[lbo-talk] Human Smoke

[Chris Maisano]

I read Baker's book, and while it was certainly a gripping read, I think that his historical method and argument are way off. Undoubtedly figures like Churchill and Roosevelt had some rather unseemly personal opinions on a number of issues (i.e. on Jews), and certain aspects of the Allies' war against the Axis were morally/ethically indefensible (i.e. Dresden, Hiroshima, etc.). But what was the alternative to war against the Axis? Baker and other pacifists have never satisfactorily answered this question because there probably wasn't one. The war against them was evil in a number of ways, but probably even greater evil would have been perpetrated if the Nazis and their allies had not been defeated. If anything, Gandhi comes off just as bad in the book as Churchill and Roosevelt, and Baker's not so implicit argument that the Nazis could have been opposed and defeated through pacifist moral suasion seems completely bonkers to me.