The lit crit reminds me, I'm reading a novel called "Most Secret" by Nevil Shute, written in 1945. It's the sort of well-crafted narrative general-interest novel that we lost with the death of middlebrow art. Shute's most famous work is On the Beach, but he's a solid storyteller in the repressed "My son John is dead--must water the pansies" British tradition. The most moving emotional moment is when a lonely man has his dog put down because he has no one to leave him with after joining the service--then discovers that he is colorblind, and stuck on shore duty, where he could easily have kept his dog. The deaths of people are slightly more distant.
Anyway, what's particularly struck me about it is the casual acceptance of Germans as monsters, and their gruesome deaths as meritorious and even enjoyable achievements. It never even flirts with moral ambiguity. This sort of thing could never be written today--even the bloodiest war thrillers understand that killing is supposed to be fraught, and that our enemies are fundamentally good people like us with bad leaders or a serious grudge. Early in the book, he describes an incident in a French village where the Germans execute the town joker for making fun of them:
Duchene stared at him in bewilderment. "But why did they do it? All Corbeil is co-operating with the new regime, as the Marshal has said. There is not a de Gaullist in the town. Why must the Germans do a thing like that?"
It was, of course, because they were Germans, but neither Simon nor Duchene had yet come to appreciate that point.
Slightly later, a character whose wife has been killed by German bombs becomes obsessed with damaging the Germans:
In short, nothing that in his loneliness he found to do on shore pleased him so much as his work. Killing the Germans was the greatest fun of all, chasing them, listening for the ping, making fierce detonations all around them in their narrow steel hulls. he lay night after night in his narrow bunk, picturing how the hull would split, the lights go out, and the air pressure rise intolerably round trapped and drowning men. That was the line of thought that gave him most real pleasure at that time.
This is not, mind you, a prelude to a realization of the moral depravity of war; he likes killing Germans, and a very good thing, too. One character, a girl, expresses revulsion at the thought of using flamethrowers on Germans, but is brushed away with the argument that the Germans used them first. Shute makes it clear that she's in the wrong.
It's interesting to read something so unabashedly militant. I wonder what our literature would look like if we had another existential-type war.
Sort of like a jihadist and an Israeli.
Sort of like a jihadist and an Israeli.
The only good German is a dead German.
The only good middle-brow is a dead middle-brow.
The WoT was an existential war, for about two weeks after 9/11. My most shocking post-9/11 moment was hearing a generally anti-war and anti-American German acquaintance rage about how the world needed to band together and nuke Afghanistan into glass, "put an end to these guys once and for all."
Problem was, when the shock war off, the memories wore off with them, because there wasn't a series of consecutive events to remind people that this wasn't an isolated incident, it was merely the first time the self-proclaimed enemy had managed to work out all the details into the butter zone. And would happily do it again, and did...Bali, Madrid, 3/11. (Unsurprisingly, das German was complaining bitterly about the Afghan war as little as three months later.)
So rather than finding a united willingness to work out a measured and effective response to the threats of global terror, even though it would mean difficult and tragic decisions, we get wild and vascillating policy preferences ranging from "stupid and ruinous war set up by lying Bush..." to "invade Iran".
In WWII, they didn't have that, especially in Europe. In the offchance the average Londonite was prone to make a "if you think about it, less people have died in incident X than have died in car accidents" argument, the whine of a V2 would quickly refocus the thought processes.
That's what happens when your country is at risk of being conquered.
A significant percentage of the US population in WWII had no problem with the idea of wiping out the enemy down to the last man, woman and child. The Russians and British were likely even less concerned.
I think you make the right point that WWII was an existential war. If (say) Iran got its hands on nukes and used them against us, that would become an existential war rapidly.
I recommend: The Jacksonian Tradition by Walter Russell Mead, especially to those who don't understand US foreign policy
"This sort of thing could never be written today--even the bloodiest war thrillers understand that killing is supposed to be fraught, and that our enemies are fundamentally good people like us with bad leaders or a serious grudge."
Nonsense. Like Al-Qaeda or Saddam? If they tried to remake Dr. Strangelove today, but instead of the enemy being the USSR it was Muslim terrorists, you would never hear the end of the outrage by right-wingers complaining that the movie demeans our War on Terror and insults our troops.
The United States is a war loving country and we hate our enemies. Period.
Actually, that doesn't sound too terribly different from characterizations of "militants" and terrorists nowadays. Is that a different matter? I don't know.
"early in the book" "slight later"
I'll bet you aren't past page 30. Why don't you actually read the book before you write about it. (Not like Liberal Fascism.) Maybe near the end of the book some of the issues you bring to your readers might be dealt with.
Some of the best books I've ever read about WWII were my recent reading of Alan Furst's books. I haven't read them all, but of the first 5 in his "Night Soldiers" books, two stand out: the first is the comparatively lengthy "Night Soldiers," about a Bulgarian kid who is drawn into the KGB and who goes on to fight in the Spanish Civil War and WWII, and "The Polish Officer," about a Polish Army officer inducted into the secret service just as the Germans have crossed the border. All of his books portray the germans as officious, the soviets as malignantly self-interested manipulators, and Americans as thoughtful but out-of-touch, and so on, but all of his characters as human as they are anything else.
Shute is very high on my list of favorite authors. I've read several of his books, though not Most Secret, and if I had to choose a single best one it would be The Rainbow and the Rose. Not a whole lot actually happens in the course of the story, but it's so superbly written you don't even notice.
So, he went from that to On the Beach? Quite a change.
The United States is a war loving country and we hate our enemies. Period.
Who is this us and we? Are there two of you in there?
Most Secret was one of several books Shute wrote as pro-war propaganda -- and that's not meant as a pejorative, either. Its publication was delayed, in fact, because it inadvertantly contained "sensitive material".
He was a fine writer and, while he saw the axis in WWII as the enemy, and capable of monstrous acts, he also showed that they were human -- a Japanese officer in A Town Like Alice orders truly horrific tortures, and then does a small piece of mercy (for very Japanese reasons).
Shute seems to ignore a lot of the morally ambiguous isssues raised in his stories. In "A Town Called Alice'" he writes of an Australian setting up an ice cream shop with a separate entrance for Aboriginals as if this sort of segregation is the most natural thing in the world. Especially funny because the first part of the book is about how the Japanese treated non-Japanese citizens in Malaysia.
Megan, one of my favorite books is Shute's "A Town Like Alice". If you're accustomed to thrillers, it starts a little slow, but has some wonderful characters and scenes.
Shute's best novels was probably his last -- published posthumously, as I recall. That was "The Trustee from the Toolroom," a delightful story about the fraternity of model-makers. (Honest.)
The central character is a former machinist, who retires from "serious" work, and lives on his writings for modeling magazines. He has to find a way to get from London to a Pacific island to recover his niece's legacy.
"If", eh?
As a Home Shop Machinist, or as the Brits would say, a "Model Engineer", MY favorite Shute book is "Trustee from the Toolroom"
"Actually, that doesn't sound too terribly different from characterizations of "militants" and terrorists nowadays. Is that a different matter? I don't know."
Funny, it sounds totally different to me. Absolutely nobody talks about wiping out Iranians, or Muslims, or Arabs. On the contrary, from George Bush on down everyone makes a sharp distinction between ordinary Muslims and the terrorists.
What universe are you living in, if you don't know that?
If you have a disease in cattle, you kill the whole herd. If you have an infection problem in a hospital, you clean the whole hospital. If you have a fracture problem in an aircraft type, you ground all of them. If you have a tumor, you take all of it. Same with Islam.
No Islamics, no problem. We have plenty of people in the world, the left even says too many. Let's do world wide post birth abortions on Islam. Let the non Islamic Africans and Asians have the opened land.
Give the people mentally infected with Islam the same option their Mein Kamph book gives us, convert or die. Make the Islamic lands the 'House of War'.
For a taste of very early Shute (born Neville Shute Norway), try the non-fiction "Slide Rule". Pretty lousy title, but an engaging book about lighter-than-air aviation engineering, which he practiced, as conducted in the early 20th century. And this book will show you how we did engineering back before computers became machines, if you are into that.
If the history of WWII was being written by today's standards, here's what would be highlighted:
-- FDR provoked the Japanese into attacking us, missed all the clues on Pearl Harbor, and nearly lost the Pacific fleet.
-- He waged war on the Germans on the pretext of Pearl Harbor, despite the fact that Germany had NOTHING to do with that attack.
-- He failed to intervene and stop the Holocaust, despite full knowledge that it was happening.
-- He authorized the firebombing of cities in Germany and Japan, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
-- He sent 120,000 people to concentration camps -- including women, children and the elderly, many of them American citizens -- simply because of their ethnicity.
-- He sided with one of the worst mass murderers in history (Joseph Stalin), and as a result lost all of Eastern Europe to Communism after the war.
While all of that is technically accurate, of course we all know that's not the whole story.
But the point is, it's perfectly okay to cherrypick facts and portray one side in our current conflict as monsters -- as along as it's the Americans and our allies.
Ms McArdle, have you read "Headquarters Nights" by Vernon L. Kellogg and published by the Atlantic? Mr. Kellogg was a humanitarian aid worker in occupied Belgium/Netherlands during WWII, and the book describes his social encounters with German staff officers, and shows how even the intellectual elites of Germany were already a bunch of genocidal racists. Ordinary Germans worked very hard to teach the world to hate them.
From the outside looking in-most of the world still thinks in -THOSE- primitive terms. They have little moral anguish about killing an enemy. Those who hate us view us with that same consideration.
Your report says more about our American educated, city dwelling, citizens who communicate mostly within their demographic and geographic comfort zone.
Nice people, but not very realistic. The real world gets ugly very quickly. The monsters within us are not deeply buried. They rise up quickly. Usually they appear over race or religion but increasingly over politics (ref. Times Square bombing)
I once came across Then and Now a dreadful potboiler by Somerset Maugham written in 1942 (later made into a movie). The idealistic Oxford league pacifist takes up with an Austrian refugee who turns out to be a Nazi spy. Eventually the young man does the honorable thing and shoots himself.
Not exactly Slaughterhouse Five.
I once came across The Hour Before Dawn a dreadful potboiler by Somerset Maugham written in 1942 (later made into a movie). The idealistic Oxford league pacifist takes up with an Austrian refugee who turns out to be a Nazi spy. Eventually the young man does the honorable thing and shoots himself.
Not exactly Slaughterhouse Five.
Mortimer Madler "I'll bet you aren't past page 30. Why don't you actually read the book before you write about it. (Not like Liberal Fascism.) Maybe near the end of the book some of the issues you bring to your readers might be dealt with."
Or maybe not. You might read it yourself before making the accusation.
Any chance Shute is trying to be ironic?
Let me recommend A Desert Called Peace by Tom Kratman.
Kevin,
that article by Walter Mead is very good. Some money quotes too good not to post:
Andy J,
All too true.
If there was an existential war - someone like Shute would be openly admitting we had lost, or at least that Bush is hopeless. Bush claims we got good Shias and Sunnis working together in Iraq ready to fix everything in another six months. Shute would be calling him a liar, which would be fair, but in this context would not support America in any way.
"Any chance Shute is trying to be ironic? "
Nope. I've read the book; he means what he says.
There is a downside to our mania for always seeing the other fellow's point of view -- as the song says, if you don't know what you stand for, you'll fall for anything.
Over the weekend I enjoyed a similary refreshing read. In C.S. Forester's novelette "Brown on Resolution," the title character in this First World War naval story is more business-like than passionate in his German-killing activities, but it's similarly hard to imagine something like this being written today. The narrator is similarly dispassionate but certainly not disapproving of Brown's lethal dedication.
Forester is famous for his Horatio Hornblower stories of naval warfare in the Napoleonic age. Fans dispute energetically about whether he or Patrick O'Brien are the better author (Forester is). He also wrote "The African Queen," which John Huston made into the famous film starring Bogart and Hepburn. Forester also wrote explicit propaganda to encourage the United States to get involved in WWI.
"Brown on Resolution" was published in 1929. It's a marvelously crafted little gem of a book that actually begins with a passionate illicit love affair, of all things, and proceeds with a protracted description the domestic milieu in which Brown, bred to be a dedicated and unflinching "killing machine" of the Royal Navy, was raised. These disparate elements are very neatly sown together in this economically wrought work.
I read it in less time than it took me to travel from Newark Liberty to PDX.
In his historical look at the U.S. invasion of North Africa, An Army At Dawn, Rick Atkinson observed that hatred of the Germans was critical to the maturation of the green U.S. troops and recognized by the generals as a necessary requirement to secure victory.
My father, based on his experiences as a combat infantry officer in the South Pacific, hated all Japanese till the day he died.
In stark contrast today our troops don't hate the enemy as much as disregard him. A result engendered partially by training leads to killing the enemy as more a process of extermination of pests than the passionate desire to kill described in the book you were quoting.
Which method of killing is more de-humanizing?
Correction to my post above: C.S.Forester propagandized to encourage the U.S. to enter the SECOND World War.
If you found that interesting, and would like to see something in that vein that is non-fiction, I recommend "A Rifleman Went to War" by Herbert McBride, the story of an American who fought in WWI in his own words.
The difference in the attitude towards violence and death is stark.
If there was an existential war - someone like Shute would be openly admitting we had lost
Or that the existential war wasn't worth fighting.
Always remember that the two great anti-war novels of the 60s -- Slaughterhouse Five and Catch 22 -- were both set in World War II.
I guess I'm a Jacksonian. Anyway, John thinks this is sort of like a jihadist and an Israeli.
Having spent six months in Iraq I can tell you Megan it is very much an existential war for the people who fight it. Anyone who has ever been in a combat zone knows what it is like to become immune to death and destruction. Despite what Hollywood is telling you most people who go to war don't suffer existential anxiety over killing people. It just doesn't work that way. You would be amazed at how innured to death you become.
Recently there has been revisionist thinking about the Dresden raid. I said to and English friend that some Germans are claiming that it was a war crime. He replied, "They bloody well should have thought about that before they bombed London."
I also liked Shute's Trustee from the Toolroom. I picked it up when I was cleaning out my grandfather's house after he died, thinking, "What an odd title for a book."
Granddad had a big workshop where he tinkered on all sorts of things, so I can see why the story appealed to him. I started looking through it and ended up reading it all at one sitting. The mechanical engineering got a bit dull and dense for my taste, but it's a mighty good yarn overall.
I was struck by how casually (for the time) it treated the promiscuity of the millionaire's slutty daughter, and the rather sympathetic treatment of the dead couple who were smuggling diamonds in their yacht to evade the British post-war currency controls, as if any reasonable man might do the same.
Neville Shute Norway's older brother died very horribly from what is now a treatable infection incurred on a WWI battlefield while he himself was too young to fight. Twenty years later, when he is too old to go into the army or airforce, his country is fighting for its life against the same nation that killed his brother, which may explain his degree of grisly bloodthirstiness.
"and that our enemies are fundamentally good people like us with bad leaders or a serious grudge"
Nonsense. Like Al-Qaeda or Saddam?
I think Ward Churchill was pretty clear that 9/11 was our fault (and he wasn't fired for that, but for blatant plagiarism and false claims of Indian ancestry). Chomsky made similar arguments to great acclaim.
And when we went after Saddam, we kept hearing "He's not the one that attacked us!" Strangely, we never heard that plaint when we invaded Germany. (Some will argue "But Germany declared war on us!" I would invite them to review the terms of the 1991 cease-fire and Saddam's subsequent actions.)
"Any chance Shute is trying to be ironic?"
BLM
Shute was not a poseur. He occasionally trafficked in dramatic irony, but never the "I'm sooooooo much smarter than you!" sort.
Since people are recommending other Shute novels, I should mention two or three of his even more obscure tales that relate to WWII.
Pied Piper is about a gentleman in his 80s who, through happenstance, ends up leading a group of people, on foot, through occupied France to freedom.
Pastoral is a deceptively simple love story between a WREN and a bomber pilot.
The Chequer Board is about a former pilot, after the war, who learns that he has about a year left to live, and what he decides to do with the time he has left.
I always press Nevil Shute books on people who've never read him before, and no one has ever chastised me for it later. :)
The difference is that these days men are eating too much soy. Soy products are proven to increase female hormones and depress testosterone.
In other words, these days we're all becoming weenies.
One of the great tragedies of our time is that war has become unfashionable in the "enlightened" West.
We seem to think we've risen above the cycles of human history and can deal with all international relationships through half measures and endless "negotiations".
Meanwhile cancers metastasize and morph.
We're all in for a rude awakening.
And may I add "Requiem for a WREN" to Ian's recommended list - that one does touch on the aftermath of WWII, when people who survived had to come to terms with it all, and what they had done in wartime.
Touching on this comment "Atkinson observed that hatred of the Germans was critical to the maturation of the green U.S. troops and recognized by the generals as a necessary requirement to secure victory." contrasting that with the current attitude of the military towards their enemy - I wonder if that isn't do in large part to the fact that the WWII military was made of essentially civilian draftees, and our contemporary military has more of the old, cold, professional attitude about it, more like the "old Army" that we had pre WWII. The business of a miltary is, after all, to kill those parties that are designated as an enemy, and to do so neatly, effeciently and with as little collateral damage as possible. Hatred doesn't much come into it.
A few Heinlein quotes seem apposite:
A further correction to Greshamite's 10:13 post: Patrick O'Brian was a far better writer than C.S. Forester.
Regarding "Most Secret": Megan's characterization of the book is accurate, but she should have added that it contains a specific explanation of the quoted character's obsession with killing Germans: His wife burns to death in an air raid.
A word is also necessary regarding the casual racism depiction in "A Town Like Alice." (To be pedantic, the novel was originally called "The Legacy." Editions published after it was made into a movie adopted the movie title, which is better.) Shute's lack of editorializing should not be taken as an endorsement. "The Chequerboard" contains not one but two happy interracial marriages, one of them between an English girl and the black GI who was falsely accused of assaulting her. And there is another novel of his called "Beyond the Black Stump" which is apparently an overt attack on white Australia's treatment of the aborigines -- I haven't read it.
"A further correction to Greshamite's 10:13 post: Patrick O'Brian was a far better writer than C.S. Forester"
I'm surprised it took so long to get a dissenting view.
FAR better? Nonsense. O'Brian has great virtues as a writer, so some difference of opinion is understandable. However, O'Brian, wonderful as he is, may sometimes bore readers, Forester never will. O'Brien has maturity, seriousness, philosophical depth and technical expertise but he's simply not the artist Forester was.
The question I have is, Megan, what point are you trying to make with this post? I don't see any conclusions except for "wonder what our literature would look like if we had another existential-type war." Is that it?
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for remembering Nevil Shute. My mother introduced me to his work when I was a teen. I have in turn brought him to the attention of my daughter. If I were to try to distill Shute's theme down to its basics, it would be the everyday heroism of common people. It's an idea that could use more exposure today. As noted, Shute is never morally ambiguous. Good and evil are real to him, and good people do the right thing for its own sake. Self-discipline and self-sacrifice are the order of the day. While his work is definitely more "popular fiction" than "great art", his writing licks are solid, his plotlines well-thought-out, and his characters are full, not caricatures. One commenter noted "Slide Rule", the autobiographical account of his years as an aeronautical engineer. Reading that book you can see that the personalities of his fictional characters come from his own beliefs on a proper life, earnestly felt and honestly lived. I'd highly recommend any of his works to young readers today. I've been collecting my own full set via amazon and e-bay.
Sgt. Mom, I agree that hate doesn't need to enter into the attitude of the military towards their enemy. The point of propaganda is not to strengthen the soldiers' wills but the civilians'. This is particularly important in democracies, which shy away from committing blood and treasure unless an existential threat can be articulated.
Hatred of the enemy goes along with the democratization of war. Involve the whole population, use masses of wartime-only "citizen-soldiers" in the Cause and you'll find hatred begins to pervade society. It is a natural by-product when societies are at war. The problem is that hatred is an uncertain motivator and tends to cause excesses and lingering problems.
Now, professional soldiers don't need to hate to kill. The downside, if it is one, is that we'll kill anyone that you designate as the enemy, provided it is a legal order. In that regard, warfare seems to have regressed back to the 16th Century when war was the province of sovereigns and kings. Which system of warfare best suits the United States is an open question.
To be even more pedantic, A Town Like Alice was indeed originally published in the US as The Legacy, but the US publisher actually changed the title from its original British publication, which was under the former title.
Indeed. Thank you. The cure for bad pedantry is more pedantry.
The movie of "The Madness of George III" was released in the US as "The Madness of King George" because it was felt that the public would think it was the sequel to "The Madness of George" and "TMoG II."
On the general topic, allow me to quote John Betjeman:
Gracious Lord, O bomb the Germans
Spare their women for Thy sake;
And, if that is not too easy,
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me!
Did they even have irony back then?
Megan, have you ever seen the movie "The Stranger"? Orson Welles as a Nazi war criminal posing as a New England teacher, and Edward G. Robinson as the G-man hunting him down.
There's a speech Welles gives in the middle of the film at a dinner party about the German people that references a "Carthagenian Peace". I saw this movie again about a year after the WTC attacks, and I'm still shocked that it never became more popular in pop culture.
"The movie of "The Madness of George III" was released in the US as "The Madness of King George" because it was felt that the public would think it was the sequel to "The Madness of George" and "TMoG II."
TR: I believe this is a myth.
http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/george.asp
"British people have to dumb themselves down for Americans" is a pretty common source of myths. Similar to "X is forgotten here, but famous in Japan" or "Y is considered a genius in France." In reality Britain has about as many dumb people per-capita as us and Britain has amazingly stupid people just as we do. (So does Germany or Japan or anywhere) If the British people you see in the US seem smarter it's because immigrants from Britain to the US are disproportionately educated. Also Americans associate many of the major British accents with sophistication.
On the others there's large numbers of French people who don't like Jerry Lewis and most musicians forgotten in the US are unheard of in Japan.
Well. Taken in by a myth. Face red.
Nevertheless it is the case that publishers, or at least some of them, think American kids are dumber than British kids. The conspicuous example being the change in the title of the first Harry Potter book. Even if they are wrong, the phenomenon is depressing.
I wonder what our literature would look like if we had another existential-type war. .
Discussing the literary implications of apocalyptic warfare naturally made me think of Jane Austen.
In particular, Admiral Croft in Persuasion, who sympathises with the sons and nephews of his friends and relatives because the ending of the wars will damage their careers in the Navy, and hopes to have the good luck to see another war himself.
He is the most decent guy you can imagine.
Absolutely nobody talks about wiping out Iranians, or Muslims, or Arabs. On the contrary, from George Bush on down everyone makes a sharp distinction between ordinary Muslims and the terrorists.
How far up your own rear end must your head be in order to actually believe this?