( 3 reviews )
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( 1 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Sep 28 2006
I was assigned to read this book for a political science class at a Christian University. Reading the book, one sees that, however strong the pacifists arguments were, they were almost absurd in comparison to what was going on with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Having the advantage to now look back and see the atrocities commited during the war against the Jews, readers of course will side with the arguments of the non-pacifists presented in the book. While pro-military intervention may not be necessarily a bad thing, Loconte does not dealy fairly to pacifism by only looking at this one instance. Would people still view World War II as honorable and heroic resistence if the Holocaust had not happened, or would it be viewed by Americans today as a war that we had no business being in. Although a thought provoking selection of essays, in dealing with the question of how a Christian should respond and act in the time of pro-war or faced with a tyrannical enemy, a broader view of the arguments should be included, not just from World War II, but also from other recent wars such as Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War.
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( 2 of 14 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 1 2006
This book, and numerous other publications, represent nothing more than the desperate response of the war-mongering right to the torn apart fig-leaf hiding the ugly untruths for the raining of laser guided bombs on the common, helpless men, women and childeren of Iraq in the name of the 'War on Terror'. They are deeply disturbed by the declining support among the awakened American people for that "war" as can be inferred not only from the dismally low ratings of both the Bush Administration and the Repulican dominated Congress, but also from virtually any other indicator. Hitler was an identified, self-declared enemy, Saddam was a manufactured, packaged and labelled threat to the United States. Hitler's was a massive war machine that challenged the might of the other equally powerful war machines. Hitler's Germany, if victorious could have, at least for a short period, enslaved Britain, France, etc., and posed a threat to the distant United States, but is that even the remotest of possibility from the present enemy who have no better weapons to fight with but their own lives? The preposterous nature of the comparison is just too patent to be muddied by distortions and misinformation. It will wash, if at all, only with the blindly faithful and no one else. Of course, the numbers of the former would be adequate enough for the book to survive and have its minutes in the dark caves of the scheming folks who use war (and God) as electoral weapons and of thier cohorts and beneficiaries.
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( 24 of 31 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 31 2004
A clear review of the history will show that anti-war polemics are not a thing of the present time only. This book will inform the readers how pacifism also defended Hitler. No war at any cost proponenets of the 1940's saw only at the end of WWII the price to be paid. Those murdered tasted the bitter poison and inhaled the gas. Read and ponder.
