Either War is Finished or We Are

The title of this entry are words attributable to Herman Wouk's stalwart American Navy officer in War and Remembrance. The book is a masterpiece of a historical novel in my opinion. Wouk weaves a theme of American character & industry, World War, the plight of the Jews and ultimately a theme of a chance for peace and hope emerging from ashes.

In many ways the world of pre and even early World War II is a time which I may have been more at home than I feel today. The transatlantic crossing on ocean liners, America as a reluctant participant on the world stage, a respect for and interest in ideas and oratory and discourse of all kinds... a world before television turned our homes into mini-theaters. A time when university meant education more than career preparation. A time when people read. A time of sweeping convulsions from new political and economic realities and theories. Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism all came to full and often violent expression in this time. Democracy was still new and fragile in much of Europe and was, unfotunately, overcome by internal political and economic forces in too many of Europe's old time nations.

Wouk's Captain Henry leads a remarkable life. He is the naval attache in Germany at the start of World War II. He meets Hitler and Mussolini. He makes an astute intelligence conclusion and report and as such is sought out by FDR and comes to know FDR and Harry Hopkins. He visits London at the height of the blitz and meets Churchill and tours the chain home stations and sees the RAF in action. He serves as a Lend Lease officer on two occasions in the Soviet Union and is in Moscow during the German march on that city. He meets Stalin. He is assigned battleship command at Pearl Harbor only to arrive a day or two after the surprise attack. He commands a treaty cruiser at the battle of Midway and at Guadalcanal. He returns later to the Soviet Union as a special emissary for Lend Lease where he tours Leningrad during the German seige and Stalingrad shortly after the Germans are annihilated there. He is present in Tehran when Churchill, Stalin, and FDR meet together for the first time. And he visits the Manhattan project installations at Oak Ridge shortly before returning for a brief time to oversee landing craft issues for the Normandy invasion. He meets and gets to know Eisenhower and all the big military brass. He then is assigned to the Pacific and serves at Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and other battles. Just after VE day he becomes Harry Truman's naval aide and is present with all the heads of state at Potsdam at the conclusion of the European war. And other characters are present at Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Poland and seige of Warsaw, the massacre of the US Air Force in the Phillipines, and more. You hit all the high spots and Wouk tells a great story with the people of his novel along with a remarkably accurate historical account of the war.

Captain (and later Admiral) Victor Henry writes about the incredible folly and command mistakes and bad decisions at the Battle of Leyte Gulf during 1944. He speaks of the end of an era in which battleships dominated the seas and even how a battle like Leyte Gulf was obsolete only a few years later. At the time Wouk wrote the book the cold war was at full simmer and the US and USSR had enormous massed nuclear arsenals sitting at 30 minutes notice - ready to destroy countries, continents and perhaps all of civilization. He spoke of the incredible folly and stupidity of launching the giant navies of Leyte Gulf and the consequences for those that bore the brunt of mistakes and bad decisions and then concluded that a nuclear Leyte Gulf would be the end of all we know. And then the words, "either war is finished or we are."

Well, it seems that war is not finished. It is fair to point out that in the first half of the 20th century there were two all out everyone choose a side wars that left entire generations of some countries dead. And before that there were the Napoleonic wars and the American Indian wars that lead to the virtual extinction of many native American tribes and there were the Crusades, invasions of the Mongolian Hordes, Romans, Assyrians, and on and on and on - countries and cultures fighting to the death. Since the end of World War II there have been all kinds of wars and conflicts, but somehow we have managed to avoid an all out fight between those that are really armed to the teeth. So, while war hasn't ended, maybe we've taken a few tentative steps down a path toward a better future.

SPOILER ALERT - The end of Wouk's book is worth repeating. One of the characters, Berel Jastrow, is a Polish Jew that fought in WW I, ran a business in Poland, was a refugee early in WW II, joined the Russian army briefly, was captured by the Germans and forced into labor camps including Auschwitz and in roving camps exuming and covering up German massacres in the Ukraine, escapes and then fights as a partisan against the Nazis and eventually is killed - buried in a shallow unmarked grave. It helps to understand this to understand Wouk's ending. Also, Wouk speaks of the initial nuclear weapons as revealing the light of the sun here on earth for the first time.

It is only a story, Berel Jastrow was never born and never existed. He was a parable. In truth his bones stretch from the French coast to the Urals, dry bones of a murdered giant. And in truth a marvelous thing happens; his story does not end there, for the bones stand up and take on flesh. God breathes spirit into the bones, and Berel Jastrow turns eastward and goes home. In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.

For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world's worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civiliams, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet though their bones lie in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace.