Introducing the stupidest person in modern times

Controversial World War II book questions 'just war.'

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.
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."...

One comment here: It was Winston Churchill who stood alone against the entire Parliament and warned Britain and the world, for that matter, for several years of Hitler's dangers. He nearly lost his office in the House of Lords because no one believed him. If anyone is to blame, it is those people in the world who refused to enforce the Treaty of Versailles when they allowed Hitler to violate the treaty and build an army.