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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fresh look at a controversial subject, August 20, 2009
This review is from: Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 (Hardcover)
In this book Randall Hansen attempts a fresh look at an old and controversial subject, the Allied bombing of Germany in WWII. A major goal of his work appears to be rehabilitating the reputations of America's bomber generals -- Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, and Doolittle -- at the expense of their British counterparts. The emphasis throughout is how the Americans were right, and essentially moral, in their strategic focus on "daylight precision bombing" as a means of winning the war against the Germans. In contrast the British--especially "Bomber" Harris and Portal, his nominal superior--were wrong and almost criminal in the way they conducted and/or condoned area bombing and mass destruction of German cities during the latter stages of the conflict. Hansen clearly offers an alternative interpretation of events compared to works like Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II by Ronald Shaffer, which reflects academic thought in the 1980s on the Combined Bomber Offensive. Shaffer's thesis was that the Americans and British had more in common in their bombing goals than was suggested by the simplistic "American precision bombing good, British area bombing bad" equation, and that neither side's "bomber barons" gave much thought to the morality of what they were doing. Thus, Shaffer argued, their sins were the same, differing only in degree. Hansen makes a very persuasive case that strategic bombing American style was effective in crippling German war-making ability, and that the wanton RAF destruction of countless German cities in 1944-45 was essentially worthless, immoral, and significantly counterproductive to the overall war effort. Consider a question never asked at the time because military parochialism made even the suggestion unthinkable: How much more quickly would Germany have collapsed had RAF Bomber Command wholly embraced precision bombing methods in early 1944, after the P-51 Mustang took control of the air away from the Luftwaffe? Hansen also shows that American radar bombing through undercast, using US modified versions of British terrain radar like H2S, was very much a second best solution to the perennial problem of bad weather over the Continent. American military leaders almost always preferred the Norden bombsight to radar, but were loathe to bring the bombs back when over Germany itself--hence radar bombing. If civilians were killed--and tens of thousands were--due to "precision" bombing mistakes or daylight radar bombing, it was more a reflection of how crude bombing technology was in the 1940s than the result of any plan to kill civilians and achieve victory by sapping enemy "morale." In Hansen's calculus, intentions do matter. For that reason, together with superior strategic results, the Americans come off as the real winners of the air war against Germany. I think he's right, in purely strategic terms, but I am less comfortable with his conclusions about the morality of the American bombing effort. I say this not because of anything the U.S. bomber barons did over the ETO, but because any judgments about American strategic bombing in WWII has to take full account of the firebombing strategy Curtis LeMay used against Japanese cities after VE day. Hansen touches on it, but I don't think he squarely confronts the contradiction between the relative morality of American efforts in the ETO and what we did over Japan. Everything that was wrong with how Bomber Harris devastated German cities, was repeated by Curtis LeMay against the Japanese. There is no escape from the bitter and disturbing reality that both British and American air commanders in WWII resorted to wholesale civilian slaughter from on high if more precise bombing wasn't feasible. In context, Harris comes off worse only because he persisted in these methods when technology offered him other options. In addition to confidently discussing "the big picture" and offering individual accounts in the air and under the bombs, Hansen does a creditable job exposing some of the foibles of those at the top, including Churchill and Hap Arnold. He also touches on the role of General Fred Anderson, Ira Eaker's deputy commander in the early days of the Eighth Air Force, in a way I've never seen before. Essentially, we learn that Anderson was a Hap Arnold "spy" inserted into the chain of command to make sure that Eaker was sufficiently "aggressive." Interesting to know. I highly recommend this book as a concise, one volume introduction to this fascinating if depressing subject. If I had read nothing else on the subject this is where I would want to start. Brian O'Neill, Author of Half a Wing, Three Engines and a Prayer
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Death from Above, August 23, 2009
This review is from: Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 (Hardcover)
Randall Hansen's "Fire and Fury" is superb. The book begins with a riveting description of the British fire bombing of Hamburg in 1943, told from the perspective of the German civilians who suffocated in shelters and cellars, sank into molten asphalt while bursting into flame, boiled alive in Hamburg's canals or were sucked into the world's first fire storm by hurricane-force winds. 40,000 people died in one city in one night, and Hansen makes it painfully clear what it felt like to be on the receiving end of the British "area bombing" campaign. Hansen carefully explains the differences between British and American strategy. For Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the point of night time area bombing was to kill, injure and demoralize the workforce that served German industry. Destroying the factories themselves was fine, but only incidental to the primary mission of incapacitating the workers. The Americans, led by Generals Hap Arnold, Carl Spaatz, and Jimmy Doolittle, insisted on "precision" bombing, dropping their bombs in daylight on military targets like ball bearing factories, oil refineries, railroad marshalling yards and other critical infrastructure. They also insisted on engaging and destroying the Luftwaffe, something they did very effectively. The Americans also killed civilians, but that was a side effect rather than the goal of bombing. The US air forces only participated once in the bombing of a German city center (Berlin in February 1945), and then only over the protests of General Doolittle and other senior commanders. It is hard to come away from "Fire and Fury" without disliking Bomber Harris. The British had a very limited ability to strike back against Germany from 1939 to 1942, so area bombing was arguably justifiable as the only way to wage war during this period. But as the war went on, British precision bombing skills improved dramatically, as evidenced by the famous "dam busting" raids in the Ruhr Valley. It became increasingly obvious to the Americans and those who were reviewing Ultra intercepts that precision raids (conducted mostly by Americans and to a lesser extent by the British) were seriously disrupting the German war effort. Hansen skillfully brings in the testimony of German Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who feared that the British would follow up on their dam buster missions (they did not) or that the British and the Americans would combine their efforts against oil, rail, ball bearing and other vital targets. By 1943 or so, it should have been reasonably clear that precision bombing was producing the desired results and that area bombing was merely murdering people and stiffening Germany's determination to fight. Hansen sets out the memos between Harris and his boss, Chief of Air Staff Sir Charles Portal. Harris had decided that killing German civilians in large numbers was the only way to win the war quickly, and he was determined to execute his strategy even if doing do bordered on insubordination. Portal and other leaders eventually began to realize that Harris was wrong, but they refused to order him bluntly to stop area bombing and to take up precision bombing. In part, it seems, they feared that the popular Harris would resign in the face of unequivocal orders. As it was, Harris read his ambiguous instructions in a way that enabled him to order a minimal number of precision "oil plan" and "transportation plan" raids, while aggressively pursuing his own strategy of leveling Germany's population centers. The exchange of memoranda among Harris, Portal and other leaders illustrate how a stubborn, popular and insubordinate officer can do great damage to a war effort even with the best of intentions--it is remarkable that the British high command did not deal more firmly with Harris, in the way that President Truman did when he relieved the popular General Douglas MacArthur from command during the Korean War. The supporters of Bomber Harris' strategy of terror bombing (it's hard to call it anything else) will find Hansen's book a bitter pill. This emotionally powerful and well written book will make it clear that there is a huge difference, both morally and strategically, between bombing military targets while knowing that civilian casualties will be likely, and affirmatively seeking to kill, injure and demoralize civilians as a matter of policy. Another excellent book with a similar theme that covers the entire history of air power from Kitty Hawk through 2003 is Stephen Budiansky's Air Power : From Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II - A History of the People, Ideas and Machines That Transformed War in the Century of Flight--it, too, argues that the oil plan and the transportation plan very nearly brought Germany to its knees. Had British Bomber Command been led by a man able to move beyond his original vision, the war with Germany might have ended much sooner and with far less territory in Soviet hands.
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well written, but flawed analysis, February 22, 2010
This review is from: Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 (Hardcover)
Randall Hansen's new book on the Allied bombing campaign over Germany is probably the best written book I ever hated. Hansen's research and writing skills are on fine display in this highly readable history. My criticism of "Fire and Fury" is that Hansen's analysis is so fatally flawed that I almost stopped reading the book several times (quite frankly, I kept reading because I was sure Hansen would address the shortcomings of his theory by the end -- he didn't). Basically, Hansen condemns everything British and praises everything American. Hansen thoroughly denounces British area bombing of Germany as immoral, unjustified, and irrelevant to final victory. In fact, Hansen argues that area bombing actually galvanized German resistance and prolonged the war. Hansen has particular disdain for Bomber Command Leader, Sir Arthur Harris, as well as British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. You will be hard pressed to find a single complimentary word about either man throughout Hansen's book. Indeed, although Hansen admits Harris' crews remained exceptionally loyal to him, even after the morality of the bombing campaign was questioned following the war, Hansen apparently believes that such loyalty was misplaced and that bomber commands crews should have revolted against their leader. Yet, Hansen cannot cite to a single instance where one of Harris' men, with the benefit of decades of hindsight, agree with such an analysis. On the other hand, Hansen idolizes the American leaders of the bombing war. Hansen's elevation of all things American turns even vices into virtues. For example, Hansen describes both British commander, Harris, and American commander, General "Hap" Arnold, as having legendary tempers. However, where Hansen describes Harris' temper as counter-productive, Hansen determines that Arnold's equal propensity to fly into a rage served him well. In fact, Hansen repeats a story where one of Arnold's tantrums resulted in a subordinate having a fatal heart attack as if it were a badge of honor. More catastrophic than the above shortcomings is the overall thesis of the book: that the Americans were more "moral" and more effective than the British by attempting precision daylight bombing. What the author overlooks is that the British tried precision daylight bombing earlier in the war with catastrophic results. Not many Bomber Command aircrews flying missions between 1939-1941 lived to see the change in tactics to night area bombing in 1942-43. Furthermore, American tactics were not a product of morality, they were a product of their equipment. The B17 and B24 carried a fraction of the bomb load of the Lancaster, Sterling and Halifax. The B17 and B24 simply were not effective night area bombers - they were built with the American mindset that a heavily armed bomber will always get through (a mindset that proved disastrously flawed until long range fighters could accompany the bombers to their targets). The Americans simply chose to equip their aircraft with more defensive armament instead of bombs. Tactics and equipment go hand in hand. Yet any discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the main British and American bombers is curiously missing from Hansen's book. For proof that Hansen's study is disastrously flawed, one has to look no further than what became of this supposed American "morality" once the American military had an effective night area bombing weapon, the B29. In a fact conveniently omitted entirely from the book, the Americans used the B29 against the Japanese as the British used the Lancaster against the Germans: with impunity and without remorse. The night bombing raids over Tokyo and other Japanese cities and their associated body counts made Essen, Dresden, and Hamburg look like the work of amateurs. I was very much looking forward to reading how Hansen was going to reconcile two of the main premises he presents in his book: (1) that Americans were too moral and concerned about civilian casualties to bomb cities and (2) area bombing can never win a war and actually prolongs it, with what happened in the skies over Japan. I was sorely disappointed. Hansen actually poses the question himself near the end of his fatally flawed analysis, when he writes "the question is why this moral concern was less fully extended to the Japanese, whose cities were firebombed (with the exception of Kyoto) and then hit with nuclear bombs." But that is it. Hansen never explores or attempts to answer the question he himself asked. The logically flaw of this analysis is overwhelming and condemns this otherwise very readable history to the rubbish heap. Hansen spends nearly 300 pages condemning the British pursuit of pulverizing the enemy's population into submission, concludes it does not and cannot work, and then ignores that the Americans did exactly that against the population of Japan with, arguably, war winning results.
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