The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945
by J?rg Friedrich
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Book Summary Information
Author: J?rg FriedrichTranslator: Allison Brown
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-16
ISBN: 0231133804
Number of pages: 552
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Book Reviews of The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945
Book Review: Carpet Bombing
Summary: 4 Stars
This book deals with the destruction of German cities and towns by carpet-bombing during WW2. It is not a textbook on aviation, nor a guide-book on how to kill the greatest number of people in the shortest period of time. It is not, either, a complete history of the Second World War. It describes, somewhat idiosyncratically, the history of the air-war in general and its effect on the German victims in particular, from various points of view.
The author tells us how the destructive technology grew over the three decades after the Great War, how it was used, for the first time, in raids on undefended cities in Europe or Turkey and, later on, in colonial conflicts far removed from the eyes of the civilized world, before a German raid on a Spanish town in the Spanish civil war became a boon for anti-fascist propaganda and roused the righteous - something that, a decade earlier, had gone essentially unnoticed when it happened in Morocco, Afghanistan or India. What Friedrich writes has been echoed and reflected on by others, such as Sherwood Ross in an article he published in The Humanist two years ago.
Readers of this book must avoid the convenient but unwarranted argument that no matter what was done by the Allies to Axis and other civilians during WW2 was justified because of the evil nature of the German authorities in power at the time. Such an approach is not permissible for various reasons. The bombing raids were not meant to shorten the war, otherwise they could have been stopped when the outcome of the war was foreseeable. The raids did not save any potential victims of the regime; on the contrary, they brought about the death of countless camp inmates who could no longer be fed even the minimal rations allotted to them because supplies ran short or could not get through, and they even caused directly the death of thousands of detainees held on ships in German waters.
Lastly, the strategy of the raids, the training of the aviators and the production of the necessary means antedate by several years any reliable intelligence on the subject of death camps; such information reached the Allies only in the latter half of 1944 when the War Refugee Board alerted the US government and presented credible evidence. To what extent the raids may even have fuelled the Hitler's hate by allowing him to feel justified in what he did, remains to be analyzed by historians. In the same way as the British rallied around Churchill when the country was threatened, the German people, even the two thirds of the population not in favor of the regime, saw no other alternative than to stand together as their houses burned around them. For these and other reasons one must shy away from any justification ex post.
The destruction of Germany in the Second World War was not caused by a general outrage over what the country had done to its Jewish minority or to the populations in the occupied lands. Rather, the crimes laid at the feet of the German leaders in Nuremberg served, belatedly, to justify the means that had been used by the Allies to win the war.
It is even difficult to argue that any measures taken by the German government against its Jewish minority before the outbreak of the war in 1939 were reason enough for what came later, because, as Didier Epelbaum explains in great detail in his book "Les Enfants de Papier", similar and at times even more blatant acts of discrimination against Jews had been carried out by the Polish authorities ever since Poland was put back on the map in 1918.
The aim of the Churchill government - as we know explicitly from the great man himself as well as from his supporters like Robert Vansittart - was not to bring down Hitler. The F?hrer was only a convenient target for the greater hate these men harbored against any kind of strong Reich in the center of Europe and this hate so blinded them that they pushed their country to the edge of an abyss and in the process lost all the colonial possessions amassed over two centuries. Britain, in a mere ten years, between 1940 and 1950, was relegated into he background of world politics. Two generations on, the physical, historical and moral destruction of Germany is still with us and weakens the political power of Europe in the face of the dangers generated in the Middle East.
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