The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 [Hardcover]

Jorg Friedrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006

For five years during the Second World War, the Allies launched a trial and error bombing campaign against Germany's historical city landscape. Peaking in the war's final three months, it was the first air attack of its kind. Civilian dwellings were struck by-in today's terms-"weapons of mass destruction," with a total of 600,000 casualties, including 70,000 children.

In The Fire, historian Jörg Friedrich explores this crucial chapter in military and world history. Combining meticulous research with striking illustrations, Friedrich presents a vivid account of the saturation bombing, rendering in acute detail the annihilation of cities such as Dresden, the jewel of Germany's rich art and architectural heritage. He incorporates the personal stories and firsthand testimony of German civilians into his narrative, creating a macabre portrait of unimaginable suffering, horror, and grief, and he draws on official military documents to unravel the reasoning behind the strikes.

Evolving military technologies made the extermination of whole cities possible, but owing, perhaps, to the Allied victory and what W. G. Sebald noted as "a pre-conscious self-censorship, a way of obscuring a world that could no longer be presented in comprehensible terms," the wisdom of this strategy has never been questioned. The Fire is a rare account of the air raids as they were experienced by the civilians who were their targets.

(10/21/04)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jörg Friedrich was born in Tyrolia in 1944 and grew up in the Ruhr District (Essen). A broadcaster in Berlin, Friedrich became a historian after he reported on the Majdanek Trial during the 1970s. His first comprehensive history of the prosecution of Nazi criminals in Germany, The Cold Amnesty (1984), was a bestseller in the Federal Republic. In 1993 he published a monograph on the forgotten Nuremberg Trial of the German High Command titled The Law of War: The German Army in Russia, which earned him a honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam. The idea for The Fire came to Friedrich accidentally one night in February 2002, and since its publication, the book has been translated into ten languages, sparking debate worldwide.

(5/1/05)

Jörg Friedrich was born in Essen, Germany, in 1944 and spent most of his career writing about Nazi atrocities before orienting his research toward an analysis of Allied military tactics. He lives in Berlin.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 552 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press; First Edition edition (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231133804
• ISBN-13: 978-0231133807
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #309,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like the bombers, indiscriminately pounding all in its path., December 11, 2006

By 

Duane McMullen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)

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 unremitting 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 bombers showed no mercy, just as readily destroying libraries and the medieval churches of anti-Nazis as factories and the homes of war workers. Showing no discrimination, the bombers killed soldiers and Nazis as readily as they killed children, slave workers and little old ladies.

The author appears grateful that the allies won the war, but in so doing wishes that the bombers' indiscriminate killing and destruction had been tempered. How, he does not say. If nothing else, he wishes to make the reader feel, in a deep visceral way, the destruction sown by the bombers and recognize the tragedy.

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why the constant shift of focus?, March 17, 2007

By 

Horst H. Freyhofer (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)

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.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, the book I have been waiting for., May 6, 2007

By 

A. Carey (Columbus, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)

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.