12/16/2023 0 Comments War and remembranceWouk also sheds light on better-known events like the Battle of Midway, noting the code-breaking that gave America the intelligence advantage was aided by Japanese sloppiness after the Doolittle raid. But in both novels, Wouk draws an insightful portrait of the Russian people that remains useful to understanding their national psychology today. As Wouk notes in an aside, Soviet historians avoided highlighting the city’s three-year resistance of the Nazis due to the Communist Party’s failures to prepare for the German invasion (of which they were warned by multiple sources). For example, in “War and Remembrance,” Pug visits Leningrad after a brutal siege that reduced the population from 2,000,000 to 600,000. The journeys of Pug, his family, and their associates reach many less-known aspects of the war. Pug’s brushes with historical figures-Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill, to name a few-may give modern readers a Forrest Gump feeling, but there are historical examples of FDR using these sorts of emissaries. As a result, Pug finds himself dispatched to Washington, London, Rome, Moscow, Tehran, and the Pacific. The chief conceit of the books is that Pug, while serving as a naval attaché in Berlin, becomes an informal errand-runner for President Roosevelt. The families become connected when Pug’s youngest son Byron goes to work for Jastrow in Italy and falls in love with Jastrow’s niece, Natalie. naval officer, Victor “Pug” Henry, the other by a Jewish-American scholar and author, Aaron Jastrow (paralleling Wouk, Jastrow found popular success when his book, “A Jew’s Jesus,” became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection). The “War” novels are melodramas told through the lives of two families.
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