General, your Tank

General, Your Tank

By
Bertolt Brecht

The poem

General,your tank is a powerful vehicle.
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.

General,your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.

General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.

About the poet:

Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria and was raised in a comfortable middle class home. He was forced to flee Germany in 1933 because of his leftist beliefs and his opposition to the Nazi regime of Hitler. He spent 14 years in exile in Scandinavia and United States. He returned to Europe in 1947. Two years later he moved to East Berlin and remained there until his death in 1956.

Introduction
“General, your tank is a powerful vehicle” is from Brecht’s “A German War Primer”. This is a simple poem and the meaning that it conveys is simple yet profound, and it does this with a directness which is both touching and thought provoking. In “Hymn to Communism” Brecht writes “It is the simple which is so difficult”. This in a nutshell is Brecht’s principle on Art, and the simplicity is both of expression as well as thought.

Summary
The first stanza deals with the powerful tank which ‘Smashes down forests and crushes hundred men”. Although it can do this, it is nonetheless powerless, because it cannot propel itself. It needs a driver.
The second stanza deals with the powerful bomber that “flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant”. The bomber too, like the tank suffers from the same defect. It needs a mechanic to fly.
In the third stanza the poet mentions that that man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect. He can think.

1. Comment on the use of irony and satire in the poem?
In this poem Brecht says that the powerless tanks and bomber become a powerful instruments of destruction only because of a man's action. But man suffers from one defect, that is his ability to think.The use of “defect” and "powerful "are highly ironical. First of all for this defect is not really a defect but the crowning feature of human beings. Then the word “powerful”, is used in first and second stanzas, just to show the horror of war. The man has the power to think and act wise fully so he can convert the powerful machines into a powerless one. The poet presented the horror of war in a satirical way by boasting one side by using the word "powerful" and then used the word "defect" in each stanzas.

2. Evaluate the poem General, Your Tank General, Your Tank as an anti-war poem?
The poem -General, Your Tank, is an excerpt from A General War Perimer in which Brecht’s expresses his strong and abiding faith in the greatness of mankind in unambiguous terms. This is an anti war poem where he ironically told the horror effect of war. It is the soldier who fights and gets killed, bringing laurels to the General in the process. The ordinary soldier is always forgotten, Brecht expresses his dislike towards wars and he ridicules the General in the poem.
The General seems to be powerful with his tank and bomber. But his tank has a defect that needs a driver. And the bomber even though he is powerful, but needs a mechanic to function. He adds that the general has a man capable of flying and killing. But there is one defect the man can think.The man is the one who converts every action if only he begins to think, he can render all machines/weapons of destruction into powerless, and put on end to wars by refusing to co-operate with war-mongers.

3.what, according to the poet, are the inherent weaknesses of apparently powerful machines?
According to the Brecht, the man is the one who only can operate a powerful machine and at the same time he can think also so those are the inherent weaknesses of apparently powerful machines.