The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945
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Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 943
EAN: 9780231133814
ISBN: 0231133812
Label: Columbia University Press
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 552
Publication Date: 2008-03-21
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Studio: Columbia University Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Combining meticulous research with striking descriptions, Jörg Friedrich renders in acute detail the Allies' air campaign of systematic destruction of civilian life, cultural treasures, and industrial capacities in Germany's city landscape. He includes personal stories and firsthand testimony of German civilians, creating a portrait of unimaginable suffering, horror, and grief. He also draws on official military documents to unravel the reasoning behind the Allies' strikes.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: Sebald's essay on German literature about WW2 in the volume Campo Santo reminded me of this book, which I read a few months ago. It was a huge success in Germany, and, unfortunately, one suspects at least partly for the wrong reason. The subject, or rather the message, has been a taboo in Germany for rather long.
The history of the allied bombing raids against Germany needs to be written. Friedrich's book is not it. I doubt that it is of much use to anybody, unless the main purpose is the creation of a spirit of self pity.
The book is not historiography, it is a rather impressionist collection of events and isolated facts and harrowing tales. The writer had mountains of material, but he fails to give any structure to his narrative. The list of contents suggests that he arranged material according to subjects, rather than according to chronology, but that is misleading. The chapter titles seem to bear little relation to the chapter contents.
In short, it is a mess.
Why do I give it 2 stars? Only because Friedrich manages to make the single events come alife. The book contains, in that sense, quite a few short tales which would have been better placed in a collection of 'true' war stories.
In a way, the failure of the book is very unfortunate, because it clouds an important issue. I don't want to enter a debate about whether the bombings were 'justified' on a moral level. However I do have the impression that those who say that they were unnecessary have a point. The bombings of cities like Dresden served no military purpose. The stated objective of demoralization was not attained. The war was won by the invading armies from the SU and the US with some help from some others. In other words, very likely the bombing raids had more of a negative impact rather than a positive one for the war effort of the allies.
Sebald in Campo Santo points to the parallell with Vietnam: there, the bombings were useless, the war was lost anyway. In Germany, the bombings were possibly also useless, because the war was won without contribution from them.
Customer Rating:
Summary: For This We Thank The Führer
Comment: "The Fire" by Jörg Friedrich. Subtitled: "The Bombing Of Germany 1940-1945.
Columbia University Press, New York 2006.
Back in 1954-1955, I studied High German in high school in The Bronx. When Jörg Friedrich published his German book, "Der Brand" in 2002, I purchased a copy. I discovered that my high school German had decayed over half a century so that my German vocabulary was insufficient to easily read Jörg's book in German. So, I read the book in English translation. I found that my German "culture" was insufficient to handle all the little cities, towns and villages that J. Friedrich mentions. Each little place would be presented, the date of the air raid mentioned, and then the number of dead recorded. Some particularly historical item, a cathedral, a town hall, a monument , would also be listed and recorded as destroyed. For 482 pages, this goes on. Then there is an "Afterword" and 24 pages of notes, bibliography and an index. The author has done a staggering amount of work.
The work, however, is flawed on three counts:
(1) organization,
(2) extraneous matter and
(3) basic premise.
Organization: as many of my fellow Amazon Reviewers have noted, there does not seem to be any rhyme nor reason to the book's organization. The author jumps around, both geographically and chronologically. The early part of the book deals with bombing and bombers and then bombing strategy. Good engineering "stuff" that sets the stage.
But then, the author jumps from one section of Germany to a different section of Germany, and then, chronologically, from the early bombing campaigns to the end of the war. So, on some early pages, you will be reading about the area of Northern Germany, and how the German refugees were fleeing the Red Army in East Prussia, Pomerania ands Silesia in early 1945, and then a little later in book, he is dealing with the firestorm in Hamburg in 1943. (By the way, a nicely written book on that bombing raid is "Inferno" by Keith Lowe, Scribner 2007.)
Extraneous Matter: the author not only wants to cover the bombing, 1940-1945, but it seems that he wants to include much German (or perhaps, European) history. For example, the Wellington bomber is named after the Duke of Wellington (alright!), who was helped by Prussian General von Blücher to defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. But, recall that at time, the King of England was George IV, who ruled both England and Hanover. Then, the Anglicization of Hanover so angered Napoleon that he ceded Hanover to the Kingdom of Westphalia. (See pages 196-197). Little gems such as this are scattered throughout the book. The Austrian War of Succession, (p. 211), the Augsburg Confession, (p. 280), the Saxons and Boniface (p. 171). My history thesis advisor would call this "...extraneous matter equals a filler." But, then, look at what he left out. Auschwitz is mentioned, but Buchenwald is not. Did you know that at the concentration camp of Buchenwald, the "Goethe Oak" was destroyed by a bombing raid. Johann Goethe liked to walk under that oak and contemplate the universe. When the bombs destroyed the oak, the prisoners in Buchenwald cheered. ( See "The Real Enemy" by Pierre D'Harcourt, Charles Scribner's sons, 1967.)
Basic Premise: I sense the central thesis of Friedrich's book is that indiscriminate bombing amounts to nothing more than the killing of the innocent.
Every time that Jörg Friedrich lists the number of people killed... as, on page 407, the Cologne raid "...left in its wake ...644 dead",
I recall the slogan painted on the ruins of German cities: "For this we thank the Führer".
On page 403, the children were sent away for their protection: Kinderlandverschnicksung. This measure was unpopular as the children were put into the hands of the Hitler Youth. Jörg writes, "Think of the moral neglect". For this we thank the Führer. Some of the children of Munich returned and "...heavy raids killed 435 children". To protect their children, the English sent them across the Atlantic to Canada and the United States. Nazi submarines sank ships carrying these innocent children in the coldness of the North Atlantic. Are the English children dead in the cold any less dead than the German children dead in the heat of the bombs? For this we thank the Führer. The Luftwaffe killed some 400,000 or so in Leningrad and Stalingrad, and other Russian cities. For this we thank the Führer.
Some day, perhaps, Jörg Friedrich can write a book about the horrors of being ripped from your Polish mother's arms and carried away to Auschwitz. When he is done with book, he can give infinite details of the horror of being brought to Buchenwald to die of starvation. After that Chemnitz. Dachau. Und so weiter. For this we thank the Führer.
After having said all of this, I believe that the book still deserves five stars...just think of all the details and all the work! I would have written a different book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Germany's massacre
Comment: I was looking for some facts about these bombings. I could find some here, some there. This book gives you virtually everything on this account. This is a treasure chest of facts. It's not a well-structured story but a mammoth collection of recorded events, facts, numbers and witness accounts. The book is about how Germany took a deathly blow, how she was ruined, and how innocent people died.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Worthy Subject, Badly Written
Comment: I think any prospective buyer/reader can get a fairly good impression of the virtues and flaws from the already existing reviews, but in reading/skimming through the reviews I was surprised that no one complained about the prose itself. Many reviewers note that the book is poorly structured (though some don't mind that), which is true, but this is true on a sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph basis. Generally,it's possible to figure out what he meant. Alot of times, the problem is in the translation, which sometimes reads like a computer translation and sometimes like the work of a translator whose first language wasn't English. It's very awkward and fails to have the intended effect. I am inclined to think that's not just a bad translation, in fact it may be a good translation of a very badly written original.
The history of the Allied bombing of Germany and Japan, and of the bombardment of civilians generally during the war and throughout the 20th century is an important subject still awaiting a good historian.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Masterful Contribution to the Literature on World War II
Comment: Joerg Friedrich's book is an invaluable contribution to the history of the Second World War that was long overdue. Until very recently it was taboo for Germans like him to write about the devastation of their country for fear of antagonizing their Anglo-American occupiers and newfound allies. The British press and public especially vented outrage whenever a native of Germany dared broach the subject. The Germans, it was held, were responsible for the Holocaust and other wartime atrocities and their bringing up the Allied firebombing of their cities was no more than a brazen attempt to to turn victimizers into victims. With the critics of these wartime atrocities effectively silenced, an important part of the whole truth about this war remained buried for over half a century. Historian Friedrich is to be commended for his audacity and courage in bringing the results of his researches before the public and so is Columbia University (this writer's alma mater) for deciding to publish the English language version of this work which was first published in Germany as "Der Brand" in 2002.
What this author's work shows is that World War II was not simply a struggle between good and evil but one between forces of evil that were present to varying degrees in all three principals to the conflict in Europe - The Third Reich under Hitler, the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Anglo-American Empire under Roosevelt and Churchill. It is a historical fact that Winston Churchill and his Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, planned and executed the systematic destruction of German towns and cities and the mass killing of their inhabitants. By Churchill's own admission (after the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945), it was a campaign of terror specifically designed to demoralize the German people to the point where they would surrender unconditionally. Exact figures are unknown but, by conservative estimates, on the order of one-half million German civilians were slaughtered during Allied air raids of which 75,000 were children under the age of 14. Yet despite all the efforts of the western Allies to break the will of the people, the home front never wavered in its determination to resist a brutal enemy and stoically endured what seemed unendurable. Churchill's diabolical and murderous scheme did little to shorten the war and may have even prolonged it. In the end, it proved to have been a complete and costly failure.
The Anglo-American air forces razed every German city and most towns of any size to the ground. All the heavily populated city centers were systematically taken out while the factories and transportation hubs important to the war effort were inexplicably spared. To catch the populace off guard and thereby increase the horror and death toll, many of the Allied air raids were conducted on major Christian holidays including Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Palm Sunday, Easter and Christmas. Besides the human toll, this orgy of destruction resulted in the loss of innumerable cultural and historic sites. In one example, Frankfurt's Old town together with Goethe's birthplace were burned down on March 22, 1944 which was the aniversary of the great poet's death. Much of the cultural patrimony of the German people was wantonely destroyed as millions of books, ancient manuscripts, musical scores, and works of art were consigned to the flames. The western Allies engaged in cultural vandalism on a scale unprecedended in recorded histor.
Fortunately for his readers, Friedrich has a knack for story telling and is able to enliven his often grim narrative by sharing his vast knowledge of interesting historical facts and anecdotes throughout the book. Following the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command, he takes his readers on a Baedeker tour of much of Germany visiting such ancient and historic towns as Aachen, the capital of Charlemagne, and Trier, where Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to be baptized, had his palace. The human element too is given its due with many riveting eye witness accounts by people who lived through the nightly horrors as hundreds of Allied planes roared overhead discharging their deadly loads of thousands of explosive and incendiary bombs. Most of the population survived by spending their nights in the reinforced basements of their apartment buildings or in public air raid shelters all of which were never completely safe and rarely withstood direct hits by 500-pound bombs. The victims were blown apart, burned to death or suffocated when the raging fires consumed the oxygen in the shelters. The author touchingly mentions the name of one baby boy who was born during an air raid and was in the world for just one day.
Much to his credit, Friedrich manages to remain completely objective and avoid even a trace of rancor or vindictiveness. He lets the facts speak for themselves. He even goes so far as to defend some of the standard rationalizations that have been advanced to justify these murderous and inexcusable acts of state terrorism. The book makes a powerful impact but it is not without flaws. Thus, some readers may be disconcerted by a lack of organization and cohesion making the narrative difficult to follow. At times the author makes a series of non sequitur statements which leave the reader puzzled as to what he is trying to say. Not all writers on this subject have been as charitable in their judgments as Friedrich. John Peter Allemand, who as a child narrowly escaped becoming a statistic in a British air raid, offers a very different perspective. This author, whose prophetic and apocalyptical verses were published under the title "A Poetical Offering with Commentaries," considers the wartime destruction of Germany and Japan a prelude to Armageddon. By reinterpreting certain passages in the Book of Revelation and Nostradamus quatrains, he convincingly shows that the Apocalypse and Second Coming are near at hand. This awesome and terrifying event promises to spell the end of many nations and powers.
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