Human Smoke Quotes

“In every war,” said Engelbrecht, “the armament maker who sells internationally is arming a potential enemy of his own country—and that, practically, if not legally, is treason.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“ELEANOR ROOSEVELT and her husband, Franklin D., the assistant secretary of the navy, were invited to a party in honor of Bernard Baruch, the financier. “I’ve got to go to the Harris party which I’d rather be hung than seen at,” Eleanor wrote her mother-in-law. “Mostly Jews.” It was January 14, 1918.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“The Bombay Chronicle asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought of the fact that the United States was now in the war. It was December 20, 1941.
'I cannot welcome this entry of America,' Gandhi said. 'By her territorial vastness, amazing energy, unrivalled financial status and owing to the composite character of her people she is the one country which could have saved the world from the unthinkable butchery that is going on.' Now, he said, there was no powerful nation left to mediate and bring about the peace that all peoples wanted. 'It is a strange phenomenon,' he said, 'that the human wish is paralysed by the creeping effect of the war fever.'

Churchill wrote a memo to the chiefs of staff on the future conduct of the war. 'The burning of Japanese cities by incendiary bombs will bring home in a most effective way to the people of Japan the dangers of the course to which they have committed themselves,' he wrote. It was December 20, 1941.

Life Magazine published an article on how to tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person. It was December 22, 1941.
Chinese people have finely bridged noses and parchment-yellow skin, and they are relatively tall and slenderly built, the article said. Japanese people, on the other hand, have pug noses and squat builds, betraying their aboriginal ancestry. 'The modern Jap is the descendant of Mongoloids who invaded the Japanese archipelago back in the mists of prehistory, and of the native aborigines who possessed the islands before them, Life explained. The picture next to the article was of the Japanese premier, Hideki Tojo.

In the Lodz ghetto, trucks began taking the Gypsies away. They went to Chelmno, the new death camp, where they were killed with exhaust gases and buried. It was just before Christmas 1941.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization

“IN TOKYO, the American ambassador to Japan heard something about a possible surprise attack. “There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the United States, are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack at Pearl Harbor,” the ambassador, Joseph Grew, wrote in his diary. “Of course I informed my government.” It was January 24, 1941.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“Universal military service, said the declaration, had always been a way for dictators to suppress the conscience of a people and to indoctrinate them with the notion that brute force was superior to ideals. “The essential idea underlying military conscription is the major premise of every dictatorship and all totalitarianism,” the signers said. “It is the assumption that the individual citizen is but a pawn in the hands of unlimited State power.” It was July 8, 1940.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“There were fearful consequences to the open tolerance of brutality: the depravity would “spread like an epidemic.” Surprisingly quickly the like-minded and the deviant personalities come together, as is the case in Poland, in order to give full vent to their animalistic and pathological instincts. Eventually, Blaskowitz said, “only the brutal will rule.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“GOEBBELS AND HITLER had a conference about the Grynzspan agitation. “He decides: Let the demonstrations continue,” Goebbels wrote. “Pull back the police. The Jews should for once feel the anger of the people.” Party leaders called their subordinates, and the Gestapo sent out, by Teletype, rules to guide the rioting throughout Germany that was to be the consequence of Ernst vom Rath’s assassination. It was to be savage but orderly. The burning of synagogues was permitted “only if there is no danger of fires for the neighborhood.” Jewish homes and businesses “may be destroyed but not looted.” And foreigners “may not be molested even if they are Jews.” It began at 1:00 in the morning on November 10, 1938. Otto Tolischus reported on it for The New York Times. “There was scarcely a Jewish shop, cafe, office or synagogue that was not either wrecked, burned severely, or destroyed,” he said. “Before synagogues, demonstrators stood with prayer books from which they tore leaves.” The wealthy synagogue on Fasanenstrasse “was a furnace.” Twenty-five thousand people were sent as hostages to concentration camps. It was called Kristallnacht, Crystal Night, because it happened at night and a lot of plate glass was broken, and because the word “crystal” simultaneously distracted from, and raised a toast to, the ferociousness of the rioting—and perhaps finally also because the word echoed the title of one of Goebbels’s favorite books on propaganda technique, Edward Bernays’s Crystallizing Public Opinion. Goebbels had successfully used vom Rath’s assassination to crystallize German anti-Semitism.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“JOSEPH STALIN, the leader of Russia, ordered operatives to remove all the stores of food from farming towns in the Ukraine. Millions of people had no bread—they ate field mice, insects, husks, and dead children. It was 1933.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

“Gandhi gave a statement at his trial. “I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence,” he said.”
― Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization