"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.

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.

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.

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.
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 four 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, 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 homefront 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 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. The day for the burning down of Frankfurt's Old Town and Goethe's birthplace on March 22, 1944 was chosen to coincide with the anniversary 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 grand scale that had no precedent.
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 days and 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. He 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. Not all writers on this subject have been as charitable. John Peter Allemand, who as a child narrowly escaped being killed in a British air raid, offers a very different perspective. This author's prophetic and apocalyptical verses, published under the title "A Poetical Offering with Commentaries," considers the wartime destruction of Germany and Japan a prelude to Armageddon. According to his reinterpretation of certain passages in the Book of Revelation and Nostradamus quatrains, the Apocalypse and the Second Coming is very near. This awesome and terrifying event promises to spell the end of many nations and powers.

I found this book to be "unbiased" as only a German could be. There are sections of the book that cry out to humanity for the indictment of the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, but any well read person would know that Winston was not a nice person, yet alone a fair and even tempered man. What I found most disturbing was the total disregard that the Allies had to the history of Europe and particularly to German History. Yet when one considers what the Allies did to Monte Casino in Italy, why should they show any mercy to Germany. Art, history, learning and humans together died in the fires from above. A well written and balanced approach, with no vindictiveness implied or spoken. Anyone who reads this will always question if the air war as fought against Germany was necessary and above all proper.

A Great read and I enjoyed it all!

This is one of the most powerful books that I have read in some years. The author provides perhaps the first truly exhaustive study of the effect of the air war on Germany. The book is broken down into chapters addressing the background and plans for the air war, the actual operations against virtually every city of significance, and the impact of the bombings on civilians, industry, architecture, cultural icons, etc. Narrative of operations is interspersed with eyewitness recollections so while this book is lengthy and academically thorough it is not dry. One should not become intimidated by the one very long chapter which covers the bombing war city by city from west to east. While this might tend to become monotonous after several hundred pages in the end you realise exactly why the author structured it that way. I could almost hear the metronome ticking as each city was systematically destroyed. A culture was very nearly erased in essentially two years (1943-45 when most of the significant bombing took place).
The thoughts this book provoked for me were twofold. First, this should cause all rational people to decide whether deliberate targeting of civilians is ever justified in war (legally as well as morally). This book does not excuse the German bombing of British, Dutch, Polish or Russian cities. On the contrary, it only serves to show that unfortunately US and British leaders were guilty of the same mindset, but had far greater capacity for destruction and continued to use it long after the necessity had vanished (by late 1944 it was clear that the bombing had little effect, if any, on war material production and the Germans were not going to surrender to the air war in any case). Second, while unmentioned this study might be applied to the bombing of Japan. Libraries of books and articles have addressed the moral and legal issues of the two atomic attacks but should these stand any differently from the great Tokyo fire raid that killed over 100,000 people in a single night (far more than Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg or Dresden)? If we decide that such bombing tactics are justified in "total war" we had better not distinguish to type of weapon used. Would you rather burn alive or suffocate in a collapsed cellar during a fire storm (as vividly described by many witnesses in this book) or become atomized in a split second or die a wasting death from radiation in Hiroshima. Not much of a choice. Both types of attacks were deliberately aimed at civilians with, as the book describes, only incidental concern to eliminate vital transportation and industrial targets. It is uncomfortable to read that the US and our Allies were successful in burning up centuries of humanity's culture and learning in monuments, buildings, libraries, artwork and other cultural artifacts, not to mention killing untold numbers of civilians (the author admits that there are no clear numbers for human losses) while leaving vital military and industrial targets intact. After thousands of books and articles condemning (justifiably) the atrocities of the Nazi regime it is high time the rest of the story of WWII is told. Read this and weep.

On these pages we live with the ordinary people of Germany: unable to sleep as they await the firebombs, rushing to the shelters,living in the shelters, rescuing their sisters, husbands, children, parents, struck dead as the blast shatters their brains and lungs, struck dead by fear, fright, and the awfullness of it all, suffocated, the air sucked out of their lungs by the flames, exploded, torn apart by the hurricanes of fire, burned and charred down to cinders and then carried in these buckets of ashes and stray bones to the overflowing cemetaries or stacked like cord wood in huge piles and consumed by bonfires that blazed for days.

Not only adults, the aged, or women but we see children growing up used to seeing friends and neighbors blown to bits, burned to cinders, used to fleeing the strafers, seeing their parents, their teachers, and themselves fall into the flames. This was life form those who were the targets of the Allied Bombers. This is the story told here.

Nearly a million people, including about 100,000 Allied Air Crew, were murdered in the Allied terror bombing of Europe's cities, most in the fire bombing of Germany.

In the first years of WWII, the British and then the US, learned that it was simply impossible with the aircraft and technology of the 1940s to hit designated targets of economic and military importance without sustaining losses that would have eliminated the air crews. A British study of attempts to hit only such targets at the end of 1941, found that as many British aircrew were being killed as Germans on the ground. However, learning from German fire bombing of Coventry, the British discovered while hitting targets was hard, burning down an entire European city, or at least its central core, filled with wooden and wood-beamed buildings holding the legacy of culture, history, and religion from the times of the Romans on, was possible. To this task they set themselves, working with urban fire fighters, experts from insurance companies, pouring over insurance maps of Germany, studying not how to hit Germany armories, military barracks, tanks or army stockpiles, but how to burn furniture, home roof top, bedding, clothing, books, and children's toys, how to burn the people and their lives.

From then on, the British designed their bombing campaigns to produce firestorms. The most famous were the razing of Hamburg and Dresden which were not unique, but the achievement of what the British, later joined by the US, sought to do every time a large bombing raid was planned. Many smaller cities and towns in Germany suffered far worst damage in percentage of devastation and casualties than these two famous cities. Some cities were bombed HUNDREDS OF TIMES between 1942 and 1945. Especially, in 1944 and 1945 many cities, towns, and even villages were bombed for the simple reason that they had not been bombed before. Jörg Friedrich discloses that beyond the fire-bombing, Churchill kept the alternative of combined gas and Anthrax bombing of Germany available with a million bombs until he realized such chemical and biological warfare would also harm invading Allied troops.

Arthur Harris, commander of British Bomber Command, and Churchill behind him simply mean to murder people in Germany. Harris considered all other military efforts even the invasion of Western Europe to be a waste of time. He thought that all resources should be directed to murdering Germans in their homes from the air. In fact, in 1944 when ordered to carry out a campaign against oil facilities in Germany, Harris disregarded the order kept burning German cities. Often military facilties, such as the air base and Army barrcks in Dresden, were not impacted at all while thousands of elderly, women, and children were murdered by the British and American bombers. While post-war critics have attempted to demonize Harris, it was Churchill and the rest of the Allied leaders who put Harris in this position and sustained his plans with thousands of bombers, billions of tons of bombs, and hundreds of thousands of air crew.

After the war, studies especially by US intelligence and military found the bombing had little impact on German industrial production and increased the anger of the average German against the Allies. After all, if they could do such horror against Germans from the air, what horrors were ahead if the British and Americans occupied Germany.

Jörg Friedrich is very clear about the evil the Nazi government represented, about the heartless way Hitler and other Nazi leaders actually thought the terror bombing helped them by making millions of Germans "soldiers" in their homes. He also documents the extraordinary work Germans did the minimize the human casualties. Allied air commanders assumed they had killed millions of Germans, but "only" five or six hundred thousand were murdered.

The greatness of this work is how he explains the human and cultural cost of the bombing. British bombers aimed for the old sections of the city made of wood. Most often their target points were the Cathedrals and high churches that the old towns and cities were built around. Hospitals, often linked with these religious institutions or mistaken for factories were also a frequent target. Walls of flames burnt away some of the most priceless religous and historical monuments in Europe. Friedrich explains the firebombing was the greatest book burning in human history, far outweighing the books Hitler burnt in 1933. He gives a great history of what was lost culturally and historically in the flames that swept across Germany in the war.

But what is the human cost! Jörg Friedrich gives us the stories of the thousands and thousands who were burned to death, torn apart by explosions, sucked into the super hurricane gales of the firestorms, smothered as the fire storms sucked all the oxygen out of shelters, and gassed as the heat of the fire storms turned the piles of coal and coke that were in every basement and cellar into carbon monoxide produers.

The allied bombs were specifically designed not only the launch fires but were planned to hinder fire fighting and rescue attempts. Waterworks were usually key targets in these raides. Delayed-detonation bombs that would go off even days after the fire storms made it dangerous for firefighters and often fatal for rescue teams. In 1944 and 1945, American and British fighters strafed refugees, rescuers, and fire fighters. Everything possible was done to multiply the death toll and stop the rescue and physical recovery.

This book is more understandable if one consults the map of Germany on inside back cover. It will force the reader unfamiliar with German and European history to learn more.

The claim that the bombing was a result of military measures was a lie. Harris considered any military operation other than murdering and "dehousing" Germans to be a diversion. Even in a place as hard hit as Dresden, the actual military targets--the town's airbase and army barracks for example--were hardly touched, but tens of thousands lost their lives in their homes, their schools, their churches, their libraries. Even though Jews fighting against the death camps urged the bombing of death factories like Aushclitz, neither US nor Britain, allowed such a task to interfere with their campaign to murder ordinary Germans.

Nearly a million people, including about 100,000 Allied Air Crew, were murdered in the Allied terror bombing of Europe's cities, most in the fire bombing of Germany. This book looks at this experience, central to modern history and only outdone by the fire-bombing of Japan, and the devastation of Vietnam which received more bombing than both sides dropped in WWII including the Atomic bombs. This Hitler's fascist terror and the genocide of Jews, Gypsies, and others, this crime needs to be ever in our minds to understand the evil of modern capitalist society. As human beings, we need to reject the alienated fiction of looking at this from the mythologized views from the bombers--though most of the bomber aircrew were also killed--but learn the fate of the common majority, the bombed. The nuclear blackmail that the United States put the entire world in since WWII has put every person in the world in the situation of the bombed, so in this book we learn our fate.

The British and then the US, learned that it was simply impossible with the aircraft and technology of the 1940s to hit designated targets of economic and military importance without sustaining losses that would have eliminated the air crews. A British study of attempts to hit only such targets at the end of 1941, found that as many British aircrew were being killed as Germans on the ground. However, learning from German fire bombing of Coventry, the British discovered while hitting targets was hard, burning down an entire European city, or at least its central core, filled with wooden and wood-beamed buildings holding the legacy of culture, history, and religion from the times of the Romans on, was possible.

From then on, the British designed their bombing campaigns to produce firestorms. The most famous were the razing of Hamburg and Dresden which were not unique, but the achievement of what the British, later joined by the US, sought to do every time a large bombing raid was planned. Many smaller cities and towns in Germany suffered far worst damage in percentage of devastation and casualties than these two famous cities. In many other cities where a city-wide firestorm did not bomb destroy the entire city, the same terror was meted out over and over and over. Some cities were bombed HUNDREDS OF TIMES between 1942 and 1945. Especially, in 1944 and 1945 many cities, towns, and even villages were bombed for the simple reason that they had not been bombed before. Jörg Friedrich discloses that beyond the fire-bombing, Churchill kept the alternative of combined gas and Anthrax bombing of Germany available with a million bombs until he realized such chemical and biological warfare would also harm invading Allied troops.

Arthur Harris, commander of British Bomber Command, and Churchill behind him simply mean to murder people in Germany. Harris considered all other military efforts even the invasion of Western Europe to be a waste of time. He thought that all resources should be directed to murdering Germans in their homes from the air. In fact, in 1944 when ordered to carry out a campaign against oil facilities in Germany, Harris disregarded the order kept burning German cities. Often military facilties, such as the air base and Army barrcks in Dresden, were not impacted at all while thousands of elderly, women, and children were murdered by the British and American bombers.

After the war, studies especially by US intelligence and military found the bombing had little impact on German industrial production and increased the anger of the average German against the Allies. After all, if they could do such horror against Germans from the air, what horrors were ahead if the British and Americans occupied Germany.

Jörg Friedrich is very clear about the evil the Nazi government represented, about the heartless way Hitler and other Nazi leaders actually thought the terror bombing helped them by making millions of Germans "soldiers" in their homes. He also documents the extraordinary work Germans did the minimize the human casualties. Allied air commanders assumed they had killed millions of Germans, but "only" five or six hundred thousand were murdered.

The greatness of this work is how he explaisn the human and cultural cost of the bombing. British bombers aimed for the old sections fo the city made of wood. Most often their target points were the Cathedrals and high churches the old towns and cities were built around. Hospitals, often linked with these religious institutions or mistaken for factories were also a frequent target. Walls of flames burnt away some of the most priceless religous and historical monuments in Europe. Friedrich explains the firebombing was the greatest book burning in human history, far outweighing the books Hitler burnt in 1933.

But what is the human cost! Jörg Friedrich gives us the stories of the thousands and thousands who were burned to death, torn apart by explosions, sucked into the super hurricane gales of the firestorms, smothered as the fire storms sucked all the oxygen out of shelters, and gassed as the heat of the fire storms turned the piles of coal and coke that were in every basement and cellar into carbon monoxide produers.

The allied bombs were specifically designed not only the launch firesm but were planned to hinder fire fighting and rescue attempts. Waterworks were usually key targets in these raides. Delayed-detonation bombs that would go off even days after the fire storms made it dangerous for firefighters and often fatal for rescue teams. In 1944 and 1945, American and British fighters strafed refugees, rescuers, and fire fighters. Everything possible was done to multiply the death toll and stop the rescue and physical recovery.

When I read this book, I think of a German women I have known. One was 12 years old sent out to buy bread on that day in Hamburg when the British and American bombers came. Days after the bombingt the city was so oblitterated that she could not find her entire neighborhood, let alone her home or her parents. Losing her mind, Martine wandered around Germany starving and alone for weeks before she was taken care of. She grew with the idea of stopping this inhumanity and married another fighter for humanity who had tried to organize German soldiers against Hitler and who was sent to the death camps for being Jewish.

Progress for humanity will flow out of our willingess to understand these twin horrors and to fight to replace the capitalist system that created them.

It is refreshing that a book about the bombing centers on the main part of the bombing, not the horrid world of the aircrews who were killed in their tens of thousands, not the pornography of details of military equipment that masks the dehumanization of war, but the tens of millions of people in Europe and Asia who were bombed, and the billions of people around the world who have felt themselves under permanent threat of similar bombing in the years since the second world war. While I differ with some of the approaches of the author and his overall philosophy, I applaud the way he brings the real subject to the fore. This is a book that needs to be read. The problem of this subject is that there are not more books with this approach.

This is the crisis and meaning of the bombing of Germany, not the superiority of the Mosquito over the B-17 or problems flying a Lancaster.

The fire bombing of Germany cost about one million lives and countless treasure including the death of the majority of the allied air crew who were involved in it and the shooting down of hundreds of airplanes that costs millions of dollars even in the 1940s.

Arthur Harris the architecht of the terror bombing of Germany claimed his only aim was to murder Germans and destroy housing. Harris opposed attacking targets that were of a military nature, a strategic econopmic nature, or associated with the battle fronts. Harris noteably simply refused orders in 1944 to target oil facilities which all accounts Allied and German would have brought the war to an end. Instead, he targeted killing ordinary people in towns and cities. Even in the last months of 1945 when the war was decided, many German cities and towns were firebombed for no other reason than they had not yet been bombed. Indeed, Harris believed all other military action against Germany on land or sea was a distraction and that all the military and economic resources of the Allies should be used for murder bombing.

While the US used another rhetoric USAAF bombing was coordinated with Harris's murder campaign with American bombers often breaking up cities to provide kindling for Harris's fire bombers and American Mustangs often strafing fire fighters and refugees fleeing the bombing.

All investigation of this bombing after the war showed that it was useless in regard to ending the war. Germany was remarkable in its degree of reshuffling and repairing to meet immediate needs of the people.

On the other hand, an implacable hostility to the Allies developed in the average German who was lukewarm at best about the war before the bombing began. The savagery shown in the bombing convinced Germans that surrendering to the Western Allies would lead to more cruelty, oppression, and murder. Studies show that even hunted underground opponents of the Nazis began to have some belief in the need for a German victory after the murder bombing started.

German war production increased, not declined during the bombing. In cities with military facilities such as Dresden that had an airbase, a major army barracks, and railroad yards severing the front lines of the German battle with Russia, almost no damage was done to military facilities while cultural treasures and tens of thousands of ordinary people were murdered.

Both German and allied investigators after the war found that if Germany's oil industry and key parts of its machine industry like the ball bearing industries had been hit by as many raids as they were hit with again, Germany would not have been able to resist past the fall of 1944. In effect, the impact of these raids was to help German resistance to the Allies and the USSR.

My companion was a baby during these bombings. Her mother was a nurse in a hospital in an area outside of the scope of the fighting, in a small town in the country that was bombed simply because it had not been bombed when the bombing campaign was scheduled to end in April 1945. Her earliest memory is being 3 years old, fleeing the bombing as her mother pushed her baby carriage through the flaming ruins of the hospital her mother worked in.

The crime and inhumanity of the bombing of Germany was only exceded by the bombing of Japan in which the same amount of murders were done in five months as were done in Germany in five years. It should be noted that the conventional raids were just as murderous as the later atomic bombing. The most deadly raid against Japan was not Hiroshima or Nagasaki but the first nightime raid on Tokyo. The balance sheet of the military impact of that bombing was the same. Indeed, after long protest of the lack of military impact, the US Navy launched its own carrier based bombing campaign against the Japanese military establishment because Le May's terror bombing had so little effect on Japan's capacity to fight.

Even these killings were outdone by the war against the little nation of Vietnam. More bombing was done against Vietnam than all the bombing that was done BY BOTH SIDES in the Second World War and the Korean War.

We should never underestimate the inhumanity of the billionaires who run this society. We are not safe until power is taken out of their hands

In this "encyclopedia of pain", Friedrich elaborates on Allied bombing tactics, Nazi countermeasures, civil defense, etc. He goes city-by-city, giving the reader a German-history lesson before discussing its bombing.

Consider the forced laborers: "Poles and Ukrainians were considered the most loyal workers. Poles, marked with a `P' on their clothing, showed great attachment to their farmsteads and the livestock they cared for. Near Cologne, `two Poles rescued the livestock out of burning stalls despite the flames; they had to be protected all the while by the spray of the water hoses.'" (p. 430)

Friedrich includes ironies. He comments: "The Huns returned in modern times as a slang term for the Germans. Emperor Wilhelm II, in his brash manner, even referred to himself as one." (p. 223). The Trawniki (Ukrainian and Baltic collaborators), who earlier burned the bodies of Jews in massive pyres at such places as Treblinka, now put their expertise to use in the mass cremations of German bodies (p. 379). The V2 rockets claimed more lives in their construction than in their explosions (p. 113).

The behaviors of German civilians help the reader understand comparable actions by others under wartime conditions. Much has been made of the Poles' looting of recently-Jewish properties. Yet some 15,000 German civilians were sentenced to death for various antisocial acts, including looting (pp. 392-394).

Friedrich tiptoes around the Germans' choice of Hitler by pointing to all those German children killed by Allied bombing who couldn't even know what a Nazi was (p. 483). Nice try, but it won't fly (pardon the pun). Actions have consequences. When voters go to the polls, they fully understand that they are voting not only for their own future, but also for that of their co-nationals and, of course, their children. In MEIN KAMPF, the Fuhrer-to-be planned a large war against the Slavic east for lebensraum. By voting for Hitler, the Germans were also tacitly voting for the destruction of Slavic children. The German people had a choice about the precipitation of a new war; the Poles and other recipients of German aggression had no such choice.

Friedrich also under-emphasizes the precedent-setting conduct of German aerial warfare. He cites the bombing of Warsaw, including the strategy of using explosive bombs to drive people into their cellars, followed by incendiary bombing to suffocate (or burn) the people now trapped there (p. 50). However, the bombing of Poland dwarfed the subsequent horrors at Rotterdam, Coventry, and London. Already in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939, the Luftwaffe was slaughtering large numbers of Polish civilians in wholesale attacks on obviously nonmilitary targets (including hospitals and cultural shrines). In Warsaw alone tens of thousands of Polish civilians perished in three weeks of furious German overkill. Not until some 3 years into the war did a single Allied air raid cost the lives of 10,000 or more German or Japanese civilians! Friedrich mentions the Allied strafing of Germans (p. 128), but not the fact that the Luftwaffe habitually strafed columns of fleeing Polish civilians already back in 1939.

Friedrich elaborates on the destruction of libraries (pp. 472-479), notably the painful loss of over 2,000 incunabula in Berlin (p. 478), but again without adequate contextualization. After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans systematically burned all of the libraries and archives of Warsaw, causing the loss of some 13 million volumes, including some 500,000 irreplaceable ones. That, rather than the destruction of German libraries, was perhaps the greatest book-burning in history. Ditto for architecture: The retreating Germans didn't blow up the militarily-innocent cultural cities of Krakow and Czestochowa only for failing to complete the laying of the explosive charges before the unexpectedly-early advance of the Red Army.

In this "encyclopedia of pain", Friedrich elaborates on Allied bombing tactics, Nazi countermeasures, civil defense, etc. He goes city-by-city, giving the reader a German-history lesson before discussing its bombing.

Consider the forced laborers: "Poles and Ukrainians were considered the most loyal workers. Poles, marked with a `P' on their clothing, showed great attachment to their farmsteads and the livestock they cared for. Near Cologne, `two Poles rescued the livestock out of burning stalls despite the flames; they had to be protected all the while by the spray of the water hoses.'" (p. 430)

Friedrich includes ironies. He comments: "The Huns returned in modern times as a slang term for the Germans. Emperor Wilhelm II, in his brash manner, even referred to himself as one." (p. 223). The Trawniki (Ukrainian and Baltic collaborators), who earlier burned the bodies of Jews in massive pyres at such places as Treblinka, now put their expertise to use in the mass cremations of German bodies (p. 379). The V2 rockets claimed more lives in their construction than in their explosions (p. 113).

The behaviors of German civilians help the reader understand comparable actions by others under wartime conditions. Much has been made of the Poles' looting of recently-Jewish properties. Yet some 15,000 German civilians were sentenced to death for various antisocial acts, including looting (pp. 392-394).

Friedrich tiptoes around the Germans' choice of Hitler by pointing to all those German children killed by Allied bombing who couldn't even know what a Nazi was (p. 483). Nice try, but it won't fly (pardon the pun). Actions have consequences. When voters go to the polls, they fully understand that they are voting not only for their own future, but also for that of their co-nationals and, of course, their children. In MEIN KAMPF, the Fuhrer-to-be planned a large war against the Slavic east for lebensraum. By voting for Hitler, the Germans were also tacitly voting for the destruction of Slavic children. The German people had a choice about the precipitation of a new war; the Poles and other recipients of German aggression had no such choice.

Friedrich also under-emphasizes the precedent-setting conduct of German aerial warfare. He cites the bombing of Warsaw, including the strategy of using explosive bombs to drive people into their cellars, followed by incendiary bombing to suffocate (or burn) the people now trapped there (p. 50). However, the bombing of Poland dwarfed the subsequent horrors at Rotterdam, Coventry, and London. Already in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939, the Luftwaffe was slaughtering large numbers of Polish civilians in wholesale attacks on obviously nonmilitary targets (including hospitals and cultural shrines). In Warsaw alone tens of thousands of Polish civilians perished in three weeks of furious German overkill. Not until some 3 years into the war did a single Allied air raid cost the lives of 10,000 or more German or Japanese civilians! Friedrich mentions the Allied strafing of Germans (p. 128), but not the fact that the Luftwaffe habitually strafed columns of fleeing Polish civilians already back in 1939.

Friedrich elaborates on the destruction of libraries (pp. 472-479), notably the painful loss of over 2,000 incunabula in Berlin (p. 478), but again without adequate contextualization. After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans systematically burned all of the libraries and archives of Warsaw, causing the loss of some 13 million volumes, including some 500,000 irreplaceable ones. That, rather than the destruction of German libraries, was perhaps the greatest book-burning in history. Ditto for architecture: The retreating Germans didn't blow up the militarily-innocent cultural cities of Krakow and Czestochowa only for failing to complete the laying of the explosive charges before the unexpectedly-early advance of the Red Army.

Rather lengthy account of the result of Allied bombing in OF Germany during ww2. Graphic and dismal,yet sheds light on the terrible consequences of war.

I am a WWII buff and have read an awful lot about the war generally and the firebombing campaigns in particular. But this book takes it to a new level, a riveting, highly depressing account of the intentional targeting and slaughtering of tens of thousands of civilians in an explicit effort to "weaken the will" of the German people and thus hasten the end of the war.

Churchill really comes across as the instigator of much of the detailed destruction of historic city centers, ancient churches and steeples, dams, water mains, you just about name it. Roosevelt is described by the author as "more humane" and mostly focused on the targeting of legitimate military and industrial targets.

But according to this book, the British worked for years with fire prevention specialists to devise the best method to destroy old and largely defenseless historic German cities. Careful attention was paid by the British to which buildings would burn fastest, how it would best be spread, which fire walls and water mains to destroy, and how to stop the fire from being put out in order to maximize civilian death and destruction. The author makes no real attempt to justify any of this, other than to say that the British were desperate and being bombed themselves.

Interesting facts - Churchill ordered from the US military a large quantity of anthrax, to be dropped on German cities, but the anthrax was set to arrive after the Allies landed on the continent, so the plan was disbanded.

New facts recounted of the horrific British destruction of the massive dams protecting the Ruhr river valley, leading to massive drowning, drought, and devastation of defenseless women and children living in villages downriver. The technology of firebombing, and the effects on the civilians who retreated to cellars, are all discussed in painful detail. Attention is paid to the great likelihood of dying that the British bombers knew went along with their dangerous missions, but the pilots are hardly described here as "heroes."

The book, however, lacks a narrative structure and could have been more crisply edited. It is simply a collection of death and destruction, intentional and targeted directly at civilians, with account after account of successful bombing raids and their effect on the historic treasures there were destroyed as a result -- along with the many many thousands of civilian dead.

This is a hard read, and I found myself reaching for someone or something to help me understand the moral equivalency of what I had been reading -- something to put it into perspective so you are not left with the sense that war is hell, and many war crimes were committed by the participants with no understanding of the whys or the moral justifications for same. For this book, it is the hows that are itemized in dark deadly detail.

Very comprehensive review of the bombing of Germany during WWII, but not very readable.
I consider it to be a good reference book. Anyone seeking specific information or details about the bombing will probably find it in this book, if they look hard enough. And that's the problem. The wealth of information is not very well organized, making the narration hard to follow and a difficult read, even for this died-in-the-wool WWII buff.

A different type of history, not a narrative history but an impressionistic one of the terrible effects of the Allied bombing in Germany on both the German public and cultural treasures. This book must be balanced by books such as Robin Neilland's "The Bomber War" and Donald Miller's "Masters of the Air." The U.S. Eighth Air Force tried daylight precision bombing for the initial period of their operations, but in the Schweinfurt raid they lost 60 bombers (600 air crew). This loss rate could not continue, so they switched to area bombing, following the British Bomber Command example. This is the only possible strategy they could have adopted. Bombing was just not accurate enough in those days (unlike today) to be able to precisely hit military targets. The results were devastating on German civilians and precious cultural treasures like churches and books, but no other means of attack would have worked. This only emphasizes the great tragedy of war and how much it should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Another point the author makes is that at a certain point Germany was beaten, why did the bombing continue? Answer: the government would not surrender, and the fight was brutal until near the very end. After the Germans started the second world war within two generations, the Allies insisted that Germany be totally defeated, unlike the WW I armistice. Even after the WW II surrender there was armed action by the Werewolf organization. Disclosure: my father was career U.S. Air Force and served in WWII, though in the Pacific. I've worked as a civilian for the Air Force for over 20 years. I've never met anyone who hated war more than those who have fought them, the soldiers who bear the brunt of the action. But sometimes the human tragedy of war is the only choice if tyrants are not to rule the world. The author realizes that, he's not a pacifist. We can join him in mourning the loss of life and cultural treasures, but not in his unrealistic view that an alternative course of action could have been taken. Certainly, read this book, but don't stop there if you want the full history on these tragic issues.

This book gives the German perspective which, if you haven't read it before, does offer a different view. The subject matter was covered well
in the first one-fifth of the book. Not much changed in the last 80
percent except for the names of the towns. I waded through the entire
book mainly because my father was an aviator in this campaign; if he
hadn't been, I'm pretty sure I couldn't have finished the book, simply
because I felt I was reading the same story over and over.

As a veteran of WW II and a member of the Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy, I always saw the bombing campaign from the bombers' point of view. But, there was always a gnawing question about what was happening to the cities and people on the receiving end of our efforts. Friedrich's wonderful book provides the answer and it's not a pretty one.

Friedrich's book has made me question the ethics of armed conflict, whether we're speaking of "The Good War" or not.

The harrowing aspect of this book is the quoted attitudes of the Allied (primarily British) leaders. Bomber Command, as I understand it, was the only branch that was not commended for its service after the war. Arthur "Bomber" Harris was the only one not to receive a peerage. During the war, the political leaders were eager to tell Harris "Go to, go to!" like spectators at a rape. But afterwards, they didn't want it booted about that they were intentionally targeting civilians against our own traditions and public statements ("We are only bombing military targets" Bomber Command repeatedly said) and the vast majority of the civilian leadership, including Churchill, was cheering them on. Even Churchill was keen on ordering anthrax bombs for use against the Germans.

After the war, the Allied Bombing Survey found that the bombing was relatively disappointing, especially in its avowed goal of destroying German industry. German war production peaked in the last quarter of 1944 and it wasn't until the ground forces arrived that production was effectively stopped. According to J. F. C. Fuller, in his "The Second World War," there was only one plant in German producing the necessary lead additive to raise fuel octane but it was never bombed. He also opined that the vast fortune in money and materiel expended on the bombing offensive would have been better used in the production of landing craft, the shortage of which, time and again, delayed the decisive ground attacks that defeated Germany.

There was no point in destroying the German cities turned to dust and ashes in the last few months of the war. At that time what made a city a target was that it hadn't been bombed before.

"The quality of mercy is not strained, but falleth like the rain from heaven," and mercy and humanity was supposed to be the Allies strong suit. When American ground units bypassed a German town and drew fire, they fired back into the town until it stopped. The bombing was not such a justified act of reprisal - according to our own standards. After a point, we were just killing more civilians and "making the rubble bounce."

Germany deserved to lose this war and I am heartily glad they did, but we owe more to the GI's and their suffering in accomplishing that goal than we do to "strategic bombing," which was like a giant ineptly swinging a gigantic sledge hammer, a giant intentionally set free by the politicians to do his worst.

At the very least, this book gives one much (very much) to think about. The savage and brutal atrocities of the German forces were their responsibility and history should witness to such evil. Allied excesses were our sides responsibility, and we have done a poor job of owning up to them.

The author's weakest argument is when he describes things like the attacks on transportation links just before the D-Day landings. Thousands of occupied civilians were killed because bombing was just not that accurate in those days, but those targets had to be taken out for the landings to succeed. I'm sure that the occupied populations, had a poll been possible, would have stoutly backed the effort to get the Nazi beast off their backs, even if some of their own would die in the effort. In this case we are dealing with valid military targets and the limits of technology at that time.

In any event, there is much here that does not do credit to the Allied side and the interests of history and posterity deserve to have it made known. I, for one, have a difficult time describing to my sons what our side did in this fashion.

You should read also, "Wings of Judgment" by Schaefer (sp?), a somewhat more clinical analysis of the policy decisions and history of the bombing.

I am an armature student of WWII history and specifically the European Theater. When I saw the author of this book being interviewed on Book TV - yes, that's right, I watch Book TV - I wanted to read "The Fire" for myself. I knew of the controversy surrounding this book, and was hoping that it would be a good and spicy controversy. I was not disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed this book. The final conclusions of the author are interesting and now I know why this book has generated so much controversy. The final conclusion of the author is that the Allies, with their unscrupulous and deliberate bombing of civilian targets which left over 200,000 men, women and children - along with 70,000 under the age of eight who had no idea what a Nazi even was - dead, were in many ways as guilty as the Nazis who were responsible for the Holocaust. I generally agree with this conclusion and agree that many of the Allie's actions were just as despicable as the Nazis' actions. However, I would not brand the allied forces as evil and tyrannical oppressors. They were in fact the liberators and rescuers of Europe and the rest of the world. And I would not passively excuse the Nazis' for what they did in the Death Camps. I just think that in the midst of a chaotic and unsympathetic war, there were evil actions committed by both sides that cannot be forgotten or whitewashed.

As for the contents of the book, Herr Friedrich does a wonderful job at examining the both allied and axis strategy, weapons, tactics, leadership and overall role in the air battle over Germany. And with gripping and repugnant photos of the victims of the air battle over Germany, this book also serves as a memorial to those who lost their lives on both sides during the air battle over Germany. So, if you are interested in WWII history and enjoy a good and spicy controversial book - like I do - then this is a must read on the air battle over Germany.

I am retired history professor and always had problems to get my students to deal with books about WWII that would not in one way or another condemn Germany and praise the U.S. I have taught and lectured in many countries and have never seen such as strong a need, not just among students, to protect a received, generally positive view of history. Even the traditional "left" and "right", often bitterly devided over other issues, find much common ground here. Many of my studens knew before I started lecturing what their assigned WWII paper would say, and what they heard in class or read in assigned material was of help only to the degree that it would confirm what they already knew. Books such as Alfons Heck's "A Child of Hitler", for example, generally aroused distrust and even anger because very little in them seemed of any help. Although Heck's book talks about WWII, it primarily offers descriptions and explanations and not condemnations. The reviews I have read here of Friedrich's book express, on the whole, a similar sentiment.

From personal experience, I know that Friedrich's book is as accurate a desription of what happend to the inhabitants of German cities during allied bombings as you may find anywhere. As a scholar, I can see flaws in its style of representation that a good book review (which this is not) should address. As a German immigrant, I can only note that it will take much longer than I had hoped for cooler heads to prevail when it comes to discussing and representing WWII and its epoch. As a human being, I have problems realizing that some people will base their judgment of the suffering of innocent people (children) on the views they hold of those who inflict the suffering. I seems that many of the lessons contained in the narrative of WWII, including of course the Holocaust, are lost, perhaps forever. It is mainly for that reason that Friedrich's book should be read, particularly by people who find the thought that it is possible to be German AND to be a victim very uncomfortable.

Written in a calm, low-key style that at first seems inappropiate, Friedrich inexorably builds up the tension and the horror of the bombing war. At the end the reader is left devastated at the futility and seemimg inevitability of it all. A fine work.

I am retired history professor and always had problems to get my students to deal with books about WWII that would not in one way or another condemn Germany and praise the U.S. I have taught and lectured in many countries and have never seen such as strong a need, not just among students, to protect a received, generally positive view of history. Even the traditional "left" and "right", often bitterly devided over other issues, find much common ground here. Many of my studens knew before I started lecturing what their assigned WWII paper would say, and what they heard in class or read in assigned material was of help only to the degree that it would confirm what they already knew. Books such as Alfons Heck's "A Child of Hitler", for example, generally aroused distrust and even anger because very little in them seemed of any help. Although Heck's book talks about WWII, it primarily offers descriptions and explanations and not condemnations. The reviews I have read here of Friedrich's book express, on the whole, a similar sentiment.

From personal experience, I know that Friedrich's book is as accurate a desription of what happend to the inhabitants of German cities during allied bombings as you may find anywhere. As a scholar, I can see flaws in its style of representation that a good book review (which this is not) should address. As a German immigrant, I can only note that it will take much longer than I had hoped for cooler heads to prevail when it comes to discussing and representing WWII and its epoch. As a human being, I have problems realizing that some people will base their judgment of the suffering of innocent people (children) on the views they hold of those who inflict the suffering. I seems that many of the lessons contained in the narrative of WWII, including of course the Holocaust, are lost, perhaps forever. It is mainly for that reason that Friedrich's book should be read, particularly by people who find the thought that it is possible to be German AND to be a victim very uncomfortable.

Written in a calm, low-key style that at first seems inappropiate, Friedrich inexorably builds up the tension and the horror of the bombing war. At the end the reader is left devastated at the futility and seemimg inevitability of it all. A fine work.

What author Jorg Friedrich has done with truth and historical accuracy in this book is an atrocity.

Yes, it is interesting, well-researched, well-written and conveys a powerful message.

Unfortunately, that message is neither true nor new.

Indeed, this is a book written by a German for Germans to support the still growing myth of the Germans as victims of World War II, rather than perpetrators. It is a myth too many Germans still cling to for it helps them to avoid facing the never-ending nightmare and collective guilt that is their past.

The author covers, in excruciating detail, the fate of dozens of German cities, pummeled to rubble and incinerated by the Allied strategic bombing campaign. The history and cultural and architectural uniqueness of each city is highlighted (as though only German cities were unique in this sense), as is the fate of each city's doomed civilian population. Strong language is reserved for the Allies, their bombing campaign against Aachen, for example, a center of fanatical Nazi resistance late in the war being described as "an atrocity".

But not a word is said by Herr Freidrich about real atrocities.

Not a word is mentioned about the hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children that died at the hands of German bombers in Spain, Poland, the Low Countries, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or England.

Not a word is written about the millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners and other undesirables in German concentration camps, incinerated with no hope of survival, unlike their German counterparts in the cities being bombed by the Allies.

Not a word is recorded about the millions of Russian prisoners of war or the tens of thousands of Italians prisoners of war exterminated in camps dominated by the regular German army.

Indeed, throughout the book the author presents the attempts of the German Army and Luftwaffe to stem the Allied onslaught as heroic. And he hideously distorts the truth about the millions of forced slave laborers in the country, many of whom were worked to death, starved to death, or were beaten to death by their Nazi masters, to depict them as willing fellow-suffers alongside their kind German overseers.

And here is the real weakness of the author's argument, the inconvenient truth that too many of those who know Germany and know the history of the war are too embarrassed to mention. No German can use morality as an argument against the Allied bombing campaign of World War II. The civilian population of Hitler's Third Reich never accepted responsibility for their role in the mass extermination of other peoples during the war. Instead, the postwar period has been filled with attempts to avoid accepting responsibility, despite stellar work by young German historians to show their complicity in the war crimes of their Nazi regime.

That the strategic bombing campaign shorted the war has been shown by other, more respected historians than Herr Friedrich, who have proven that the vast majority of the cities bombed, especially Hamburg, were without a doubt centers of German military industry.

There is also little doubt that the Allied bombing of Germany facilitated the advance of the Allied ground forces by diverting hundreds of thousands of anti-aircraft guns, tens of thousands of fighter aircraft, and millions of personnel to the defense of the skies over the Third Reich. Had those resources been available on the ground to oppose the Allies, the Americans, British and Russians would have had an even tougher time breaching and defeating the defenses of the Hitler's Germany.

Yes, it is true, that Allied bombing campaign also ensured, early in the war, that the killing and extermination started by Adolph Hitler, with the full support of the people, forced Germany's civilian population to come face-to-face with the horrors of a war they initiated. But this was neither its original nor it main intent. Even if it had been, however, the Germans would have won little sympathy from the populations of conquered Europe or Russia.

The author writes an interesting book, but he and the German people will get little sympathy from readers who know the Germans and their World War II history.

Perhaps as a follow-on volume, Herr Friedrich should consider writing about the searing white-hot fires of the concentration camp ovens that exterminated an entire generation of innocents so completely, that nothing remains to show the world that they once existed.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, in his farewell address to Congress on April 19, 1951, said, "But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory."

The purpose of war is to destroy an enemy's ability to fight, and his will to fight. Germany started WWII. Germany's will and ability to fight was destroyed. Germany lost. Herr Jorg Friedrich can't change or rewrite history, and his hand wringing attempt is typical of liberals who never accept responsibility for their actions.

Incendiary bombs, cluster bomblets with a steel nose and magnesium body, are effective, as both the Germans and Japanese discovered. The next step up is nuclear. If Germany had them, they would have been used on London and other cities.

Germany started a war within a war with Brittan by intentionally booby-trapping some of its bombs with an anti-fuze removal device intended to kill the British bomb disposal men. German V-1 and V-2 missiles killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent English civilians. The Allies have no reason to fill guilty about the use of incendiary bombs.

Herr Friedrich questions the moral basis of Allied action. I wonder if he would be questioning the moral basis of Nazi Germany if Hitler had won? Perhaps he should concentrate on the plight of the German Jews and Allied POWs. Now, that is something to whine about.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, in his farewell address to Congress on April 19, 1951, said, "But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory."

The purpose of war is to destroy an enemy's ability to fight, and his will to fight. Germany started WWII. Germany's will and ability to fight was destroyed. Germany lost. Herr Jorg Friedrich can't change or rewrite history, and his hand wringing attempt is typical of liberals who never accept responsibility for their actions.

Incendiary bombs, cluster bomblets with a steel nose and magnesium body, are effective, as both the German's and Japanese discovered. The next step up is nuclear. If Germany had them, they would have been used on London and other cities.

Germany started a war within a war with Brittan by intentionally booby-trapping some of its bombs with an anti-fuze removal device intended to kill the British bomb disposal men. German V-1 and V-2 missiles killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent English civilians. The Allies have no reason to fill guilty about the use of incendiary bombs.

Herr Jorg should concentrate on the plight of the German Jews and Allied POWs. Now, that is something to whine about.

I am part way through the book, and find it quite interesting. Some of this is not news to me, but some is. The book does give backround & context to some famous images of WWII, such as the pix of he cratered wasteland of Wesel. There are also some good digressions into the land war as it related to bombing, particularly Market Garden and the battles for Aachen and the Huertgen Forest, which I had read about before. The focus is on the aeriel bombings, which is quite interesting, including the destruction of Pforzheim, where a conventional boming attack + firestorm achieved a kill rate higher than Nagasaki. One can see nuclear war as a logical outgrowth of the bomber mentality of WWII. Big shocker so far was the air raid (if you could call it that) on Swinemund, which was pretty much directed at refugees camped out in parks and on ships in the harbor. Reads like a war crime here. The book does have some technical info on how the bombing concept was developed and the different types of bombs used, as well as info on how firestorms developed, and why some German citys burned better than others. Lots of good historical trivia on the various German citys that were destoryed, too, which adds color to the book. An interesting point that the book makes is that this civilian bombing campaign really was pointless, militarily, after 1944, certainly in 1945. The book is well translated, keeping the flavor of German phrasing, but also easy to read and set at a good pace. This is an informative and gripping read.

Friedrich's main problem is that the book has no structure whatsoever. He starts telling about bomb development, jumps to flak effects, makes a detour to GEE and Oboe navigation systems, returns to firewall construction in old German cities, and all of a sudden, he is telling about the damage done to London and Antwerp by V1 and V2.

As one reviewer noted this is not military history; this is a collection of disparate facts, put together without any clear theme. Or maybe the damaged and destroyed German architectural and cultural wonders keeps repeating itself as the guiding principle. Dresden, which was bombed out in practically one raid, is discussed over 20 times, but nowhere can you find a complete account of the fate of the city.

True to German thoroughness, everything is meticulously documented: On April 10th, 1944, 239 British bombers destroyed 2124 railway cars in Lille, killing 456 people. Pforzheim received 1551 tons of bombs: where on earth did this number come from ? RAF files could reveal the tonnage loaded to bombers, but who knows how many planes returned due to technical problems, how many were shot down before bombing, which percentage of those who actually bombed were above Pforzheim, and not somewhere miles off ? Certainly numbers can be found in documents, but Friedrich takes everything at face value, and does not bother to consider the accuracy of his numbers. Especially the accuracy of the number of the dead is amazing, since many towns were completely annihilated, as described by Friedrich.

Some British bomber war histories are awful, like Denis Richard's book, but this one is bad in a completely different sense. It covers the war in context, it deals with both industrialists, pilots and navigators, night fighters, civilians, politicians, generals, firefighters and operation analysts. But unfortunately, it tries to tell everything in every chapter.

Although the book structure is perfectible, this work is impressive, and leaves you with some bad taste in the mouth : did the German civilians deserved that ?

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 Führer 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.

"For all that, the book is flawed."
"There are other weaknesses too. The book is badly translated"

Just thought it was funny that in this same page they quote a positive review by the same magazine...
Have not read it yet.

This is a different kind of history than one I am used to. I found no discernable structure. Nor did I find an explicit thesis. The narrative runs at random across time and space, from pre-Roman history to 1945, from one city to another and back. The only common thread is death, destruction and the bombers themselves. Even the chapters seem to be arbitrary breaks in one long stream of consciousness.

This stream is unrelenting dispassionate fury, quiet but relentless through all 480 plus pages of narrative. Like the bomber streams themselves, you begin to feel its pounding bombardment page after page after page. Then suddenly, like the war, the stream stops and all that is left is the wreckage as you consider what you have endured.

Never actually stated, the theme is nonetheless clear enough. The allied bombing of Germany - in particular that of Bomber Command - brought massive death and destruction to Germans, destroyed priceless artifacts built and preserved for centuries, yet made little contribution to actually winning the war.

The author makes no excuses for Germany and, from time to time in passing, acknowledges both the evil done by Germans and that the Germans themselves were the pioneers in bombing defenseless cities. The author fully admits that the Germans would have eagerly done worse with bombers - if they had had the power.

The author's point is that the Germans did not have the power. By late 1944, when the war's outcome was no longer in doubt and the destruction began in earnest, they were so totally overmatched by the allies so as to be at the mercy of the bombers. And the