Customer Reviews

Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan

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If you are looking for a book that glorifies the civilian bombing campaigns over Europe ,dont waste your money. If you are looking for another book that is essentially "History written by the victors" dont waste your time. If are expecting a book that will say "Hell yah...we bombed the hell out of them and they deserved it.",you will be sorely disappointed.
And that is apparently what the negative reviwers of this book were looking for. After viewing some of their other reviews it seems they were essentially seeking another book that agreed with their point of view or opinion that we never, ever did anything wrong.
Admittedly, there are some chronological,and technical errors,minor in context, but this was not meant to be a reference book.
As the proud son of a American WW2 veteran ,whos job it was to difuse mines ,shells,and bombs ,i certainly am no bleeding heart anti-american liberal looking to condemn our courageous veterans.
But as in all wars, i find that atrociites start at the top, in the command structure,and there was no difference here. "Bomber Harris" gets the credit/blame for getting this ball rolling.And he is unaploigetic about it.
If you are looking for a book that presents a "relatively" unbiased view ,in courtroom case manner, then you will find it a very interesting read.
The view from both sides of the arguement is looked at, and analyzed, and judged ,aginst the statistical outcome that was achieved.
If instead we had surrounded civilian poulation centers and told the commanders to send in their troops ,and go to every 6th building and drag the inhabitants out into the streets and kill them, then blow up or burn the structure to the ground,the results would have been the same statistically. But that would have been considered a war crime. Yet somehow ,the impersonal act of strategic bombing non combatant population centers gets a pass in the eyes of many history books.
And that is the wrong that this book strives to right. Will this book change the past..no...But it can change the way this event is viewed in historical reference ,and hopfully prevent it from happening again.

Growing up in the United States during the height of the Cold War, we learned all about the atrocities of the Nazis and the Japanese. "Among the Dead Cities" is a philosophical analysis of whether the Allied powers were also guilty of war crimes, through their indiscriminant bombings of civilian areas in Germany and Japan.

Aside from detailing the destruction of the cities, Grayling offers countering arguments and also explains the slow escalation of aerial bombardment attacks between Nazi Germany and the United Kingdom. This escalation also carried over to American bombing campaign in Germany, and also into the Pacific. The discussion of the strategic thoughts at the time, are provided not as a means of establishing sympathy, but for readers to develop an understanding of the strategic thoughts at the time.

"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." These words spoken by Robert E. Lee during the Battle of Fredericksburg poignantly describe the destruction brought forth by the Allies. This book needs to be read not just by Airmen, but by all who answered the call to the Profession of Arms.

A.C. Grayling's "Among the Dead Cities" is a valiant, but ultimately flawed attempt to examine the moral ramifications of the Allied bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan during the Second World War. Few authors in the English-speaking world have yet had the courage to examine this issue and this book is both welcome and valuable, particularly in light of the bearing that this moral dilemma poses on subsequent policies undertaken by the victorious nations. Grayling's main philosophical question here is whether or not the bombings were wrong. In the pursuit of his answer, he examines the possible justifications for the bombing of civilians thoroughly and, for the most part, objectively. His training as a philosopher allows him to neatly torpedo the arguments in favor of the bombing of civilians in a concise and articulate manner, though his historical accuracy is occasionally wrong on some of the details. (For example, in a list of conquered territories and client states from which Hitler obtained resources, he lists Silesia, a region which was mainly populated by German-speaking peoples from the 13th century onwards and had been part of Prussia or Austria since the 15th century.) These instances are fortunately few and usually of a technical nature.

Of greater consequence are some of the ways in which he ultimately undermines his own argument. While no book on the European theater of WWII would be complete without mention of the Holocaust, Grayling's constant emphasis on how much worse it was than anything that the Allies had done has the net effect of defusing his own argument. The Holocaust, for all of its horrors, is as incidental to his examination of the morality of the bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan as the criminal history of a man would be in the trial of his sister's rapist. No competent judge would allow such material to be considered in a rape trial and, similarly, the constant evocations of the Holocaust, no matter how horribly wrong it was, do not belong in this book. Weighing the relative "wrongness" of the different events gives the impression of excusing the less wrong one, no matter how much Grayling protests to the contrary in the text. Comparing atrocities to see which is more atrocious is an intellectually useless pursuit and will never lead to the prevention of future atrocities. Grayling seems to be aware of this, but he can't help himself from doing it anyway.

Other ways in which he undermines his efforts are his insistence on using the lowest possible casualty figures for the cities that were bombed (25,000 in Dresden?!?) and his reliance on English-language source material alone in making his case. The former he explains as an effort to be conservative and the latter as an effort to maintain his independence from the opinions of the writers of Germany and Japan who are often portrayed as using their civilians' victimhood to attempt to minimize their own culpability in WWII. Both of these are mistakes, though the latter is the more egregious one as it renders the victims voiceless. The understatement of casualty figures is a more minor mistake because there are never reliable casualty figures for events of this magnitude. One need look no further than the attack on the World Trade Center to know that.

Overall, though, this book is a definite step in the right direction towards creating a more valid and nuanced picture of the Second World War and the moral complexities thereof.

A very generative book that makes you think long and hard about the issues and the new perspectives raised. I have read a lot in this area and yet this brought out very many new angles and trains of thought. And it always occurs to me that those who criticize a work like this, which is an invitation to a dialogue, are doomed to fail to learn anything from history. Their minds are closed and that is the real tragedy. I am open to Grayling being wrong, (as I think Grayling is), but I doubt some of his critics are open to his being right.

The real issue with area bombing is that it did not shorten the war AND was immoral indiscriminate killing of civilians. Focus on oil supplies and tactical interdiction/support of the front line fighting would have been both more effective AND involved less killing of civilians. Knowledgeable advocates were arguing this at the time,including the leadership of the US 8th Air Force and heads of the British Army and Navy re the Battle of the Atlantic. This is not hindsight or nit picking but profoundly important for our future.

I think Grayling shows profound respect for those actually carrying out the bombing and the risks they took and casualties they suffered. No one writing today can write from the same situation of danger experienced by the bombers or the bombed, but that is no reason not to use our brains and the best scholarship we can muster. We must moreover debate these issues with the data, and a strong critical intelligence, not broad brush dismissals unpowered by real thought. There are real moral dilemmas here, which Grayling brings out powerfully and without Hollywood simplicities. Both my countries suffered grievously in world wars, but that is no reason we should not be adults looking carefully at our track record and those of our opponents with some distance, but while memories are still alive. Grayling is an adult, challenging and rigorous thinker.

With the benefit of foresight i'd imagine that few German citizens would've voted Hitler into power and one also hopes that with the same luxurious perspective,a more carefully thought out bombing policy would've been implemented against the axis powers.
Terrible things happen in the heat of war which don't come up well under close scrutiny so it's all the more important to standback and evaluate, not only for the sake of future conflicts, but also heal the wounds of the older generation who quite rightly feel emotive on this topic:the enemy can also be a victim and saying this in no way minimizes the horrors perpetrated by Germany and Japan.
How about the strategic success of carpet bombing? Yes,Important resources were diverted into costly shelters,guns and planes but all in all it's a case of means not justifying the ends:the terrible losses of aircrew on the allied side were only slightly exceeded by losses on U-boats where 1 in 3 died.

The Zoo in Berlin was bombed to pieces but the nearby armanants ministry was left unscathed.Need I say more? a blunt weapon at best (inpite of more precise options available in the later sages of WW2) and not decisive in the downfall of Nazi Germany.As with the ravaged remains of Stalingrad,the rubble of Berlin actually provided an ideal arena for the defenders.

Grayling is masterly at laying forth all the arguments though gets in a bit of a muddle with the constant references to the holocaust as if overly worried he's going to come across as a Nazi sympathiser.On the contrary,this is an eminently sane text and should be mandatory reading,though perhaps uncomfortable for those of a more conservative disposition.

As the son of a German woman who lived the terror of being a young civilian during World War II, some might see my apprecation for this elegantly written, carefully reasoned work as biased, but that is not the case. The deliberate bombing of civilians, by whomever and whenever, deserves the closest possible scrutiny, since it remains a preferred mode of warfare, having killed untold millions, and threatening to kill untold more. Grayling's impeccable storytelling brings these colossal matters, so recent and so powerfully yet misunderstood, to a humane level, where we as inheritors of the whirlwind of bombs raining on the alleged noncombatants reside. This is a profound book, one to ponder, investigate, apply to the contemporary world, and slow the poisonous adulation of obliteration of humans through armaments.

This is an interesting examination of the morality of Allied strategic bombing in WWII. The author is a well known British philosopher and public intellectual. Contrary to one of the blurbs on the dust jacket, this is hardly the first careful examination of this issue. It has been discussed often, for example, by Michael Walzer in his well known Just and Unjust Wars. Grayling deserves credit, however, for bringing attention to this difficult issue and for doing a good job of framing the moral issues. Grayling is careful to specify that he is not opposed to bombing per se, even if it results in substantial significant civilian casulties. The subject discussed by Grayling is restricted to the deliberate attack of civilian urban populations by mass bombing. This so-called "area bombing" strategy was practiced by the RAF, and to a lesser extent by the USAAF, over Germany. The preferred strategy, though not always the reality of USAAF efforts, was more targeted bombing of key economic and military targets. A particularly devastating form of area bombing was practiced by the USAAF over Japan and the use of nuclear weapons can be said to be the logical conclusion of an area bombing strategy. Most of the book actually discusses the area bombing campaign of the RAF and the USAAF efforts in Europe are discussed largely for comparison. The discussion of USAAF efforts in the Pacific is cursory because Grayling thinks that moral conclusions about area bombing, based on the experience of the RAF, will be universally applicable.
Grayling opens with a concise discussion of the bombing campaign, discusses the experience of the bombed, and has a good section on the thnking behind the pursuit of area bombing. To establish the moral context of area bombing, Grayling has an interesting chapter on British critics of area bombing. This was a small minority but included some impressive individuals like Bishop Bell of Chichester and the pacifist advocate Vera Brittain. These individuals were successful in making the public and the British government aware of the moral issues, so Grayling can claim that his examination is not anachronistic. Grayling also discusses traditional just war doctrine, the history of diplomatic conventions regarding attacks on civilian populations, and even postwar conventions related to attacks on civilian populations. All of this is to establish that the general tenor of moral discussion prior to and after WWII was against deliberate targeting of civilian populations.
Grayling does not take the mechanical and legalistic view that because the RAF and USAAF deliberately targeted civilian populations, area bombing was immoral. He is very aware that the allies was engaged in a life and death struggle against a pitiless and completely immoral foe. The nature of this struggle justified actions which might otherwise be considered immoral. He identifies, I believe correctly, that the key issues were whether or not area bombing was necessary and "proportionate", that is did it contribute significantly to the conquest of Germany and Japan. Based on his reading of the historical literature, he concludes that area bombing (including the use of nuclear weapons) fails these tests and was immoral.
This historical analysis, not the philosophic analysis, is where Grayling fails. I don't think he deals effectively with the arguments of historians like Richard Overy who have argued that Allied strategic bombing was crucial to defeating Germany. He argues that because the Allied area bombing campaign didn't prevent German industrial output relevant to the war effort from rising after 1942, it was a failure. This seems incorrect. As Grayling admits, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Germany was running a 'Guns and Butter' economy; only in 1942 was total mobilization begun. German economic output of arms and other relevant products was destined to rise regardless of what the Allies did because it was starting from a relatively low level. Bombing certainly wasn't decisive but it is hard to imagine that the devastation wreaked on German cities (40% of the building in German cities destroyed by the war's end) didn't have a significant impact. Grayling is dismissive also of arguments that the Allied bombing forced the Germans to pour key resources into air defence. He states, for example, that many of the troops used for air defense in Germany were second line formations. True enough, but these second line formations would probably have been better than the poor Hungarian and Romanian divisions that the Germans were forced to use in some crucial front line sectors. Similarly, Grayling describes that air defense needs caused the deployment of something like 10,000 anti-aircraft weapons in Germany. Many of these could have been used on the Eastern front as anti-tank guns, and there were times when German and their allied units had critical shortages of anti-tank guns. Implicit in several of Grayling's comments is his apparent ignorance of the fact that the Eastern Front was the crucial battlefield of the war. Everything the western allies did in Europe was essentially to make it possible for the Red Army to defeat Germany. The Allied bombing campaign diverted crucial manpower, anti-tank guns, and aircraft resouces from the Eastern Front, and this is why Overy and others suggest that bombing was crucial. Grayling partially addesses this issue but not successfully. He suggests that the RAF and USAAF should have concentrated on a strategic bombing campaign attacked crucial military resources, transportation linkages, and key industries. This is unrealistic. As shown by the experience of both the RAF and USAAF, accurate strategic bombing wasn't possible until late in the war. The alternative would have been giving the Germans a free ride, a totally unacceptable alternative. Grayling's suggestion that the British, when confronted with the choice of area bombing or ineffectual efforts, should have developed the means to purse precision bombing, as was eventually done by the USAAF. This suggestion betrays an almost laughable ignorance of the horribly constrained circumstances faced by Britain during the war.
As for the actions of the USAAF in the Pacific, Grayling doesn't really discuss them. I think similar criticisms of his position can be made about the military necessity, in this case, not so much the need to guarantee victory as to end the war as fast as possible. The use of nuclear weapons is a complex issue and has been the subject of a good deal of scholarly writing. My reading of this literature is that the use of nuclear weapons was the best of a series of unpalatable alternatives.
Area bombing was tragic but it was not immoral in the specific context of WWII.

8/07 Review Addendum: Adam Tooze's recently published Wages of Destruction, an outstanding economic history of the Third Reich, provides a very useful prespective on Grayling's arguments. Tooze shows well the Allied bombing campaign had an enormous effect on German industrial production. Tooze's data shows that the Allied bombing campaign more than satisfies Grayling's criterion of proportionality.

One needs no further proof that we live in a free and democratic society than the fact that books such as this one are readily available.
That the victorious would be criticized for their actions decades later would never have happened had the AXIS powers prevailed in World War 2.
It is startling to note that Germany itself was virtually wiped off the face of the planet; were the actions of the Allied powers justified? No. But consider that just a few years later, the same foe that defeated Germany would save the nation; witness the Berlin Airlift. Again, one doubts that the NAZIS nor Imperial Japan would have shown any such humanity to the nations they would have been in control of had they won the war.

If you travel to London, a `must' for any tourist is Westminster Cathedral. In the apse of that famous edifice you will find a window devoted to the saviors of Britain in WW2, the men of the RAF. Most unfortunately, you find among those named one that surely needs to be effaced, Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris.

Long appalled by the muted - nay, virtually non-existent - criticism of the murderous policy of our air warfare in WW2, the `area', or `saturation', or `strategic' bombings, whatever one wishes to call that atrocious, indiscriminate attempt to annihilate whole sections of cities, I approached this work with great hope that this would, at last, be definitively addressed. Indeed, in the hands of a clearly informed and prolific philosopher (see his other works), it seemed an almost ideal combination. And, his work, in the opening chapters, in elucidating the origins of this policy is exemplary, namely: the accidents triggering retaliations that ultimately spiraled out of control; the inability to hit a target with any accuracy*; the unacceptable loss rate from daylight raids (the only ones with any chance to reliably find a tactical target); the psychological need to take the fight to the enemy when all other avenues with any public impact were inaccessible; and finally, the peculiar psyche of Arthur Harris (and, possibly, Curtis LeMay, although this is somewhat less certain), who sincerely believed, due largely to his experience in WW1 and his consequent desire to avoid its repetition at any cost, that air power alone would bring surrender without the necessity of a ground assault.

Grayling continues with an exhaustive summary of the legal framework of the rules of war. His outline of the various Geneva conventions and protocols is quite helpful, if sometimes anachronistic and tedious. Still, for a work of this sort, it cannot be avoided, and Grayling accepts this wearisome duty, offering it to us digested and distilled in one place, for which we must be grateful. In addition, he offers, as a substantial bonus, a unique 45 page appendix of "RAF bombing attacks on Germany, with civilian casualties... and RAF losses...". Unfortunately, he fails to note his source, or sources, for this monumental, and crucial, enumeration.

It is in the actual history, though, that the book fails (proving perhaps, if proof were still needed, that this profession does indeed require training, and that it is not, despite appearances, open and vouchsafed for all). The author, in particular, apparently does not understand the distinction between a war that is lost, and surrender. While it is doubtless true that, by the beginning of 1945, at the very latest, there was no possibility of either Germany or Japan prevailing, or even emerging from the war without defeat, there still remained the question of surrender and how the countries were to be governed after the war. Due to the horrific nature of both regimes in power during the war, there was absolutely no question by the Allies of retaining any elements whatever of those structures and personnel after the war - to do so would have rendered the enormous sacrifices of the war years as essentially meaningless. And, neither of those regimes, as they were constituted during the war, was ready at any point, however hopeless, to surrender - both were, in fact, geared to fight to the last man. That happened, in essence, in Germany. In Japan, it was avoided, but only by the - very belated - intervention of the Emperor (and then, only after an attempted coup against his holy personage was repulsed!). In fact, a good argument can be made, despite the very good, recent book by Professor Hasegawa, "Racing the Enemy", that the Bomb was critical in his intervention. (Professor Hasegawa's book, by the way, was subjected to serious criticism by Michael Kort, and D.M. Giangreco, among others.) You have to know what the Japanese were willing to accept for surrender, namely, the military left essentially untouched, the retention of a number of colonies, the home islands unoccupied, to understand how `unconditional' in `unconditional surrender' was not really excessive. You have to have intimate knowledge of the war, by living through it or reading extensively in it, to know from Iwo Jima and Okinawa just what would be expected from invading the homeland, and why, therefore, use of the Atomic Bomb was not necessarily contemptible (tho one can, certainly, argue with how it was initially used). Most egregious is his statement (undocumented), on page 154 (repeated, if abbreviated, on p. 260) that Byrnes was urging, on June 1, 1945, use of the bomb as primarily a tool against Russia, which does not fit with the man or the times. (I am assured by Professor Hasegawa, who has examined the minutes of the Interim Committee in the archives, that no such statement of that date from Byrnes exists - nor could it, as it was certainly far too early for such talk, and, I would add, impossible, even from belligerent Byrnes.) I can only assume that Grayling has consulted too much of the notoriously unreliable Gar Alperovitz - and, of that author, even one book is too much - and not enough, not nearly enough, of the best sources on the war.

Lastly, I cannot refrain from commenting on the author's equivalence of 9/11 and Aug 6, 1945 (p. 279). Can it really be that a man of this profound philosophical training does not see the difference between a pointless act of terror with no defined objective on 9/11, with Aug 6, which had a very specific and achievable - I would even say achieved - one?

In sum: A work of importance, but seriously flawed - the definitive treatment awaits.

* I have learned, from other sources, that the accuracy of bombing in WW2 was pathetic, despite the storied Norden bombsite, with over 50% of all bombs falling outside of a radius of 1000 feet from the putative aiming point! (Still looking for one reason we did not bomb the rails leading to the concentration camps?)

I would recommend Grayling's book to any serious student of the Second World War. The author makes every attempt to analyze the area bombings of Germany and Japan in a balanced and dispassionate manner. Grayling offers interesting insights. The many excellent reviews already submitted attest to these in detail.

I think there is validity in stating that these bombings constituted war crimes in the strictest sense. Forty years ago in my studies of World War II I would have placed the blame squarely at the feet of the Allies. Now I tend to see the innocent German and Japanese women and children killed in these bombings as the victims of their respective regimes more than the victims of their enemies. The Germans, both SS and Wehrmacht, murdered millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, cripples, the mentally ill, and on and on. The Japanese military murdered hundreds of thousands in Nanking and throughout Southeast Asia. It was thus perhaps inevitable that the massacre of innocents would in turn be visited on them.

These murderous regimes sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. The innocents on both sides were the losers.