Customer Reviews

A History of Bombing

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist

This book explores the history of bombing with a focus on those who were bombed, and the attitudes of those who did the bombing. It is not a technical history, but rather a moral history, along the lines of Jonathan Glover's book Humanity, although their emphases and styles are very different.

He draws from many sources to put together a view which is very unique, combining military history, literary history, and political history (especially of European colonies) with analyses of the development of international law regulating warfare and of politicians and officer's views of war. He also adds in autobiographical elements of his fear of attacks as a child during WWII. He follows the development of technologies of bombing, and the techniques of bombing that came along with them (localized to strategic to area bombing, with nuclear bombing of civilians being the culmination of this). He looks at many futuristic novels to see what people's attitudes were toward war and the massive annilhilation possible through bombing, and finds much racism, and also many predicitions of how destructive bombing would become. He looks at many military theoreticians and shapers of international law, both before and since the advent of planes and bombing, to see what has formed our views of what is acceptable in warfare, and how these laws have been bent and broken.

One of Lindqvist's main points is the element of racism in bombing, and how bombing was initially acceptable only when conducted against those who were not civlized, or less than human. Europeans became used to the idea of bombing in the colonies, and this paved the way for the massive bombing which first took place in "civilized lands" in WWII.

He does not shy away from criticizing those groups who are supposed to be the vanguard of civilization, such as the British and Americans. He discusses colonial interventions, and how bombing was integrated into the general program to civilize the "savages" of Africa and Asia. He points out how little value was given to the life of one of the colonized as opposed to one of the colonizers. Only with this inequality could bombing could be used as a police action (i.e., to put down rebellions) which was cheaper, in terms of money and lives--but only in terms of lives of the colonizers. This inequality also comes up when looking at international law. The laws concerning warfare, such as the Geneva conventions, were shaped during the period when Europeans held colonies. Even though these laws were put in universal terms, in practice they were only thought to apply to fighting between "civilized" countries, and not to what goes on in the colonies. Again, this inequality comes up with regard to national sovereignty, and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

A large part of the book focuses on WWII, and he criticizes many of the choices of the Allied powers, such as area bombing and firebombing in Germany, firebombing and nuclear bombing in Japan. Some people may therefore find this book one-sided, but remember that this is the side that historically has not been heard. Also, he places WWI and WWII against the history of imperialism, of the Europeans and the Japanese, which makes it clear that he is not a supporter of any specific country, but concerned with the effects of warfare on people at large, whoever and wherever they may be, and even if they are citizens of an enemy country.

P.S. The structure of the book is really interesting. It is split into many short sections that have more or less a single point, and are centered around an event or person. These are placed in chronological order, but the book only makes sense if you read it following one of 23 strands he identifies, each focusing on different aspects of the history (i.e., "Bombing the Savages", "Hamburg, Auschwitz, Dresden", "Massive Retaliation", etc.). In this way, as you move through history, forward and backward, you flip through the book, which helps emphasize the historical placement of the events and ideas, and allows him to touch on a lot of different topics without the book becoming a mess.

This is a book I read a long time ago and it stuck with me afterwards - it's got an unusual nonlinear structure (the short segments are arranged roughly chronologically, but you read them non-sequentially as the author mixes history, personal anecdote, etc). This structure could be seen as a gimmick, but I felt it worked well to create a work whose whole felt greater than the sum of its parts. Other reviewers have faulted the book as a "History of Bombing" - but the intention was not to write a history as such. As a rumination on the human predilection for war, past, present, and (sadly) future it's a worthwhile journey.

Lindqvists work a history of bombing is a major achivment of the human mind. The greatest about Lindqvists books is his use of such an wide perspective and view on history from so many different perspectives. Many regular historians are so caught up in their own subject and narrow perspective, that they don't see beyond the narrow limits of the traditional role of the academic historian. Lindqvist use fiction littature to give us a view of how ideas of extermination and mass destruction was widley spread and a part of the basis of western thought in the period 1850-1950. This is a powerfull insight, becuse many of us today deny this and say it was just a minority who shared those beliefs, when in fact it was the opposite, the majority accepted those ideas only a tiny minority spoke out against them. By using fiction littature Lindqvist shows that the ideas of genocide was not anti-western, it was an integrated part in the western civilization. With his different perspective and use of fiction, it is always refrhing to read his books. In a history of bombing you follow the terrible history of bombing from its beginnings in colonial warfare, by those who set out to civilize inferior peoples. But in Europe it was still taboo to use the same methodes of warfare against civilized europeans. But then those ideas who came from the subjection of non european peoples around the world, arrived to Europe. In the ultimate nightmare of modern warfare, in the second world war, bombing of civilians became a legitimate form of warfare. Hitlers new empire was ruled on the basis of a colonial empire, racial imperialism. Germany would use eastern Euroe as a vast colonial empire, were racially inferior people would work for the new masters.

Hitler was crushed in with him the idea of racial imperialism. But as Linqvist shows in the enviorment of the escalating cold war, and the colonies struggle to gain independence barbarious acts of bombing continued. Mass bombing continued in the colonies, but was stopped when the public in the western world realized its horrors. As Lindqvist writes, bombing of civilins could not stand the view of the public eye. In Korea and Vietnam, mass bombing of civilians became a way for the US to contain communism. But as protests agiainst the bombing in Vietnam intensified the United States lost its public support abroard and at home.Now with recent events in the Gulf war and after, Lindqvists survey of bombing history is needed. Today, as in the the old days there are those who once again claim that bombing could be an efficient way to wage low cost wars wihout casulties. A view of the history of the horrors of mass bombing should be a refreshment to the memory, and will hopefully put the supporters of the bombs in minority status, should they gain momentum once again then you are dead, like the millions before you.

As the translator of the book, I probably don't count as an unbiased reviewer. But I learned a great deal in reading and translating it, and I think it is quite ingenious and also devastating. An important book. I wanted to say that the book's English title is considerably more sedate and formal than the Swedish title. Readers like the ones expecting a traditional military history might have been misled by the publisher's decision to omit the Swedish title: "Bang! You're Dead! The Century of Bombing" in favor of a more graspable "The History of Bombing." You may judge for yourself the impact of the original title versus the changed one.

This is a great book, but very hard to take. I found could only be swallowed in small doses. But I promise you, no matter how much you think you know about the military history of the 20th century, you will be faced with a lot of new, and very disturbing material. Probably should be required reading in the US and UK.

As one reviewer pointed out, it is a bit like bull fighting from behind the barricades, but that really only applies to the first couple years of WWII. Admittedly Churchill was faced with an almost hopeless situation in 1939-41, and probably gets a pass on his decisions in that window, but that is a very small portion of the material covered in this book.

Those interested in the question of how Britain and Germany initiated bombing of one another's cities, should read RV Jones great book The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-1945 (titled The Most Secret War in UK), which gives a somewhat different take on how that decision took place. In his telling Hitler made a terrible mistake in shifting from tactical bombing of British airfields, which was taking a serious toll on the RAF, to bombing London and other cities. If he had kept pounding the fighter bases, he might have won the Battle of Britain.

... That such people disapprove of this book makes me proud to number it among my favorites. Alright, alright, I WILL focus on the book but I'm allowing myself some potshots.The book is unabashedly pacifist but not so at the expense of intellectual rigor. It is a fair critique that the author has an anti-war bias, so S.O.F. types need look no further unless they are interested in, God forbid, understanding a point of view that might disagree with their own and learning a thing or two. Rather than prattle on in the usual bleeding heart hyperbole the author presents an almost legalistic case for his ideas. He is anti-war, but it is important to note what KIND of war the he inveighs against in this book, namely, the large-scale killing of civilians from the air simply because they ARE civilians, not merely of the other side, but of a lesser, somehow inhuman, group of beings. This is where the author's chilling insight into the strategic bombing mindset is most profound. A previous reviewer implies that though large-scale bombing of civilians began in WW1 it should be exempt from the book because it was only "white on white." What this fails to recall about the actual point of the book is: the author argues that such a thing happened precisely because the European powers were able to think of each other in an almost racist fashion. Racism, or more accurately, dehumanization, is the necessary step in this scenario. He presents evidence that this process with had begun with the pre-WW1 use of bombing against civilians in colonial uprisings and was only accelerated between the wars and afterwards.The author's main premise is that an inhumane mindset, be it racist, colonial, or what have you, is a prerequisite for the acceptance of the bombing the civilians by governments or by individuals, whether passively or actively. I don't think the author would argue with the assertion that 9/11 was a direct consequence of such a mindset, further, that Gen. Curtis LeMay and Osama bin Laden might have something in common: they both showed complete disregard for the lives of innocents in the accomplishment of their strategic goals. What is most compelling about the book is the way it demonstrates thoughout history the temptation to use bombing simply because one can; how early Science Fiction racist pulp novel fantasies had an ugly way of coming true, in some form, all through the 20th century, much the same way "The Turner Diaries" were horrifically actualized at Oklahoma City.Apart from all the rubarb of whether any of this is gospel truth, the author has a fascinating and truly poetic way of trying to prove a point. The book flows in fragments and you are forced to read it in pieces by jumping around from numbered section to numbered section instead of page by numbered page, like you were reading random articles from a newspaper. I have'nt read it yet "out of order," that is, by page number in sequence, but I think it must be something like a vast version of "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot, only much more heart- breaking and closer to home.If you are interested in an invigorating, disturbing (no matter what side of the political fence you read from) and thought-provoking read, give this book a chance.

As far as I can tell, all the reviewers agree that sven lindqvist has done some incredible research for this book. He does envision a world without war. While most people cannot imagine such a world, this book is written in a way that encourages the reader to see that history unfolds in unpredictable ways. Things that once seemed commonplace now seem CRAZY, and ideas that once seemed crazy now seem commonplace. I think that the reviewer who says that the white on white bombing of WWII contradicts Lindqvist's ideas about the racialism of aerial bombing's social history has missed the point. Lindqvist shows that history only reached this point because earlier europeans who were using bombs to subdue their colonies could not really IMAGINE white on white bombing, so they did not support laws that would outlaw or regulate aerial bombing. A lack of imagination can be a terrible thing. Although all of us suffer from a lack of imagination at times, this book gave me hope. I hope that future generations will see war as an absurd and antiquated phenomena. That would be cool, don't you think?

This book is not a history of bombing. It is only slightly related to history as it describes events that have taken place in the past but beyond that don't waste your time.

It is an excellent resource for people who feel that those who won the fight against fascism should feel guilty about it. Also, it is an excellent resource for those who want to know nothing about the terror bombing done by the Axis powers during the war. Again an excelent resource for literature and sci-fi books from the pre war, post war, and after the world wars, none of which are historical in any way. Also the book is constructed in a super hipster "no chapters man" crap-o-la style with every paragraph numbered rather than the book logically constructed in progressive chapters leading the reader to understand the authors theses, if he has one, because beyond, "BANG YOUR DEAD" the author goes a very long and lazy route to prove, "war is bad." Realy? I han't heard that. The author excludes tidbits like the slaughter of Jerusalem or Tire, yes they weren't bombed or Banged Your Dead the people in those cities had their throats cut by the warring partiers during the Crusades, but there I go bringing actual military history into this mess of leftist hippie bs. My point being war, or total war, has always existed aerial bombing was the new twist.

A moving acount of the bombing of Dresden but such an account is not balanced by the author with say the bombing of Coventry also a non-military city, shoot, I may have let some history out there, sorry.

This book has, I think, three different parts or points of view; the first is well worth, and these is the good documentation about the theme of aerial bombing, abundant and accurate.
But the other two parts are very debatable: one is the resource and constant citation of the horrors of aerial bombing... but obtained not from reality, but from rare cheap novels or fiction books of unknow authors or almost, forgotten nowadays; the main of these works are chaotic and terrible dreams about wars between races, a little in the style of the feverish fantasies of the yellow hordes of Fu- Manchu or something else, there's plenty of Death Rays, rare bombs and flying machines never seen in real life.
And finally, I find another default, and is the accusation for making war, colonial or not, to countries as England, Japan, USA, France, Spain, Italy, etc. This critique I believe, is easy to do from a country as Sweden with an economy and geography that have protected it from the main conflicts of the twentieth century, but not everybody has so much luck, and even the conduct of these country during the II World War with is peculiar neutrality could at last be revised.

It looks as if Lindqvist was bound and determined from the start to classify bombing as racist and to that end, he has omitted from his "history" a huge problem with the premise of his logic.
His racism theory originates entirely with his claim that the first bombing was done by whites against people of color. But that's not true -- World War I was the dawn of the use of the kind of bombing with which he's concerned. And that involved three parties, the Germans, the British and the French. All of the bombing was white on white.
There's so much other good data in the book, that it leaves one wondering where it would've gone if he had simply omitted his entire racism theme. But then again, without that, maybe he would have had no desire to even write the book