The Winds of War

When the pot boils, the scum comes to the surface.

That is my main takeaway from The Winds of War. I've read a few of Herman Wouk's novels now and, like the rest, this one is another incredibly compelling drama detailing the conflicts and relationships between a well-drawn cast of characters. In this case it's a military family, the Henry's, and how they orbit the days of World War II.

While the characters and the situations they found themselves in kept me turning the pages, it was the setting and cultural attitudes which left me thinking about the book long after I closed the cover. Wouk's exploration of the larger social attitudes which allowed Nazism to flourish in Germany, as well as the indifference displayed by many Americans, made this book feel almost vital in this moment.

It is all too easy to draw parallels between the mass unrest which allowed facism to take hold in the early 20th century and the modern shift in the West towards ideaologies of bigotry. When speaking on the duology as a whole, Wouk noted that Winds of War was the prologue, setting the stage for the story he really wanted to tell in War and Remembrance, which covers America's experience upon entering the Second World War. Reading today, this first volume isn't prologue but prophecy, and a damning condemnation of how American exceptionalism has made many blind to the mainstream fascism which has taken root in the West today.