The two chief evils Human Smoke addresses in most detail are both things that the Allies took the lead on: bombardment and blockade. Both were methods of war aimed at civilians. Both caused incredible suffering. Both were sold on a series of lies. Both did not work. The response in both cases was to step them up.
As refugees and civilian populations in Belgium, Poland, Norway and Holland faced starvation, Churchill refused to let food relief through the blockade. He told Parliament that fats would be used by the enemy to make bombs, potatoes used to make fuel, and that — less plausibly — ‘the plastic materials now so largely used in the construction of aircraft are made of milk’.
In October 1941, Herbert Hoover asked:
Is the Allied cause any further advanced today because of this starvation of children? Are Hitler’s armies any less victorious than if those children had been saved? Are Britain’s children better fed today because these millions of former allied children have been hungry or died? Can you point to one benefit that has been gained from this holocaust?
The record of the bombing was similar. In 1941 it was estimated that only one in five British bombers placed its payload ‘within 75 square miles of its assigned target’. ‘Not more than one per cent’ of bombs hit their military targets — so targets were selected in order that the bombs that missed would hit civilians rather than be ‘wasted’. And what were the results? By May 1941, there had been ‘no collapse of civilian morale, no revolutionary unrest, no industrial taproot cut’. What was needed? Why, more and bigger bombs, more dead civilians.
Was it a war fought to prevent the persecution of Jews? It was not. Jewish refugees were not welcomed in any great numbers anywhere, and when war started, the vast majority of those summarily interned were just those refugees. British propagandists, where they were to show images of suffering, were instructed to concentrate on ‘indisputably innocent people . . . not with violent political opponents. And not with the Jews.’
Comments
Eoin Lynch
April 24th, 2008 3:52pmIt's quite a pity that a historian wasn't used to review this book.Sam Leith is out of his depth.Any undergraduate worth his salt can rubbish the claims in this book as they have been used before by the likes of David Irving.
The Nazis did not come to power in 1933 with the intention of murdering all of Europe's Jews.Their plan was to make life so unbearable through pogroms and legal oppression for German Jews to flee.However their plans for living space brought millions of Jews into their sphere and their plans became more radical with deportation to Poland,Madagascar and Russia were all offered for the solution to the 'Jewish question'.Once it became clear that the Soviet Union was not going to be defeated so easily the Nazis embarked on the Holocaust.
Churchill was not a war monger but foresaw that appeasing the Nazis was useless as Chamberlain and the arch appeaser Stalin found to their cost.Only Churchill could have bullied and directed every department of state for the goal of victory.
Report this comment
DG Forbes
April 24th, 2008 12:00pmChurchill may have revelled in the war but he didn’t start it. It was begun by predessors whose patience snapped and who broke with a long policy of appeasement, deciding on the evidence that pacifism didn’t work with someone like Hitler and likely never would. Chamberlain then sided with Churchill in the cabinet struggle of May 1940 with Halifax over whether we should fight or surrender on Hitler’s terms (compare the fate of France shortly after). Of course, that was a choice but people at the time chose freely not to make it and they assumed the corollary that total war needed to be met by total war. Didn’t the same Miss Partridge say elsewhere that it was essential the war should be won to save the intellectuals? The facts are what you chose to make of them in a contest at this distance that’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind. For example, it’s an article of faith with moral absolutists that area bombing was not only a war crime but was ineffective as a weapon against the German economy. That’s not what Speer or Jodl said, according to the literature. The further the war recedes, the easier it becomes to distort what happened through the lens of contemporary moral fashion. As Leith said, Baker knew where he was going to arrive when he sat down to write. That’s okay; Leith’s own prevarications have a distinctly nastier smell. Incidentally, what would have been the ‘right’ thing to do if we had signed a deal with Hitler and he then went on to attack the Soviet Union?
Report this comment