The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada-Flores (review)

In The Americanization of Emily (1964), James Garner plays Charlie Madison, a cynical World War II naval officer, who attempts to woo Emily, a war widow, with the declaration that "I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved . . . If everyone obeyed their natural impulse and ran like rabbits at the first shot, I don't see how could possibly get to the second shot." Not only does his preachment fly in the face of traditional heroic visions of the virtue and nobility of war, it also ignores the reality that in the absence of armed resistance Hitler, whom Charlie describes as "a madman in Berlin," Stalin, "a suicidal paranoid," Mussolini, "a manic buffoon in Rome," and "a group of obsessed generals in Tokyo" would keep right on coming.

That is the dilemma Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada-Flores explore in their documentary The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It. American men who had refused to go to war against Germany during World War I had simply been jailed. During World War II Congress - recognizing that a refusal to bear arms right might be rooted not in cowardice or disloyalty but it deeply held religious beliefs of pacifist convictions - established the status of "Conscientious Objector" (CO). A tiny fraction - 0.02 percent - of those who registered for the draft during World War II applied for CO status, but even that fraction amounted to more than 72,000 men. Just over a third were declared medically unfit for military service, rendering the issue moot, and roughly 6,000 refused to register for the draft (even with CO status) and were jailed. The remainder entered uniformed service in jobs—chaplain, medic, ambulance driver—that did not require them to carry arms, or did "work of national importance" under the auspices of the Civilian Public Service program.

Using newsreels and interviews with a number of the aging Conscientious Objectors (COs), the filmmakers recreate the environment in which COs tried to hold onto their pacifistic philosophy in the face of the clear and present threat that the Axis powers posed to the United States and its allies. They recreate the willingness of many COs to sacrifice for their country—doing backbreaking physical work, treating battlefield casualties under fire, and submitting themselves to debilitating medical experiments—but not to kill for it. They also document the anger directed against the COs, in their hometowns and the towns where they were stationed, by those who saw them as shirkers or cowards. One woman interviewed recalls being "literally cursed and kicked out the door" by potential employers when she revealed that her husband was stationed at a nearby CO camp. A CO who trained as a firefighter at a camp in New Hampshire recalls that, when a nearby town caught fire one night, residents "let a third of [it] burn down rather than let those damn COs come out" to help fight the flames.

The short documentary clearly articulates why, though most men willingly or resignedly go off to battle when called, a few refuse to fight. It provides the basis for wide-ranging discussions of on how committed pacifists should respond to a clear and present threat to democracy like the one the Axis powers posed in 1939-1945, and whether, in fact, they face a choice between two unpalatable alternatives if they wish to remain true to themselves. The filmmakers thoroughly explore the options these men faced: going to jail, entering civilian programs sponsored by religious organizations, or serving in non-combatant roles in the military. They also provide the COs with the opportunity to acknowledge that they understood where their philosophy might have led, had the war gone differently: to the loss of freedom for all the Allied nations, and potentially to their own executions.

Despite the film's strengths, the filmmakers' use of "good" in the...