole rest of the sorry mess proceeded from there like a house of cards falling down.

It must have been quite a surprise to Hitler, because I don't think he had any notion that the French and British would fight him on behalf of Poland. Particulary the British!   Hitler had always seen them as his natural future allies in a world dominated by an Anglo-German alliance. He figured that the British would help him annihilate the Soviets, and together they would run the world.

The period of the "Phony War" that followed the Polish campaign was interesting, in retrospect. The British and French had declared war on Germany after the Polish invasion, but they didn't really do much about prosecuting that war. Leaflets were dropped by their airplanes on German land. No significant land actions were taken against the Germans by the powerful French army which had the Germans very badly outnumbered in the West until the conclusion of the Polish campaign.

This must have emboldened Hitler considerably in late '39 and early '40, as he would have felt that the western allies were showing weakness and lack of resolve. Still, he was quite nervous about the chances of his 1940 offensive in the West. When it succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, he must have felt invincible...and such hubris would later lead him to do absolutely irrational things such as the attack on Soviet Russia, and the declaration of war on the USA within days after Pearl Harbour. He sealed his country's fate with those decisions.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 11:50 AM

A couple of nights ago, I saw right-wing pundit and erstwhile Presidential candidiate Pat Buchanan on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show." Buchanan was promoting his new book, which advances he same idea/opionion as Baker's: that WWII was not a wholly justified crusade as we all have been taught, and that Churchill was a culprit.

I believe the book title is "Unnecessary War" and the subtitle includes Churchill's name and maybe Hitler's as well.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Teribus
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 11:17 AM

"It is true that Churchill first set the RAF into systematically bombing German civilian centres, including Berlin, and that Hitler's response to that was to order the terror bombing of London. Hitler had given his Luftwaffe explicit orders NOT to bomb London up until that point, so the British terror bombings on Germany were what drew the response of German terror bombings on the British capital." - History according to Little Hawk - It is, not surprisingly, totally incorrect:

History of the London Blitz:
"In late August 1940, before the date normally associated with the start of the Blitz, the Luftwaffe attacked industrial targets in Birmingham and Liverpool. This was part of an increase in night bombing brought about by the high casualty rates inflicted on German bombers in daylight.

During a raid on Thames Haven, on 24 August, some German aircraft strayed over London and dropped bombs in the east and northeast parts of the city, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Islington, Tottenham and Finchley.

This prompted the British to mount a retaliatory raid on Berlin the next night with bombs falling in Kreuzberg and Wedding, this had caused 10 deaths. Hitler was said to be furious, and on 5 September, at the urging of the Luftwaffe high command, he issued a directive "for disruptive attacks on the population and air defences of major British cities, including London, by day and night". The Luftwaffe began day and night attacks on British cities, concentrating on London."

The Luftwaffe had previously bombed civilian centres of population in Spain (Guernica), Poland (Warsaw), Norway (Narvik) and The Netherlands (Rotterdam). Prior to dropping bombs on London on the night of 24th August they had dropped bombs on Birmingham and Liverpool, bombing techniques in 1940 were so inaccurate that attacking their industrial targets surrounded as they were by residential areas would inevitably result in civilian casualties.

On taking up his appointment as head of Bomber Command in February 1942, Sir Arthur Harris said this, "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."

"Strategic" or "Area" bombing of German cities was the brainchild of one Professor Frederick Lindemann, not Churchill as stated by Little Hawk. Churchill appointed Lindemann as the British government's leading scientific adviser with a seat in the Cabinet.   

It was in 1942, not 1940, that Lindemann presented a seminal paper to the Cabinet advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign. Up until that point in the war the Royal Air Force lacked the types of aircraft needed for such a task. Lindemann's paper was accepted by the Cabinet and Harris was appointed to carry out the task, made feasible by the arrival in service of aircraft such as the Handley Page Halifax and Avro Lancaster.

As to the effectiveness of the Bomber Offensive, Albert Speer the industrialist and man in charge of German war production certainly rated its effectiveness and after the war wrote and confirmed that to Harris in person. He also stated that he realised that after the offensive against Hamburg in 1943, he (Speer) knew that Germany had lost the war. He was also of the opinion that had Harris immediately followed up the Hamburg raids with similar attacks on five or six more German cities the war would have ended, unfortunately Harris at the time could not muster the resources to maintain such an attack.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 09:06 AM

If the review quoted by Bruce is faithful to the book, I think the author (who is younger than me but LOOKS OLDER) needs to study chronology a little more closely. By the time war broke out, Austria had been annexed, Poland and Czechoslovakia had been invaded, and German forces had carried out bombing raids against civilians (though not Sevilleans) in Spain. There were also the antisemitic Nuremburg laws in place, and Jews were being imprisoned in concentration camps. Japan had been at war in China since 1937 (having previously been interfering there for years).

While the WWII Allies, like any political organisation, were far from squeaky-clean, prior to the War there were very serious attempts made to avoid war, notably the Munich agreement. The British and French people were mostly against war, it being feared that a repeat of the horrors of WWI would ensue. (They were of course wrong, the horrors were mostly of a quite different sort.) So it was with the greatest reluctance that Britain and France delared war in 1939, and it's notable that it over 2 years later that the Americans entered the war- scarcely the action of scheming warmongers.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: MarkS
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 09:06 AM

Little Hawk
I agree with most of your post but I hesitate to compare Mussolini with Hitler, Stalin, and Japan.
Mussolinis' deeds pale in comparison to those others.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:54 AM

The treaty of Versailles was vindictive and intended to punish Germany. It's roots were in the 19th Century: the Franco-Prussian War and others. Spiteful, vengeful, vindictive, rapacious -- it bred near-revolution in Germany, fighting between the various political factions, and eventually brought Hitler to power.

A Mennonite friend of mine, who has very thoroughly studied WW2, was completely opposed to it until he visited Dachau. It was then that he felt that "some wars are justified and the only answer." Given that the Allies knew of Germany, Japan, Italy and the Soviet Union's camps and record prior to the War and never acted I cannot fault them when they finally did act.

The Rape of Nanking alone....

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Gulliver
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:52 AM

Yes, as Acorn4 writes it was the mess made at the Treaty of Versailles that ultimately led to the instability of the Weimar Republic and provided the opportunity for Hitler and his allies to come to power. Right-wingers all over Europe supported the move towards Facism, whether in Germany, Spain, or Italy. Many of the ruling class in Britain (Churchill's class) saw Hitler as a bulwark against Stalin and supported him accordingly, though this was hushed up after the start of the war. They didn't protest as long as Hitler oppressed the Communists, Social-Democrats, Jews and others, although it was well known from Mein Kampf and Hitler's broadcasts that he intended taking over the Ukraine to use as Germany's breadbasket and enslave other races as he thought fit.



Don

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:41 AM

It should make for interesting reading. I think that just wars are very, very rare indeed...and I think the blame for the destruction of WWII can be laid at the feet of many powers and many politicians, and not only those on the Axis side.

This does not alter the fact that the Nazis were a terribly destructive regime (as were the Italian Fascists and the Japanese military government....and Stalin's Soviets as well).

A careful reading of Winston Churchill's life and his performance in government reveals that he was an extremely belligerent and ruthless man who carried out very aggressive policies. I think that had he been on the Axis side instead of the Allied side in the war, he would now be seen as a monster, just as Adolf Hitler is seen.

It is true that Churchill first set the RAF into systematically bombing German civilian centres, including Berlin, and that Hitler's response to that was to order the terror bombing of London. Hitler had given his Luftwaffe explicit orders NOT to bomb London up until that point, so the British terror bombings on Germany were what drew the response of German terror bombings on the British capital.

The RAF continued waging the single most vicious anti-civilian bombing campaign in history from that point until the end of the war, culminating in horrendous events like the firestorms that consumed Hamburg and Dresden.

If the Allies had not won the war, those actions would be seen as among the greatest war crimes in history.

It's nothing new that the victors of a war sanitize their own actions in the public consciousness and demonize all actions of the losers, so the stories we've been told all our lives have arisen out of that effort. Anything that balances the story a bit would be worth giving some attention to.

I might add that my father fought against the Nazis...and he detested them...and I can well understand why. I'm not saying they were "the good guys". I'm not saying they did not deserve to lose the war. They did deserver to lose it. I'm saying, however, that there were ruthless bastards on the Allied side too in positions of leadership, and that major war crimes were committed on both sides in that war, and that very bad prewar policies on both sides led all the nations inevitably into that conflict.

Therefore, the blame for it is shared by those on both sides.

I also know Germans who lived through the war as young people and they've told me about it. The anger and tremendous resistance raised in the civilian population by the continual Allied terror bombings of that country is exactly what propped up the Nazi government, kept Hitler popular almost to the end, and made of that war a much more bitter conflict that it might have been. Nothing unites a population in solidarity and gets them to support their government more than continual terror attack of the civilian infrastructure by foreign air forces. Imagine it happening to your own towns and cities...on a daily basis. Imagine it being done by some other nation like China or Russia, and imagine how you would feel towards them...and how fervently you would support your own government's retaliation and defense efforts in that circumstance.

The Allied bombings were done supposedly to break German morale. They had exactly the opposite effect. They stiffened German morale, and the Germans fought to the bitter end.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:18 AM

Just tonight on SBS was a documentary - "The Wehrmacht - The Blitzkreig" - it reveals (indirectly) that Baker's ideas are rubbish. The documentary reveals that captured German Generals were placed in 'luxury' accomodation, where they spoke openly - being recorded on disc unbeknown to them. This top secret info was only released recently, and I doubt that Baker had access to this material.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: Acorn4
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:09 AM

As I understand it the political mistakes made from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles onwards until right through the thirties helped to create the situation which led to the rise of the Third Reich, and this has always been understood; Hitler hoped that Britain would not be involved and miscalculated here- events like the bombing of Dresden have always been controversial so I can't really see that anything new is being put forward here.

"Passivity" had been tried with the annexation of the Rhineland, Anscluss and the Sudetenland and Hitler may have been stopped in his tracks if the non fascist powers had been "non passive "a bit sooner.

Subject: RE: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: bobad
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:03 AM

This book should appeal to those with a penchant for moral equivalency    and historical revisionism.

Subject: BS: WW II unjustified?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 07:20 AM

Controversial World War II book questions 'just war'

Story Highlights
Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke" looks at the origins of World War II

He says Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt strengthened Adolf Hitler's power

Holocaust scholar says Hitler would not have responded to passivity

Baker known for "Vox," phone sex novel given to Bill Clinton
   
SOUTH BERWICK, Maine (AP) -- Even the staunchest opponents of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are loath to take issue with World War II, the quintessential conflict between good and evil that became the model of a morally just war.

So it's no surprise that novelist Nicholson Baker's latest venture into nonfiction, "Human Smoke," has stirred up strong feelings. After all, he questions the popular notion of the just war and indicates that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt share blame with Adolf Hitler in setting the stage for the deadliest and most destructive war in history.

Baker makes his case through hundreds of brief vignettes culled from newspapers, diaries and secondary sources that are presented chronologically and without context or commentary by the author. The book ends on December 31, 1941, as the world plunges into the abyss.

In a two-page "afterword," Baker dedicates the book to pacifists who risked public scorn and imprisonment by fighting to stave off the war.

Outraged by the invasion of Iraq, Baker said he was familiar with arguments that some wars had to be fought and that World War II is the premier example.

"If this is the war that everyone holds up as the benchmark of a morally justified war, let's look very closely at how it began, let's find out what happened, in what order and where the moments were that things could have turned out differently.

"Let's ask the question, 'Was it a good war?' " he said in an interview at his 18th-century farmhouse in this New Hampshire border town where he and his family have lived for the past decade.

Exploring the origins of World War II may seem something of a reach for an unconventional author known for quirky novels such as "Vox," which details a phone sex conversation and became a footnote to history after it was learned that Monica Lewinsky had given a copy to President Bill Clinton. Another novel, "The Mezzanine," explores the thoughts of an office worker who rides an escalator during his lunch hour.

Baker has written articles in The New Yorker, ranging from the history of the fingernail clipper to the workings of a movie projector, but his best-known shift to nonfiction was the 2001 "Double Fold," which lamented the destruction of newspaper archives and their replacement by microfilm.

It was while tending the British Library newspaper collection that he rescued from the shredder that Baker began reading about "the horrible period" that led to World War II and prompted him to dig deeper and try "to make some sense" of the situation.

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.

"He was acting like a bloodthirsty maniac during that period. That has to go back on the record in all of its unpleasantness. We can't learn from a hero like that. It's a mistake to say that because Hitler was bad, we have to clean up the image of Churchill. Churchill was also bad," Baker said.

Baker maintains that Churchill's bellicose actions and Roosevelt's eagerness to supply Britain with ships and planes served only to prop up Hitler's standing with Germans and strengthen his hold on the country.

"It was the war -- the long, slow war of bombing and blockade -- that fundamentally helped to keep Hitler in power," he said. "The fact that the country was attacked night after night in this way released a massive antipathy to the British."

The people in the book whom Baker looks up to include Mohandas Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolence; Herbert Hoover, who opposed the British blockade; and a handful of lesser-known pacifists who spoke out against the run up to war.

Tall and lean, with a full but neatly trimmed white beard, the 51-year-old Baker does not regard himself as "a war-minded person," but neither does he claim to be "an absolute pacifist." He is sympathetic to the Quaker tradition of nonviolence, having had Quaker forebears and having gone to Haverford College, which was founded by Quakers.

"Human Smoke," which draws its title from a description of the ashes at Auschwitz, is not meant to be a comprehensive history. Rather, he said, "it's just one journey through the thicket of events," one that captures the anguish of the period and puts human faces on those caught up in it.

The book slices and dices the years that led to war into hundreds of little anecdotes rather than a single sweeping narrative. Baker presents the facts in a detached, journalistic manner that belies his underlying passion and leaves it to the reader to sort out contradictions and infer the broader picture.

Reviews, Baker noted, have ranged from "extremely positive" to "ferociously negative." In The New York Times, William Grimes vilified "Human Smoke" as a "self-important, hand-wringing, moral mess of a book." But Colm Toibin, in the newspaper's Sunday Book Review, called it "riveting and fascinating" and "a serious and conscientious contribution to the debate about pacifism."

Among the skeptics was Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, who helped oversee the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"If there ever was a war that was worth fighting it was World War II, and there is no evidence that I know of whatsoever that Hitler would have responded to passivity except to regard that as empowering him to expand," Berenbaum said. "Hitler could only be stopped by force."