The End: Hamburg 1943
by Hans Erich Nossack
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hans Erich NossackPhotographer: Erich Andres
Translator: Joel Agee
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-31
ISBN: 0226595579
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Book Reviews of The End: Hamburg 1943
Book Review: Another Apologia for the German People
Summary: 2 Stars
Reading in between the lines of this poetic eulogy to his native city Nossack has missed two points. Why was the city bombed? Was this revenge for what the Nazis had done to so many other cities?
Hamburg has been a major shipping port for central Germany since before there was a single German state. With it's natural harbor and rail lines it was one of the first targets that the Allies 'carpet' bombed. So much of the city was industrial that it was easier to 'level' it then to try and strategic bomb. One of the fallacies of WW2 is that the norden bomb sight was able to allow the Allies to 'pinpoint' bomb. It did not adjust for the speed and direction of the plane nor for the speed and direction of the wind.
Secondly, the Nazis had saturation bombed both Rotterdam and Warsaw, not to mention many of the major cities of the Soviet Union. By 1943, most if not all Germans had seen pictures of the destruction that the Luftwaffe had perpetrated (including Guernica in Spain) so they shouldn't have been surprised to see the Allies do the same thing.
This is just a part of the "Total War" that the Nazis had created, coming back to bite the German people in the arse. Nossack laments the losses to his home city but doesn't seem to take into account the same destruction visited on other cities. The German people were kept up to date by the Propaganda Ministry and saw daily what was being visited on other people by the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht.
Look carefully at the pictures that are appended to the book and you will notice that the people seem to be well dressed and going about their everyday lives. The woman are even carrying handbags. After the bombing many of the refugees were set-up in new housing and given household goods that had been stolen from Jewish deportees or 'requisitioned' from the occupied countries (see "Hitler's Beneficiaries" by Gotz Aly).
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