Choices Under Fire
by Michael Bess
Published by Vintage
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Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali
In Choices Under Fire, Bess pens essays about the moral issues faced in World War II. You can read these essays independently from each other. Bess discusses racism, the kamikazes, the atomic bomb, bombing civilian populations, the battle of Midway, cooperating with Stalin, the holocaust, and the war crimes trials. None of this material is new; in fact, a lot of the material is familiar to most readers interested in World War II history. What is unique about this book is that Bass explores the moral dimensions of personal, collective and national choices.
Each essay starts with a view that is presented in most American World War II textbooks. Bess adds additional historical information, most of which is known but “forgotten” or rarely associated with the events being discussed. He then links this material to the moral choices made by the main actors in this situation and presents a more nuanced version of that event (for example, Japanese expansion is examined within the context of European imperialism, or the rational to bomb civilian centers, our alliance with Stalin to defeat a dictator like Hitler, and other such decisions).
One may not agree with some of the perspectives presented in this book, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor grew out of Japan’s searing experience of helplessness before European and American domination, or that the judgments handed down to the Nazis at Nuremberg represented rough victors’ justice, rather than morally clean verdicts. However, one needs to acknowledge that there could be divergent perspectives on the same set of events.
Armchair Interviews says: Very interesting perspective on WWII.