Everything about War With The Newts totally explained
War with the Newts (
Válka s mloky in the original
Czech), also translated as
War with the Salamanders, is a satirical science fiction story by
Czech author
Karel Čapek.
Connections to other works
There are obvious similarities to Čapek's earlier
Rossum's Universal Robots, but also some original themes.
Robert Zubrin claims that
War with the Newts partly inspired his novel
The Holy Land.
As satire and social commentary
The book is a dark
satire, poking fun extensively at the contemporary European politics, including
colonialism,
fascism and
Nazism,
segregation in America, and the
arms race. A notable satirical point is the mentioned research of a German scientist who has determined that the German newts are actually a superior
Nordic race, and that as such they've a right to expand their
living space at the expense of the inferior breeds of newts.
The author's opinion of the United States' social problems also appears very pessimistic, as whenever that country is mentioned as dealing with a crisis, American mobs "
lynch negroes" as scapegoats. Sometimes the newts are shown in the same manner as the blacks, as when a white woman claims to have been raped by one of them. In spite of the physical impossibility of the act, people believe her and carry out newt lynchings.
One passage, depicting the European nations willing to hand over
China to the newts as long as they're themselves spared and overriding the Chinese's desperate protests, seems a premonition of
Munich Agreement, a few years after the book was written - in which the writer's own country suffered a similar fate in a futile effort to appease the Nazis.
Further Information
Get more info on 'War With The Newts'.
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