War and Remembrance is a novel by Herman Wouk, published in October 1978 as the sequel to Wouk's The Winds of War (1971). The Winds of War covers the period 1939 to 1941, and War and Remembrance continues the story of the extended Henry and Jastrow families from 15 December 1941 through 6 August 1945. The novel was adapted into a television mini-series, War and Remembrance, and presented on American television in 1988.
Plot
War and Remembrance completes the cycle that began with The Winds of War. The story includes historical occurrences at Midway, Yalta, Guadalcanal, and El Alamein as well as the Allied invasions at Normandy and the Philippines.
One of the more significant themes in the novel and one that occurs in many of Wouk's works is a rediscovery of a central character's Jewish identity. Biblical scholar Aaron Jastrow and his niece Natalie Henry's experience of the Holocaust and their internment in Theresienstadt Ghetto are the events that trigger their newfound identification with their Judaism, Jastrow having formerly converted to Catholicism. "Jastrow is transformed from a rational professor with only marginal awareness of his Jewishness into a passionate champion of his Jewish integrity" according to one reviewer.
The action moves back and forth between the characters against the backdrop of World War II: Victor "Pug" Henry takes part in various battles while separating from his wife. Pug's older son Warren, a naval aviator, and younger son, Byron, a submarine officer, also participate in combat. Warren is killed at the battle of Midway. Byron's wife Natalie is trapped in Axis territory with her uncle, celebrated author Aaron Jastrow, and another major strand focuses on their story as Jews caught in Europe. Like most Americans, Natalie and Aaron fail to believe that the civilized German culture with which they are familiar could possibly engage in genocide. As a result of their rash decision to stay when they could escape, they are slowly absorbed into the Jewish population that is first interned, then sent to concentration camps. As Byron attempts to find out what is happening to them, eventually tracking them down amidst the chaos of wartime Europe, the story of the Holocaust is gradually revealed to the American government and people. Another plot thread concerns Aaron Jastrow's cousin Berel who is captured near the end of The Winds of War and is forced to join Kommando 1005, SS officer Paul Blobel's Jewish contingent that travels around Eastern Europe exhuming the bodies of massacred Jews and disposing of them in an effort to hide the evidence of Nazi mass murder.
Plot criticisms
One frequently cited criticism of the plot is that Wouk's repeated references to history take precedence over character development as well as the observations and ideas he offers to explain WWII in a larger context. As a result, the plot is occasionally too predictable, and Wouk seems at times to force the history to comply with his own observations about WWII and mankind. Larry Swindel noted that "there is deficient characterization throughout for any reader not already acquainted with the principals", and "the characters are reduced to pawns on the chessboard of history". Another critic noted that Wouk's personal commentary could have been better presented through his characters and that he should have been able to make his own observations about history through the structure of the novel itself. Nonetheless, it was felt that the book was an interesting, informative read, and that the reader could relate emotionally to the plight of the central characters. Wouk stated in a lecture which addressed the novel and the nature of warfare then and now, "The sadness is the present reality...I tell you now that I have no solutions. I will offer no facile optimism." Another critic noted that in regards to the novel's depiction of the holocaust, that it may be a serious "trivialization of history to employ old fashioned tricks of plotting, such as the chapter-ending cliffhanger, in dramatizing such grave events".
Perhaps the most significant critical praise of the book and its prequel, The Winds of War, is that Wouk used the tools of the novel to identify the psychological mechanisms and rationalizations that allowed intelligent, well meaning individuals to fail to take needed action to forestall the rise of Hitler's Germany, the ensuring war and the resulting holocaust.