Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker. I don't like fiction so prefer a challenging factual book such as this. It's a real belter. You know all that stuff we learned about the war and about how 'we' were only good and 'they' were only bad? Load of bollox that. This book is contemporary newspaper and political stories about what occurred at the time thereby putting it into context regarding the way things were when they happened. Apparently, Neville Chamberlain got Hitler off the hook by ceding Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Immediately prior to that, Marshal Halder, the German officer given orders to take Czechoslovakia but refused, knew Hitler was mentally ill and evil and along with many more German officers, were about to kill him. Once Chamberlain, thinking that 'would be for the best', gave Hitler an open inviatation to World War 2. Additionally, you know how the Germans statred bombing British civilians thereby prompting the British to start bombing German civilians? Actually, it was the other way round and it was the RAF who started the incineration of German cities and what the Luftwaffe did was, on the whole, reprisals. An incredible book, this.
