ESSAY

WHY I’M A PACIFIST The dangerous myth of the Good War By Nicholson Baker

ix months after end of the First Sthe Japanese attack World War: a peace on Pearl Harbor, without victory. “We Abraham Kaufman, ask for peace now,” the executive secre- Kaufman said, tary of the War Re- “while there is still a sisters League, stood world to discuss up in the auditori- aims, not when it is um of the Union too late.” Methodist Church What explained in and Kaufman’s urgency? said something that It was simple: he was dif! cult to say. didn’t want any Kaufman, a man of more people to suffer thirty-three who and die. Civilian had put himself massacres and mili- through City Col- tary horrors were lege at night and reported daily, and had worked Sun- Kaufman feared that days selling maga- the war would prove zines and candy in a to be, as he’d written subway station, in- to the sisted that we need- Times two years ear- ed peace now—and lier, “so disastrous as that to get peace to make the 1917 now, we needed to adventure seem negotiate with Hit- quite mild.” He un- ler. “This tremen- derstood exactly dous war can be what was at stake. In ended by just one his view, a negotiat- small spark of truth and sanity,” he said. negotiating with Hitler, and with Japan ed peace with Hitler was, paradoxi- To those who argued that you too—over prisoners of war, for exam- cally, the best chance the Allies had of couldn’t negotiate with Hitler, Kaufman ple, and the sending of food to Greece. protecting the world from Hitler’s last- replied that the Allies were already It was important to confer right away, ditch, exterminative frenzy. Nicholson Baker’s most recent book is The Kaufman believed, before either side Kaufman was one of a surpris- Anthologist, a novel. He lives in Maine had lost. Our aim should be what ingly vocal group of World War II with his family. Woodrow Wilson had hoped for at the pacifists —absolute pacifists, who

All artwork from the National Circulating Library of Students’ Peace Posters Collected Records. Courtesy Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania ESSAY 41

41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50_Baker Final.indd 41 3/29/11 11:11 AAMM were opposed to any war service. their principled opposition to that over my book obsessively, for hours at a They weren’t, all of them, against enormous war—the war that Hitler time—and she hated it. “By the time I personal or familial self-defense, or began—but I do think you will want ! nished,” she wrote, “I felt something I against law enforcement. But they to take their position seriously, and see had never felt before: fury at paci! sts.” did hold that war was, in the words for yourself whether there Pollitt’s displeasure hurt, as negative of the British paci! st and parliamen- was some wisdom in it. reviews from thoughtful readers gener- tarian Arthur Ponsonby, “a monster ally do. But I still think the paci! sts of born of hypocrisy, fed on falsehood, raising pacifists—using the World War II were right. In fact, the fattened on humbug, kept alive by P-wordP in any positive way, but es- more I learn about the war, the more I superstition, directed to the death pecially in connection with the understand that the paci! sts were the and torture of millions, succeeding Second World War—embarrasses only ones, during a time of catastroph- in no high purpose, degrading to some people, and it makes some ic violence, who repeatedly put forward humanity, endangering civilization people angry. I found this out in proposals that had any chance of

and bringing forth in its travail a 2008, when I published a book saving a threatened people. They weren’t hideous brood of strife, con" ict and about the beginnings of the war. naïve, they weren’t unrealistic—they war, more war.” Along with Kaufman Human Smoke was a mosaic of con- were psychologically and Ponsonby—and thousands of tradictory fragments and moments acute realists. conscientious objectors who spent in time, composed largely of quota- time in jail, in rural work camps, in tions: it made no direct arguments ho was in trouble in Europe? hospitals, or in controlled starvation on behalf of any single interpreta- JewsW were, of course. Hitler had, from studies—the ranks of wartime paci- tion of World War II. But in an af- the very beginning of his political ca- ! sts included Vera Brittain, Rabbi terword, I dedicated the book to reer, fantasized publicly about killing Abraham Cronbach, Dorothy Day, the memory of Clarence Pickett—a . They must go, he said, they and Jessie Wallace Hughan. Quaker relief worker —and other must be wiped out—he said so in the I admire these people. They be- British and American paci! sts, be- 1920s, he said so in the 1930s, he said lieved in acts of mercy rather than in cause I was moved by what they’d so throughout the war (when they ! st-shaking vows of retribution. They tried to do. “They tried to save were in fact being wiped out), and in kept their minds on who was actually Jewish refugees,” I wrote, “feed Eu- his bunker in 1945, with a cyanide in trouble. They suffered, some in rope, reconcile the pill and a pistol in front of him, his small ways, some in large, for what and Japan, and stop the war from hands shaking from Parkinson’s, he they did and said. They were, I think, happening. They failed, but they closed his last will and testament beautiful examples of what it means to were right.” with a ! nal paranoid expostulation, be human. I don’t expect you to agree, They were what? In a review in The condemning “the universal poisoner necessarily, that they were right in Nation, Katha Pollitt said she pored of all peoples, international Jewry.”

42 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2011

41-50_Baker Final5.indd 42 3/25/11 1:36 PPMM Throughout Hitler’s tenure, then, tasks of finding food and shelter,” winning of World War II was unques- the question for the rest of the world wrote Brittain in 1944. “But when tionably a plume in our cap, was it not? was how to respond to a man who was they recover, who can doubt that there We’d stepped into the fray; we’d turned (a) violent; (b) highly irrational; (c) will be, among the majority at any the tide of battle. At that point I put vehemently racist; (d) professedly sui- rate, the desire for revenge and a hard- aside political thought altogether. It cidal; and (e) in charge of an expand- ening process—even if, for a time, it was beyond me. Its prose was bad. I ing empire. One possibility was to may be subdued by fear?” If you drop concentrated on writing about what build weapons and raise armies, make things on people’s heads, they get an- struck me as funny and true. demands, and threaten sanctions, gry and unite behind their leader. This Then came the Gulf War. I’d just embargoes, and other punishments. was, after all, just what had hap- ! nished writing an upbeat novel about If Hitler failed to comply, we could pened during the Blitz phone sex. My wife and I watched Op- say, “This has gone too far,” and de- in London. eration Desert Storm on TV, while it clare war. was actually happening. Peter Arnett Paci! sts thought this was precisely ven so,” you may say, “I don’t and Bernard Shaw were up on the roof the wrong response. “The Govern- “ likeE the word ‘pacifist.’ If somebody of the Hotel Al-Rasheed in Baghdad. ment took the one course which I came after me or someone I loved, I’d We saw the tracer ! re sprout up over foresaw at the time would strengthen grab a baseball bat, or a gun, and I’d that enormous complicated green city Hitler: they declared war on Germany,” ! ght him off.” Of course you would. I with its ancient name, and we saw the Arthur Ponsonby said in the House of would, too. In fact, that’s exactly what slow toppling of the communication Lords in 1940. The novelist Vera Brit- I said in college to my girlfriend— tower, which looked like Seattle’s Space tain, who published a biweekly Letter who’s now my wife—when she an- Needle, and then, within hours (or so to Peace Lovers in London, agreed. nounced that she was a paci! st. I also I remember it), we were shown grainy “ thrives, as we see repeatedly, said, What about Hitler? black-and-white clips of precision- on every policy which provokes resis- She made two observations: that guided bombs as they descended to- tance, such as bombing, blockade, and her father had served in World War II ward things that looked like blank, threats of ‘retribution,’ ” she wrote in and had come back a paci! st, and that cast-concrete bunkers. Soundless ex- her masterful 1942 polemic, Humilia- sending off a lot of eighteen-year-old plosions followed. Wolf Blitzer seemed tion with Honour. boys to kill and wound other eighteen- unfazed by it all. The Jews needed immigration vi- year-old boys wasn’t the way to oppose I thought: People are probably dying sas, not Flying Fortresses. And who Hitler. I said, Well, what other way was down there. They can’t not be. There was doing their best to get them vi- there? Nonviolent resistance, she re- was something awful in being able to sas, as well as food, money, and hid- plied. I wasn’t persuaded. Still, her witness feats of violent urban destruc- ing places? Pacifists were. Bertha willingness to defend her position tion as they unfolded—to know that Bracey helped arrange the Kinder- made a permanent notch, an opening, big things that had been unbroken transport, for example, which saved in my ethical sense. were now broken, and that human the lives of some 10,000 Jewish chil- Next came my brief, insufferable beings were mutilated and moaning dren; Runham Brown and Grace Young Republican phase. For a year, who had been whole—and to compre- Beaton of the War Resisters Interna- just out of college, I worked on Wall hend that I was, simply by virtue of tional organized the release of Jews Street, at a company called L. F. being a compliant part of my country’s and other political prisoners from Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin. tax base, paying for all this unjusti! - Dachau and Buchenwald; and André (They’re gone now.) I became a con- able, night-visioned havoc. Trocmé and Burns Chalmers hid fused but cocky neoconservative. I Afterward we learned that those Jewish children among families in subscribed to Commentary, enthralled early “surgical” strikes had gone astray, the South of France. by its brilliant pugnacity. I read F. A. some of them, and had killed and “We’ve got to fight Hitlerism” Hayek, Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpat- wounded large numbers of civilians. sounds good, because Hitler was so rick, Karl Popper, Robert Nozick, and We also learned that there were many self-evidently horrible. But what ! ght- Edmund Burke. thousands of bombing runs, or ing Hitlerism meant in practice was, I wasn’t interested in wars, because “sorties”—such a clean-sounding largely, the ! ve-year-long Churchillian wars are sad and wasteful and word—and that only about 10 percent experiment of undermining German miserable-making, and battleships and of the " ights had employed “smart” “morale” by dropping magnesium ! re- gold epaulettes are ridiculous. But I weaponry. Most of the bombing of Iraq bombs and 2,000-pound blockbusters was excited by the notion of free mar- in those years, it turned out, was just on various city centers. The ! rebomb- kets, by the information-conveying as blind and dumb as the carpet bomb- ing killed and displaced a great many subtlety of daily price adjustments, and ings of World War II. There was, how- innocent people—including Jews in I thought, Heck, if Commentary is ever, a new type of incendiary weapon hiding—and obliterated entire neigh- right about F. A. Hayek, maybe they’re in use: depleted-uranium shells, ! red borhoods. It was supposed to cause an right about ! ghting Communism too. from Gatling guns and helicopter gun- anti-Nazi revolution, but it didn’t. Surely we had to have hardened mis- ships, which became unstoppably “The victims are stunned, exhausted, sile silos and Star Wars satellites and heavy burning spears that vaporized apathetic, absorbed in the immediate battalions of Abrams tanks. And the metal on contact, leaving behind a

ESSAY 43

41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50_Baker Final.indd 43 3/29/11 11:11 AAMM wind-borne dust that some said caused caust? We had to push back some- Other Jews, a minority, disagreed. birth defects and cancers. Then came how against that horror. (“In wars it is the minorities that are the medical blockade, years of it, and Yes, we did. But the waygenerally right,” Ponsonby once said.) punitive bombings. What President you push is everything. In 1941, Rabbi Cronbach, of the He- Bush began, President Clinton contin- brew Union College in , ued. I thought, No, I’m sorry, this he Holocaust was, among many began talking to Rabbi Isidor B. Hoff- makes no sense. I don’t care what Com- otherT things, the biggest hostage cri- man, a friendly, bald, hard-to-ruf! e stu- mentary says: this is not right. sis of all time. Hostage-taking was dent counselor at , Later still, I saw a documentary on Hitler’s preferred method from the and Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Omaha, PBS called America and the Holo- beginning. In 1923, he led a group of Nebraska, about forming a Jewish Peace caust: Deceit and Indifference, about ultranationalists into a beer hall in Fellowship. The fellowship would help the State Department’s despicable Munich and, waving a gun, held support Jewish conscientious objectors blockage of visas for Jewish refugees, government officials prisoner. In who were then in alternative-service which permanently broke my trust in 1938, after Kristallnacht, he impris- camps or prisons, and it would, accord- Franklin Roosevelt. Then Bill Clin- oned thousands of Jews, releasing ing to the " rst issue of its newsletter, ton’s Air Force bombed Belgrade. them only after the Jewish commu- Tidings, “strengthen the devotion to They used the BLU-114/B “soft- nity paid a huge ransom. In occu- paci" sm of self-respecting, loyal Jews.” bomb,” which ! ung a fettuccine of pied France, Holland, Norway, and “Crony” Cronbach became the hon- short-circuiting " laments over power Yugoslavia, Jews were held hostage orary chairman of the Jewish Peace stations in order to bring on massive and often executed in reprisal for lo- Fellowship. He was a " ne-boned man, blackouts, and they also dropped a cal partisan activity. always in a suit and tie, and he had a lot of conventional explosives from By 1941, as Congress was debating horror of vengeance as an instrument high altitudes, killing hundreds of the Lend-Lease Act, which would of national policy. He’d seen what hap- people. And then, in 2002, we provide military aid to Britain and pened in the Great War. “People of bombed Afghanistan, using other Allies, the enormity of the gentleness, re" nement, and idealism 15,000-pound “daisy cutters,” and risk became clear, if it wasn’t al- became, in the war atmosphere, hyenas killed more people; and then we ready, to anyone who could read a raging to assault and kill not merely the bombed Iraq again and destroyed newspaper. On February 28, 1941, foreign foe but equally their own dis- more power plants and killed more carried a trou- senting countrymen,” he recalled in his people—wedding parties, invalids bling dispatch from Vienna: “Many 1937 book, The Quest for Peace. By sleeping in their beds. And as we de- Jews here believe that Jews through- supporting the earlier con! ict, he sug- bated the merits of each of these at- out Europe will be more or less hos- gested, America’s Jews had “only helped tacks, we inevitably referred back to tages against the United States’ en- prepare the way for the Nazi horror our touchstone, our exemplar: the try into the war. Some fear that which has engulfed us.” Second World War. even an appreciable amount of help The American middle class, still War is messy, we say. It’s not pret- for Britain from the United States dimly recalling the trenches, the ty, but let’s be real—it has to be may precipitate whatever plan the mud, the rats, the typhus, and the fought sometimes. Cut to the image Reichsfuehrer had in mind when, in general obscene futility of World War of a handsome unshaven G.I., some- recent speeches, he spoke of the I, was perhaps slightly closer to Cron- where in Italy or France, with a bat- elimination of Jews from Europe ‘un- bach’s paci" sm than to Roosevelt’s tered helmet and a cigarette hanging der certain circumstances.’ ” interventionism—until December 7, from his mouth. World War II, the In response to this threat, The 1941. Once Pearl Harbor’s Battleship most lethally violent eruption in his- American Hebrew, a venerable weekly, Row burned and sank, the country tory, is ’s great smoking ran a de" ant front-page editorial. “Re- cried for the incineration of Tokyo. counterexample. We “had to” inter- duced to intelligibility this message, The false-! ag “peace” groups, such vene in Korea, Vietnam, and wher- which obviously derives from of" cial as America First, disbanded immedi- ever else, because look at World War sources, warns that unless America ately; the absolute pacifists stuck to II. In 2007, in an article for Com- backs down, the Jews in Germany will their principles. At the War Resisters mentary called “The Case for Bomb- be butchered,” the paper said. So be it. League headquarters on Stone Street ing Iran,” Norman Podhoretz drew a The editorial went on: in Manhattan, the executive commit- parallel between negotiating with tee members (including Edward P. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmad- We shall continue, nay, we shall in- Gott lieb, a schoolteacher who had inejad, and negotiating with Hitler: crease our efforts to bring about the changed his middle name to “Paci" st”) we must bomb Iran now, he suggest- downfall of the cutthroat regime that published a post–Pearl Harbor ! yer that ed, because look at World War II. is tyrannizing the world, and we are called for an early negotiated peace “on not blind to the price we may have to True, the Allies killed millions of pay for our determination. But no sac- the basis of bene" t and deliverance for civilians and absurdly young con- ri" ce can be too great, no price too all the peoples of the earth.” The ! yer scripts, and they desolated much of dear, if we can help rid the world of got a good response, and won them Europe and Japan—that was genu- the little Austrian messiah and his some new enrollees; only a few angry inely sad. But what about the Holo- tribe, and all they stand for. letters came in, one written on toilet

44 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2011

41-50_Baker Final5.indd 44 3/25/11 1:36 PPMM paper. The FBI visited the of! ces and My Ireland began making a series of what Kaufman called “exhaustive inquiries.” $+$53(5·60$*$=,1( Meanwhile, Hitler’s anti-Semitism had reached a ! nal stage of Götterdäm- ´(;3(5,(17,$/µ merungian psychosis. As boxcars of war-wounded, frostbitten German sol- diers returned from the Russian front, and as it became obvious to everyone ´, FRXOG KHDU WKH WKXQGHU that the United States was entering the LQJRIWKHVSHFWDFXODU7RUF war, Hitler, his arm tremor now evident :DWHUIDOO LQ .LOODUQH\ 1D to his associates, made an unprecedent- ed number of vitriolic threats to Euro- WLRQDO3DUNEHIRUH,DFWXDOO\ pean Jewry in close succession—some VDZ LWµ³'RXJODV $GDPV in speeches, and some in private meet- 6RXWKHUQ3LQHV1& ings. (The Jew, Hitler now claimed, was a Weltbrandstifter, a world arsonist.) A number of Holocaust historians— 3OHDVHVKDUHZLWKXVDSKRWRJUDSKDQGSHUVRQDODQHFGRWHDERXWZKDWPDNHV,UHODQG among them Saul Friedländer, Peter VXFKDXQLTXHH[SHULHQFH

B%DNHU)LQDOLQGG 30 from the camps, were taken from Vi- man civilian life crossed a new thresh- Germans: “They are being defeated, enna at the beginning of June. Leon- old of intensity. The militarily insignif- their cities are being destroyed, so they hard Friedrich, a German Quaker ar- icant city of Lübeck, on the Baltic Sea, take their revenge on the Jews.” Ringel- rested in May for helping Jews, later crowded with wood-timbered architec- blum and his friends, although of sev- wrote: “In the six months after the tural treasures, was the target of the eral minds about the need for retribu- United States entered the war, the ! rst truly successful mass ! rebombing, tion, agreed on one thing: “Only a Gestapo felt under no restraints.” on the night of March 28, 1942, which miracle can save us: a sudden end to Even at this stage, word was spread- burned much of the old city and de- the war, otherwise we are lost.” ing in the United States. On June 2, stroyed a famous, centuries-old paint- A sudden end to the war, otherwise we 1942, for example, a story ran in many ing cycle, Totent anz (“The Dance of are lost. This, then, was the context for American newspapers about Hitler’s Death”). “Blast and bomb, attack and Abraham Kaufman’s June 16, 1942, talk plan. It was written by Joseph Grigg, a attack until there is nothing left,” said at the Union Methodist Church. First United Press journalist who had been the Sunday Express. “Even if ‘Lübeck- worry about the saving of lives, his interned by the Germans for five ing’ does not crack the morale of Ger- logic went—everything else is second- months, then freed with other Ameri- many, it is certainly going to raise our ary. In July, the SS began the liquida- cans as a result of negotiations. “There spirits,” said the Daily Mail. (Vera Brit- tion of the Warsaw ghetto, loading apparently was an effort to create a tain, reading through a pile of these 6,000 people onto freight cars every ‘Jew-free’ Reich by April 1, as a birth- clippings, exclaimed: “We are day. The head of the Jewish Council, day gift for Hitler,” Grigg reported, “but Gadarene swine, inhabited by devils of Adam Czerniaków, committed suicide due to transportation and other dif! - our own making, rushing down a steep rather than comply; the Germans were culties the schedule could not be main- place into the sea.”) holding his wife hostage. Knowing tained.” The massacres in Russia, Po- Operation Millennium was the what we know now, wouldn’t we all land, and the Baltic states were, Grigg RAF’s next large-scale ! re raid, at the have stood and said what said, “the most terrible racial persecu- end of May. Nearly 1,000 bombers Kaufman said? tion in modern history.” flowed toward the city of Cologne, Meanwhile, that June, the United where they dropped about 1,600 tons on! rmation of the Final Solu- States was “! ghting Hitler” by doing— of bombs—more ! rebombs than high Ction didn’t get out widely in the what? By battling the Japanese navy, explosives—in half an hour, destroying Western press until November 1942, by building big bombers, and by having tens of thousands of houses and apart- when Rabbi Stephen Wise, after in- big war parades. On June 13, with the ments and more than twenty churches. explicable delays, called a press con- Allied land assault on Europe still two The area around the city’s main cathe- ference to reveal the substance of years away, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dral was a roasted ruin. “You have no an urgent telegram he had received of threw an enormous idea of the thrill and encouragement from Switzerland in August. The one. It went on for a full day. There which the Royal Air Force bombing Associated Press reported: “Dr. Ste- were tanks, planes, and picturesque has given to all of us here,” wrote phen S. Wise, chairman of the international costumes, but there were Roosevelt’s personal aide, Harry Hop- World Jewish Congress, said tonight also " oats meant to stir emotions of kins, to Churchill. He added: “I imag- that he had learned through sources enmity and fear. A " oat called “Death ine the Germans know all too well con! rmed by the State Department Rides” moved slowly by: it was a giant what they have to look forward to.” that about half the estimated animated skeleton beating two red No doubt the Germans did know— 4,000,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Eu- swastika-bearing drums. There was a in any case, they promptly blamed the rope have been slain in an ‘extermi- huge mustachioed ! gure in a Prussian Jews for the bombings. In a radio broad- nation campaign.’ ” helmet and body armor, riding a cast, Goebbels said that Germans were Once Wise broke his silence, there Disney- style dinosaur that strode heed- now ! ghting for their very skins. Then was a surge of press coverage. President lessly through corpses— the " oat was again came the overt threat: “In this Roosevelt promised retribution, and, as called “Hitler, the Axis War Monster.” war the Jews are playing their most Churchill had done not long before, There was a " oat called “Tokyo: We criminal game and they will have to quoted Longfellow: “The mills of God Are Coming!” in which American pay for it with the extermination of grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding airplanes set ! re to the city, frightening their race throughout Europe and, small.” Yiddish papers carried black off a swarm of large yellow rats. The maybe, even beyond.” bars of mourning. And in December, New York Herald Tribune’s reporter In the Warsaw ghetto, that same Anthony Eden, Churchill’s foreign wrote that the only thing missing from June of 1942, Emanuel Ringelblum minister, read an Allied condemnation the parade was subtlety. This is what read the reports and remembered an in Parliament. “The German authori- the United States was doing during the old story about a pro" igate nobleman. ties,” Eden declared, “not content with early phase of : beating Shlomo, the nobleman’s moneylender, denying to persons of Jewish race in all big red toy death drums on auctioned the man’s land in payment the territories over which their barba- Fifth Avenue. for debts. The nobleman, enraged, rous rule has been extended the most bought a dog, named him Shlomo, and elementary human rights, are now car- uring this same midwar period, beat him daily. The same thing, wrote rying into effect Hitler’s oft repeated theD Royal Air Force’s attacks on Ger- Ringelblum, was happening to the intention to exterminate the Jewish

46 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2011

41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50_Baker Final.indd 46 3/29/11 11:12 AAMM people in Europe.” Like Roosevelt, My Ireland Eden promised that the culprits would “not escape retribution.” $+$53(5·60$*$=,1( After Eden was ! nished, there was a moment of silence: a minute or two of ´(;3(5,(17,$/µ grief for the Jews of Europe. “The whole crowded House—an unprecedented thing to do and not provided for by any ´, FDPH DFURVV WKLV WKDWFKHG Standing Order—rose to its feet and URRI KRXVH LQ $GDUH &RXQW\ stood in silent homage to those who /LPHULFN,WZDVDVLIVWUDLJKWRXW were about to die,” Sydney Silverman, RIDIDLU\WDOHDQGUHPLQGHGPH MP, recollected after the war. “We KRZP\WULSWKURXJK,UHODQGZDV could not do much to help them. No OLNHDWULSWKURXJKP\FKLOGKRRG one desired that our war activity should GUHDPVµ³(PLO\ +DXVORKQHU be moderated in any sort of way or that our war effort should be in any way 3KLODGHOSKLD3D weakened in order to bring succor to those threatened people.” 3OHDVHVKDUHZLWKXVDSKRWRJUDSKDQGSHUVRQDODQHFGRWHDERXWZKDWPDNHV,UHODQG The atrocity was so gargantuan, VXFKDXQLTXHH[SHULHQFH

ESSAY 47

B%DNHU)LQDOLQGG $0 Now you can read help of volunteers, distributed thou- and asked to allow Jews to emigrate. sands of pro-armistice ! yers. A peace The Allies had nothing to lose with Harper’s Magazine without delay, conditional upon the such a proposal. “If refused, that release of Jews and other political pris- would strip Hitler of the excuse that anytime, anywhere . . . oners, might bring the end of Hitler’s he cannot afford to fill useless reign, she suggested: “There are many mouths,” Gollancz wrote. “If accept- anti-Nazis in the Reich, and hope is a ed, it would not frustrate the econom- stronger revolutionary force than de- ic blockade, because Hitler’s alterna-

T HOMA S FRANK: IN PRAISE OF T H E TEA PARTY spair.” She wrote a blunt letter on the tive is not feeding but extermination.” subject to the New York Times: “We Nobody in authority in Britain and must act now, because dead men cannot the United States paid heed to these H ARPER’S MAGAZINE/JANUARY 2011 $6.99 be liberated.” The Times didn’t print it. promptings. Anthony Eden, Britain’s Other pacifists publicly took up foreign secretary, who’d been tasked by this cause. “Peace Now Without Vic- Churchill with handling queries about tory Will Save Jews,” wrote Dorothy refugees, dealt coldly with one of many Day on the front page of her Catholic importunate delegations, saying that Worker, and the Jewish Peace Fellow- any diplomatic effort to obtain the ◆ THE DRUNK’S CLUB ship called for an armistice to prevent release of the Jews from Hitler was A.A., the Cult that Cures By Clancy Martin Jewish extermination and “make an “fantastically impossible.” On a trip to DISAPPEARING INK Afghanistan’s Potemkin Democracy By Matthieu Aikins end to the world-wide slaughter.” Brit- the United States, Eden candidly told THE HARE’S MASK A story by Mark Slouka tain said that Jewish rescue required Cordell Hull, the secretary of state, Also: James Fenton and Phillip Lopate ◆ “the termination or the interruption that the real difficulty with asking of the war, and not its increasingly Hitler for the Jews was that “Hitler bitter continuation.” might well take us up on any such of- Even lapsed or near pacifists— fer, and there simply are not enough including Eleanor Rathbone in the ships and means of transportation in House of Commons, and the publisher the world to handle them.” Churchill . . . when you sign up Victor Gollancz—urgently echoed this agreed. “Even were we to obtain per- sentiment: If we failed to make some mission to withdraw all Jews,” he for our digital edition kind of direct offer to Hitler for the safe wrote in reply to one pleading letter, passage of Jews, we shared a responsibil- “transport alone presents a problem through Zinio. Subscribe ity for their fate. Gollancz sold a quarter which will be dif" cult of solution.” of a million copies of an extraordinary Not enough shipping and transport? today and have the next pamphlet called “Let My People Go,” Two years earlier, the British had evac- in which he questioned the Churchill uated nearly 340,000 men from the 12 issues of Harper’s government’s promise of postwar retri- beaches of Dunkirk in just nine days. bution. “This ‘policy,’ it must be plain- The U.S. Air Force had many thou- ly said, will not save a single Jewish life,” sands of new planes. During even a Magazine delivered to he wrote. brief armistice, the Allies could have airlifted and transported refugees in your PC, laptop, or iPad. Will the death, after the war, of a Latvi- very large numbers out of an or Lithuanian criminal, or of a Nazi the German sphere. youth who for ten years has been spe- cially and deliberately trained to lose his humanity—will the death of these re- In the American press, calls for a Subscribe now by duce by one jot or tittle the agony of a negotiated peace were all but inau- Jewish child who perhaps at this very dible. The only signi" cant publicity visiting the digital moment at which I write, on Christmas that any U.S. peace advocacy group day, three hours after the sweet childish got after 1942 was negative— subscription store at carol, “O come, all ye faithful,” was witheringly negative in one instance, broadcast before the seven o’clock news, and rightly so. It came in connection www.harpers.org is going to her death in a sealed coach, with the formation of something her lungs poisoned with the unslaked called the Peace Now Movement, lime with which the ! oor is strewn, and with the dead standing upright about which set up an of" ce on Manhat- her, because there is no room for them tan’s East 40th Street in July 1943. to fall? Abraham Kaufman, while admiring the antiwar writings of the new What mattered, Gollancz held, group’s chairman, George Hart- was, and he put it in italics, the saving mann, remained wary of its methods, of life now. The German government and not just because its name appro- had to be approached immediately priated his own group’s most stirring

48 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2011

41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50_Baker Final.indd 48 3/29/11 11:12 AAMM and useful phrase. What disturbed him was that the Peace Now Move- ment was willing, as the War Resist- My Ireland ers League was not, to accept support from pro-fascists and anti-Semites, or $+$53(5·60$*$=,1( even from “the devil himself,” ac- ´(;3(5,(17,$/µ cording to Hartmann, in order to bring the war to an end. Kaufman also had doubts about the past of one of the group’s organizers, John Collett, who’d been institution- ´,VDZWKLVVWRUPJDWKHULQJ alized for a mental disorder, and whose GUDPDWLFDOO\RYHUWKH&OLIIV Norwegian visa imparted a fascist taint. In any case, Collett, out on a RI 0RKHU LQ /LVFDQQRU speaking tour, self-destructed: he was &RXQW\ &ODUHµ³-R $QQ arrested in Cincinnati for peeping %R\ODQ%HWKOHKHP3D into a sorority shower and ! ned a hun- dred dollars. After Collett resigned, another Peace Now staffer, Bessie Simon, carried on 3OHDVHVKDUHZLWKXVDSKRWRJUDSKDQGSHUVRQDODQHFGRWHDERXWZKDWPDNHV,UHODQG her friendly overtures to prominent VXFKDXQLTXHH[SHULHQFH

ESSAY 49

B%DNHU)LQDOLQGG 30 were not destined to survive, the War asking the prime minister whether To that overriding end, paci! sts op- Resisters League published an updated the Royal Air Force might bomb posed the counterproductive barbari- demand that the Allies call a peace Dresden and other cities in eastern ty of the Allied bombing campaign, conference, stipulating Jewish deliver- Germany. Churchill eventually and they offered positive proposals to ance. “The fortunes of war have obliged him. Remorse works well, save the Jews: create safe havens, call turned, and with them the responsibil- but it works only in peacetime. an armistice, negotiate a peace that ity for war,” Hughan wrote. “The guilt When Vera Brittain argued against would guarantee the passage of refu- is upon our heads until we offer our the Allied program of urban oblitera- gees. We should have tried. If the ar- enemies an honorable alternative to tion in her pamphlet Massacre by mistice plan failed, then it failed. We bitter-end slaughter. Are we ! ghting Bombing, the Writers’ War Board, a could always have resumed the bat- for mere victory or, as enlightened government-funded American propa- tle. Not trying leaves us culpable. adults, for humanity ganda agency, pulled out all the stops At a and civilization?” in attacking her. MacKinlay Kantor meeting in Cincinnati some years af- (who later cowrote Curtis LeMay’s ter the war, Rabbi Cronbach was e were ! ghting, it seems, for memoir, the one that talked about asked how any paci! st could justify mereW victory. It was inconceivable bombing Vietnam “back into the opposition to World War II. “War that we could stop, even though an Stone Age”) published a letter in the was the sustenance of Hitler,” Cron- end to the ! ghting was the solvent Times dismissing Brittain’s “anguished bach answered. “When the Allies be- that would have dissolved quicker ramblings.” The Japanese and Ger- gan killing Germans, Hitler threat- than anything the thick glue of fear mans well understood the “language ened that, for every German slain, that held Hitler and Germany to- of bombs,” Kantor said. “May we con- ten Jews would be slain, and that gether. By 1944, Hitler’s health was tinue to speak it until all necessity for threat was carried out. We in Ameri- failing. He was evil, but he wasn’t such cruel oratory has passed.” ca are not without some responsibili- immortal. Whether or not the Ger- Some historians, still believing ty for that Jewish catastrophe.” man opposition, in the sudden still- that bombing has a magical power to If we don’t take seriously paci! sts ness of a conditional armistice, communicate, conclude from this like Cronbach, Hughan, Kaufman, would have been able to remove dismal stretch of history that the Al- Day, and Brittain—these people who him from power, he would eventual- lied air forces should have bombed thought as earnestly about wars and ly be dead and gone. And some of the railroad tracks that led to the their consequences as did politicians his millions of victims—if such an death camps, or bombed the camps or generals or think-tankers—we’ll be armistice had been secured—would themselves. But bombing would have forever suspended in a kind of immo- have lived. done absolutely nothing except kill bilizing sticky goo of euphemism and Peace and quiet was what the more Jews (and Jews were already dy- self-deception. We’ll talk about inter- world needed so desperately then. ing when Allied ! ghter planes rou- vention and preemption and no-fly Time to think, and mourn. Time to tinely strafed boxcars in transit.) A zones, and we’ll steer drones around sleep without fear. Time to crawl out cease-fire—“a pause in the fury of distant countries on murder sorties. of the wreckage of wherever you hostilities,” as Vera Brittain called it We’ll arm the world with weaponry, were and look around, and remem- in one of her newsletters—was the and every so often we’ll feel justi! ed ber what being human was all about. one chance the Allies had to save in taxiing out a few of our stealth air- Instead, what did we do? Bomb, Jewish lives, and the pacifists pro- planes from their air-conditioned burn, blast, and starve, waiting for posed it repeatedly, using every means hangars and dropping some expen- the unconditional surrender that available to them. sive bombs. Iran? Pakistan? North didn’t come until the Red Army was So the Holocaust continued, and Korea? What if we “crater the air- in . We came up with a new the ! rebombing continued: two par- ports,” as Senator Kerry suggested, to kind of “sticky " aming goo,” as the allel, incommensurable, war-born le- slow down Qadda! ? As I write, the New York Times called what would viathans of pointless malice that fed United States has begun a new war later be known as napalm. Allied each other and could each have been against Libya, dropping more things airplanes burned the Rouen cathe- stopped long before they were. The on people’s heads in the name of hu- dral, so that the stones crumbled to mills of God ground the cities of Eu- manitarian intervention. pieces when touched, destroyed rope to powder—very slowly—and When are we going to grasp the es- Monte Cassino, and killed 200 then the top Nazis chewed their cya- sential truth? War never works. It schoolchildren during a single raid nide pills or were executed at never has worked. It makes every- in Milan. A conservative MP, Regi- Nuremberg. Sixty million people thing worse. Wars must be, as Jessie nald Purbrick, who had wanted the died all over the world so that Hitler, Hughan wrote in 1944, renounced, Royal Air Force to drop a big bomb Himmler, and Goering could com- rejected, declared against, over and into the crater of Mount Vesuvius mit suicide? How utterly ridiculous over, “as an ineffective and inhuman (“to make a practical test as to and tragic. means to any end, however just.” whether the disturbances created Pacifism at its best, said Arthur That, I would suggest, is the lesson thereby will give rise to severe Ponsonby, is “intensely practical.” Its that the paci! sts of the Second World earthquakes and eruptions”), began primary object is the saving of life. War have to teach us. Q

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41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50_Baker Final.indd 50 3/29/11 11:14 AAMM