by War
Truman wanted to keep the Russians out of the Japanese war.
"Yet at Potsdam he did not waive Stalin's commitment to attack Japan.
He had Marshall's advice that the Russians could not be kept from attacking if they wanted to.
"An invasion of Japan would have caused far more Japanese deaths, let alone, American ones, than the Hiroshima casualties. The Japanese army leaders controlled the government and their plan to fight invasion called for a bloody scortched earth battle to the last like Hitler's. The bomb gave the Emperor leverage to force a decision for the peace party in his councils.
Yet the B-29 bombardments and the submarine blockade might have done so too, in time to scrub the invasion.
If not, and if the Soviet Union had materially aided an invasion, the Red Army would have occupied part of the land. Japan might have ended partitioned like Germany.
Yet whether the Japanese think the deaths at Hiroshima were an acceptable price for warding off that possibility is far from certain.
This much is certain.
The uranium weapon had been perfected barely in time for use in the war. There were two bombs available; only two, one of U-235, one of plutonium. The President, the cabinet, the scientists, the military men, all wanted the bomb rushed into combat. Harry Truman later said, "It was abigger piece, of artillery, so we used it." There were worried dissenting voices: few, and futile. The momentum of all that expenditure of money, manpower, industrial plant, and scientific genius was irresistible.
War scares nations, by murdering their people, into changing their politics. Here was the ultimate expression of war, after all, a child's handfuls murdering a city. How could it not be used? It did scare a nation into changing its politics overnight. "Greatest thing in history!" said President Truman at the news of Hiroshima.
Greatest thing since canned beer.
Byron came through the plane gate leading by the hand a pale small boy in a neat gray suit, who walked docilely beside him. Rabinovitz recognized Louis, though he was taller and thinner.
"Hello, Louis." The boy looked solemnly at him. "Byron, she's fine today, and waiting. I'll drive you there. Did you hear about the atom bomb?"
"Yes. I guess that's the end, all right."
Walking to Rabinovitz's very decrepit Citrodn, they made the common talk being repeated all over the world, about the terrific news.
"C' "Natalie says she's ready to go home, now that you've got him," Rabinovitz said as they drove. "She thinks she'll recuperate better there."
"Yes, we talked about that last time I saw her. Also she has property. Aaron's publisher has been in touch with her.
There's quite a lot of money. And that villa in Siena, if it's still standing. His lawyer has the deeds. It makes sense for her to go back right now."
"She won't go with you to Germany, that I can tell you."
"I don't expect her to."
"How will you feel there yourself?"
"Well, the U-boat men are just professionals. I've got a job to do with them."
"They're murderers."
"So am I," Byron said without rancor, stroking Louis's head. The boy sat on his lap, soberly looking out of the window at the sunny flat green fields outside Paris. "They're the conquered enemy. We study their equipment and methods as soon as possible after surrender. That's standard."
; Silenced for a minute or so, Rabinovitz said abruptly "I think she'll stay in America, once she goes there."
"She doesn't know what she'll do. First she has to get well.
"Would, you come with her to Palestine?"
",That's a tough one. I know nothing about Zionism."
"We Jews need a state of our own to live in, where we won't get massacred. That's all there is to Zionism."
"She won't get massacred in America."
"Can the Jews all go there?"
"What about the Arabs?" Byron asked after a pause. "The Ones that are there in Palestine already?"
Rabinovitz's face as he drove became Igave, almost tragic.
He looked straight-ahead, and his reply came slowly. "The Arabs can be grim, and they can also be noble. Christian Europe has tried to kill us. What choice have we? Palestine is our traditional home.
Islam has a tradition to let the Jews live. Not in a state of our own, not as yet, that's a new thing in their history. But it will work out." He glanced toward Louis, and caressed the quiet boy's cheek.
"With a hell of a lot of trouble first. That's why we need him."
"will you need a navy?"
Rabinovitz briefly sourly smiled. "Between you And me, we have one. I helped organize it. A goddamn small one, so far."
"Well, I'll never be separated from this kid, once I'm demobilized. That much I know."
"Isn't he very quiet?"
"He doesn't talk."
"What do you mean?,"
"Just that. He doesn't smile, and he doesn't talk. He hasn't said a word to me yet. I had a time getting him released. They had him classified as psychologically disabled, some such fancy category. He's fine. He eats, he dresses and cleans himself, in fact he's very neat, and he understands anything you say.
He obeys. He doesn't talk."
Rabinovitz said in Yiddish, "Louis, look at me." The boy: turned and faced him. "Smile, little fellow."." Louis's large eyes conveyed faint dislike and contempt, and he looked out of the window again.
"Let him be," Byron said. "I had to sign more damned papers and raise more hell before I could pry him loose. It's lucky I got there when I did. They're shipping about a hundred of these soiled psychologically disabled kids to Canada next week. God knows if we could ever have trained him there."
"What's the story on him?"
"Very sparse. I can't read Czech, naturally, and the translation of the card was pretty poor. I gather he was picked Jews and Czechs and shot them. The bodies were just lying around. that's where somebody. found him, among the bodies.."
As they walked into the sunny garden of the convalecent home, Byron said, "Look, Louis, there's Mama."
Natalie stood near the same stone bench, in a new white frock.
Louis let go of his father's hand, walked toNatalie, then broke into a run and leaped at her' "Oh, my God! How big you are! How heavy you are! Oh" Louis!"
She sat down, embracing him. The child clung, his face. buried on her shoulder, and she rocked him, saying through up in a woods near Prague, where the Germans took a lot of.. tears, "Louis, you came back. You came back!" She looked UP at Byron. "He's glad to see me."
"Sort of."
"Byron, you can do anything, can't you?"
His face still hidden, the boy was gripping his mother hard.
Rocking him back and forth, she began to sing slowly in Yiddish, Under Louis's cradle, Lies a little white goat.
The little goat went into businessLouis let go of her, sat up smiling on her lap, and tried to sing along in Yiddish, in a faltering hoarse voice, a word here and there, IL 'Dos vel zein dein baruf, Rozhinkes mit mandlen Almost at the same moment, Byron and Rabinovitz each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light..
In a shallow, hastily dug grave in the wood outside Prague, Berel Jastrow's bones lie unmarked, like so. many bones all over Europe And so this story ends.
It is only a story of course. 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 civiltans, people of so many nation
s, 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 remmbrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace.
Historical Notes The history of the war in this romance, as in The Winds of War, is offered as accurate; the statistics, as reliable; the words and acts of the great personages, as either historical, or derived from accounts of their words and deeds in similar situations.
Major figures of history do not appear in times and places not historically true.
World Holocaust, the military treatise by "Armin von Roon," is of course an invention from start to finish. Still, General von Roon's book is offered as a professional German view of the other side of the hill, reliable within the limits peculiar to that self-justifying literature.
Except where directly challenged by Victor Henry, Roon's facts are accurate, however warped by nationalism his judgments may be.
The reliability of detail in the well-known battles, campaigns, and events of the war-Singapore, Midway, Leyte Gulf, the Tehran Conference, the sieges of Imphal and Leningrad, and the like -will, it is hoped, be evident to the informed reader. The notes that follow deal with little-known or unusual historical elements of the story, and with pimges where fact and fiction am especially intertwined.
The exploits of the fictional submarines Devilfish, Moray, and Barracuda are improvisations on actual wartime submarine patrol reports." The death of Carter Aster is based on the famous selfsacrifice of commander Howard W. Gilmore of U.S.S. Growler, for which he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Aster, however, is a different and fictional character.
All other Navy vessels in the novel are actual and their movements and actions follow the historical record. All admirals in the Pacific are treated like the major political figures. The real personages and , , story of the heavy cruiser Northampton" except for the fictitious captains Hickman and Henry, follows its war diary from Pearl harbor to its sinking at the Battle of Tassafaronga.
The names of the pilots and gunners in the three torpedo squadrons at Midway proved surprisingly difficult to recover and erify, so quickly is the record fading. The rosters printed in the novel are the result of a long search. Any reliable corrections will be recognized for future editions.
-The story of the Izmir is a fictionalization of actual illegal voyages refugees from the Nazis, who reached Palestine in this way or died rying "The Wannsee Protocol" is a historical document, and as described in the story'only one copy out of thirty of this top-secret record was preserved, through an accident of bureaucratic over thoroughness. Disclosure of a smuggled photocopy to the American legation in Bern is fictional, as are the characters in the legation.
Americans caught in Italy by the war were interned in Siena, as narrated. Those caught in southern France were first interned irrLourdes, then moved to Baden-Baden, as in the story; and harshly bargained for by the Germans thereafter, for more than a year.
The Comte and Comtesse de Chambrun are real figures; the comte. did administer the American Hospital in Paris. The German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, is historical. Werner Beck is a fictitious character.
The Joint declaration of the United Nations in December 1942, which led to the Bermuda Conference, is history. Its text is given in full in the novels Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge ming is an actual person, whose conversation and actions are drawn largely from his own writings and his congressional testimony. Foxy Day* is fictitious.
The Bermuda Conference happened as described. The public reaction that gradually ensued, and the establishment of the War, Refugee Board, are facts.
The main source for the furor in 1943 over Soviet suppression of Lend-Lease facts is Admiral William Standley's autobiography. Tits Soviet practice, incidentally, continues to the present day. General Yevlenko is fictional.
"The Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Imn" (referred to in the text as "The Declaration of Iran") is a historical fact, as is the general outline of how it came about; though of course Victor Henry's conversation with the Minister of the Imperial crown, -is invented. General Connolly of the Hussein Ala-a real person Persian Gulf Command is an actual officer, and the description of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union through that corridor is factual.
The fictitious Granville Seaton describes true Persian history.
."The Paradise Ghetto" in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, was known about during the war. Nothing is invented or exaggerated in this account, though the parts played by Natalie and Dr. Jastrow are fictitious. The SS officers are all real, as are the leah Elders EPpstein and Murmelstein. The general history of the ghetto is true. The "Great Beautification" for the one visit of neutral Red Cross observers is a well-docUmented fact, in all its bizarre detail" as is the visit itself. A fragment of the film "The Fuhrer Grants the Jews a TOwn" survives in the Yad Vashem archive in Je Sa em. e making of ru I Th the filming took Place as described, but the film was never "hibited.
The scenes in Oswiecim, or Auschwitz, are based on a study of the available documents and literature, as well Is on consultations with survivors, These scenes halve been meticulously reviewed for authenlicity by erdnent authorities on this terrible subject. be forever beyond the grasp Oswiecim may SP of the human mind, now that nothing is left Of it but 8 dead museum. It is hoped that Auschwitz survivors of comparing their recollections with this fictiona Remembrance , treated by One who was mort make the vanished hour if not there, will see an honest to z'ro for all the world that 'as not there.
The march Of Soviet prisons ri os episodes Of cannibalism, the - rs from Lamsdo to wiecim, the "Perimental gassing of these Soviet prisoners of war with Zykjon B to test its efficacy for killing Jews e maM; all these are fact. n An important source is the memoir of the commandant himself, Rudolf Hoess, written while he was awaiting trial after the war. He was found guilty of the mass murders, which he fleely admitted, and was hanged in Auschwitz.
The other SS officers are real people, except that Klinger is fictitious, The inspection visit Of Himmler, and his viewing of the Puing Process from beginning to end, took place as described; in July, however, not in June. The construction Of the crematoriums, the general picture Of the All hwitz Inter and agricultural insta sc et Area with its industries liations, the treatment of prisoners who atmpted to escape, the roll cans, "Canada": all facts.
Konimando 1005, the loving Gezma, unit that exhumed and !tradicated the mass graves, is a matter of history. ss Colonel Paul BlObel is an actual Pen. The Mutiny Of Mutterperl is fictitious escape Of some Prisonel is improvised out of accou - The escapes from SS slave nts of such Berel Jastro, I gangs. his fictitious journey from Temopol through to Prague is the Made ans ased on several such incredible journey$, by Jews who escaped from the death camps with photographic and documentary evidence, and crossed all of Nazi-held Europe to bring the revelation to the outside world; only to encounter the almost universal "will not to believe." The fictitious partisan bands of Nikonov and Levine are derived from existing partisan literature.
Reference is made in this passage to some actual partisan bands.
The treatment of the landing craft and atomic bomb programs is factual. There was a conflict over priorities involving a COils.
Victor Henry's part in it is of course fictitious; Dr. Oppenheimer's visit to Oak Ridge is a fictional same; and Kirby, P;ters,.and Anderson are fictional characters. It is a fact that Dr. Oppenheimer. recommended the very late introduction of the Navy'.s thermal.. diffusion system into Oak Ridge, to provide enriched feed for the electromagnetic separation process; and that this made possible. the-. production of one U-235 bomb for use in the war, over Hiroshirm The Nagasaki bomb of plutonium was produced in the Hanford reactors.
It is also a fact that no other bombs were available from, the Manhattan Project when ttme two were dropped.
The account of the FM sonar,
"Hell's Bells," and of its use late in the war, is factual.
To sum up: the purpose of the author in both War and Remembrance and The Winds of War was to bring the past to vivid life through the experiences, perceptioas, and passions of a few pooplecaught in the war's maelstrom. This purpose was best served by scrupulous accuracy of locale and historical fact, as the backdrop against which the invented drama would play. Such at least was the working ideal.
Herman Wouk
The End