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To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II Hardcover – February 4, 2003

by Herman Knell (Author)

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Herman Knell was nineteen and living in Würtzburg in March of 1945 when hundreds of Allied planes arrived overhead, unleashing a torrent of bombs on the city. Würtzburg's tightly packed medieval housing exploded in a firestorm, killing six thousand people in one night and destroying 92 percent of the city's structures. Despite the fact that Würtzburg had no strategic value, the city emerged from World War II second only to Dresden in material destruction inflicted from the air. The experience led Knell to years of research on the history, development, and effects of the strategy of area bombing.To Destroy a City is the result of the author's long and unrelenting investigation. His analysis of this form of warfare, which reached its zenith during World War II, covers the history and the development of wide-area bombing since 1914, examines its wartime effectiveness and the consequences. But the extra dimension that Knell's book offers is his firsthand experience of the tension, fear, tentative defiance, and, finally, utter catastrophe of being on the receiving end of overwhelming air power. For Americans, who fortunately did not experience bombing during the war, this is essential reading.

To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Knell, who emigrated to Canada after WWII, acquired first-hand knowledge of strategic bombing's human consequences in March 1945, when his home town of Würzburg, Germany, was largely destroyed by the Royal Air Force. His subsequent lifelong study of the bombers' war led to this solid coverage of the subject, which is distinguished by its thoroughness and balanced judgement on controversial subjects. The story will be comparatively familiar to the serious reader of WW II history, less so to the beginning reader, for whom this book will be more useful. There are worthwhile items such as sketches of the theoreticians of the strategic air campaign, notably Solly Zuckerman and Frederick Lindemann (both British), and concise coverage of air raids outside the main European theater (China, Finland). The book leaves out the question of the role the Allied air campaign played in defeating the Luftwaffe over Europe, but does address civil defense effectiveness, psychological effects and the aftermath of the war for both civilians and bomber crews in a good introduction to its subject.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An important contribution...[Knell] skillfully blends first-hand insights into his narrative of the destructive potential of this form of warfare." -- Choice December 2003

"Knell's greatest strength is the personal perspective he brings to the subject...unique and valuable." -- Parameters Spring 2004

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Product details

Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (February 4, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0306811693
ISBN-13: 978-0306811692
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 10 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #863,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2859 in Books > History > Europe > Germany
- #7813 in Books > History > Military > World War II
- #31145 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering

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A somewhat Dreary Book

ByJONJORJon January 15, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Any book written about World War 2, tends to be a bit one sided, it is only dictated by which Author writes it. No matter how well researched, these books are not always helped by the fact that these books cover an event that happened roughly seventy years ago. Very often the Author is a relative of someone long deceased, and is writing it based on stories from deceased relatives.
Maybe it is time that the Second World War is finally put aside. It has been getting to the point where you only change the name of the town, be it Hamburg, Dresden or whatever. If you are expecting an exciting book, this is not for you

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A sad time in history

ByPaulaon December 1, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

A horrific story of terror and destruction through the eyes of a young observer.

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Good memoir, but fails as a scholarly work

ByTigerTCon September 21, 2005

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Herman Knell's To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and its Human Consequences in World War IItells two stories: the personal story of the author's survival of the bombing of Würzburg, Germany, in March 1945, and the general history of strategic bombing during the First and Second World Wars. Knell's personal account of his survival in World War II, while not overly dramatic or filled with amazing tales, is a fascinating read and gives the modern reader a glimpse of life in wartime Germany. Knell's history of strategic bombing, based heavily on archival research in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, is a critical and condemning look at one of our civilization's more brutal methods of warfare. As with most works that attempt to do two tasks, To Destroy a City does a fair job with both tasks but excels at neither.

Knell lived in Würzburg, Germany, a city of about 100,000 along the Main River in northern Bavaria. Although he was in his late teens in 1945, the aftereffects of polio spared him service in the Wehrmacht during World War II. His condition did not spare him from the horrors of war, however; on the night of 16 March 1945, he was a witness to and victim of the bombing of Würzburg by the British Royal Air Force.

For most of the war, the RAF and United States Army Air Force had largely ignored Würzburg. There were a couple of minor nuisance raids during the first months of 1945, but most of the Allied attention was focused on cities such as nearby Schweinfurt, with its military barracks and vitally important ball-bearing plant. However, on 16 March 1945, RAF Bomber Command dispatched 236 strategic bombers (Lancasters and Mosquitoes) to Würzburg, and in 17 minutes of bombing destroyed 89% of the city, killed 5,000, and "dehoused" (the contemporary euphemism for making homeless) another 90,000.

Before the bombing, Knell and his father, wary of the increasing Allied "nuisance" raids on Würzburg, had moved out of downtown to their garden cottage a few miles from the city. The sound of hundreds of bombers roused Knell and his father from their beds, and they ran outside and saw the "Christmas trees"-air markers dropped by the pathfinding airplanes before a raid-over Würzburg. They watched, frightened, as an "endless" stream of aircraft passed over Würzburg. After the 17-minute bombing raid, Knell and his father tried to enter the city as time-delayed bombs went off and a firestorm began. They could not get any farther than the Ringpark that surrounds the Old City, a refuge for thousands of Würzburgers fleeing the burning inner city. There they discovered from neighbors that their home and family businesses were destroyed by fire.

Knell could not answer the question of why Würzburg was targeted simply based on the targets hit, so he then examined the targeting process-if there was no real answer to the for-what-reason "why," then there may be an answer to the how-did-it-happen "why." Knell uses just a few pages to explain the targeting procedure for Würzburg-how it came to be on the target list-but then uses the rest of the book to give the overall background behind strategic bombing during the first two world wars. This is the real substance of the book.

In many places, Knell's thorough research shines. His archival research in the United States, Britain, and Germany unearthed documents that shed light not only on the strategic bombing campaigns, but also on the decision-making process that led to these attacks and the target selection. He shows the dichotomy-or hypocrisy-between what the governments of Britain, Germany, and the United States were saying and what they were actually doing. To Destroy a City is replete with statistics about the number of bombers on a mission, the percentage of losses, and the tons of ordnance dropped on targets. These elements add depth to his observations and conclusions.

Knell also adds some new insight and perspectives into the strategic bombing campaigns. Based on the accuracy and survivability of the British Mosquito fighter-bomber, Knell posits that, had Britain concentrated on using these planes for strategic bombing instead of the larger Lancasters, the strategic bombing campaign would have been both much more effective and much more humane. Knell also discusses the civil defense systems in Germany (extensive and locally controlled), Britain (lacking and controlled by the Home Office), and Japan (virtually non-existent), and discusses the burdens that were placed on the local governments and the individuals under these systems. Knell's chapter on the psychology of the strategic bombing focuses not only on the victims of the bombing but the psychological price paid by the air crews, with their harrowing and nerve-wracking missions and low chance of survival.

Knell criticizes German strategic bombing, British strategic bombing, and American strategic bombing. He criticizes the Nazi path that led to war, and he criticizes the Versailles Treaty that he says gave rise to the Nazis. He praises the "heroic efforts" of the Bomber Command crews and criticizes Germans who lynched downed bomber crews. He excuses most of the Allied leaders of the bombing campaign for either following orders or doing what they truly believed would win the war. From out of all of this, Knell draws only one clear conclusion: the area bombing campaign that destroyed many German cities was a tragedy.

Knell's conclusion is based on the premise that the area bombing campaign was not a military success. Although he admits that the economic cost to Germany was high, Knell focuses on the failure of the morale bombing campaign: "Though area bombing was to result in the defeat of enemy morale and cause the overthrow of the enemy political systems, that effort did not produce the desired result." Instead, the losses from this campaign were "unnecessary" and "cannot be excused."

While Knell can justifiably claim that the morale bombing campaign was a failure, his focus on the civilian area bombing causes him to miss the larger picture. Certainly, the morale bombing did not cause the collapse of the German society or rebellion of her people, just as it had failed to do the same against Britain earlier in the war, but the morale bombing of the Japanese cities, culminating in the two atomic bombs, was the direct catalyst for the capitulation of Japan. In To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and its Human Consequences in World War II, Knell focuses on the destruction of the cities and the human consequences, but he fails to consider adequately the entire strategic bombing offensive aimed at the military and economic systems of Germany. The overall campaign did succeed in tying down an enormous fraction of the German war effort, slowing the development and production of German war materiel, and crippled the German military by degrading oil production. Strategic bombing's contribution to the war effort has been debated and questioned since the war, but no one can justifiably claim that the overall campaign was "unnecessary" or that its losses "cannot be excused" simply because the morale bombing failed to win the war single-handedly.

Fortunately, though, Knell never takes his criticism to its extreme, as some modern German historians have done, and likens this campaign to the Holocaust. In Der Brand, Jörg Friedrich calls the burning cellars underneath the bombed cities "crematoriums" and refers to the bomber squadrons as "Einsatzgruppen." Friedrich also ignores the contributions of the bomber offensive to the war. Another German historian, Klaus Rainer Röhl, compares the Allied attacks on German civilians to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This new historiography has increasingly painted the German people as victims of World War II. While Knell does recount some of the elements of this when he blames Versailles for World War II or claims that Operation Barbarossa was simply a pre-emptive strike against Soviet Russia, in no way does Knell embrace this new emerging consciousness of German victimhood.

Knell's work has many flaws, but it has a certain poignancy and a perspective found in few other works. Knell could have easily taken a partisan approach and condemned the entire campaign, its architects, and its warriors, but sometimes Knell goes out of his way to forgive or to justify their actions, even when he condemns the overall campaign. Knell's analysis of the campaign is sometimes flawed, and the reader looking for an insightful and balanced analysis of the European strategic bombing campaign should look to Alan J. Levine's The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945. But while To Destroy a City fails as a piece of scholarly history or in-depth analysis, the personal touch in this survivor's tale makes it a worthwhile read.

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A useful book, a labor of love for humanity,and hatred of evil

ByTony Thomason June 30, 2005

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Hermann Knell is not a professional writer, not an academic, not a military man. Instead, he is a concerned victim of bombing in World War II, a victim of the terror bombing that destroyed his home town, Wurzburg, Bavaria in 1945. From his adolescence in wartime Germany to his present life in Canada, Knell has struggled to find why such bombings took place. Though he is not a professional scholar, this book is the product of research at libraries, government and military archives, and of interviews and discussion with scholars, military leaders, and experts in the Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, and several other countries. This is a life quest.

The book uses the Knell's own experience in Wurzburg as its center. Why was this small city bombed, why was it hit with a firestorm that destroyed 90 percent of it, a bombing that killed a higher percentage of its inhabitants than the terror bombings of Dresden and Hamburg?

The answers Knell finds are simple and chilling. The city was there, other targets in Germany had been demolished, and the British and American bombers were pretty much unopposed by serious flak or fighters. Simply put, the British and American bombing campaigned aimed to produce the results scored at Wurzburg, Hamburg, and Dresden almost every time they organized a major bombing of cities small, big, or whatever. The several cities where weather, lack of opposition, and layout of the city permitted this were the firestorm cities. Most other cities were the sites of attempted, but failed or partial firestorms. Nothing was special about firestrooms. They were what Washington and London aimed to do to all German cities. Wurzbug was bombed because it was a German city. Whatever other military or economic questions involved were secondary.

The firestorms were produced by dropping millions of small incendiary bombs, that would light a city on fire, often after dropping heavy explosive bombs to blow open buildings so the fires could start inside of them, but still get plenty of air to spread and grow. If successful, the fires would grow so concentrated that their heat and the explosive force of their consumption of oxygen became more destructive than the worst explosive bombing. The British and American often mixed in delayed action bombs or had several waves of bombing timed so that fire fighters and and other rescuers would be stopped or killed if they attempt to wrestle with the firestorms.

The result, when successful as in Dresden and Wurzburg, was a huge explosive fire that sucked all the oxygen in huge areas of cities. People were incinerated, buildings sometimes exploded as the air was sucked out of them, people were cooked in their own skins, and even shelters that were safe from bomb blasts and heat would lose all their inhabitants to the air stealing fire.

These raids proved the most disastorous forms of murder in human history. In fact, the great firestorm raid on Tokyo in 1945 killed at least 100 thousand people, many more than the use of the Atomic Bomb at Hiroshama or at Nagasaki. And this was the first of many such raids against Tokyo!

The author attempts to deal with larger questions by going through the history of aerial bombing centering on the reasons for the Allied campaign of "area bombing" in World War II. Area bombing is the bombings whose targets were largely the populations, the centers, and usually the working class districts of cities. It was largely promoted by the British and practiced, but not preached by the USAAF during the in the European war, and practiced with a vengence by the USAAF against Japan, The racist tinge of the American war against Japan made open espousal of terror bombings up to and beyond the Atomic Bombing of that country a public and popular policy in the United States even though they felt they had to mask such bombing in Europe with the rhetoric of being "precision" bombing of specific targets.

One of the more interesting things Knell brings out is that British terror bombings and strafing of defenseless Arab, Afghan, and Indian villagers help set the tone for British bombing in world War II. Knell also shows that the US and Britain were prepared to wage gas warfare against Germany and how US military leaders came close to using biological warfare against Japan.

Knell's major point is that the strategy of "strategic" bombing was the idea that German resistance would "crack" after a certain weight of bombing. He points out that the planners of British bombing and later American bombing rejected proposals that they go after the transportation or oil systems of Germany. They chafed at the bit whenever their bombings had to be associated with direct military operations. THEY SAW THEIR TASK AS MURDERING AND "DEHOUSING" MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, even though every form of analysis showed that such bombing whether against Britain, Japan, or Germany would not produce this effect. Arthur Harris, commander of the UK's Bomber Command actually believed all other military activity was superfluous. The war could be ended if enough Germans were killed by his bombers!

Knell's states that even from the point of view of Allied or German military objectives, bombing civilians was simply not efficient, although it is obvious his concern is not military efficiency, but at stopping the destruction of cities and the murder of innocent people. He implies that aerial bombing is a violation of international law. He suggests that in a just world the commanders of the British and American air forces in WWII should have been tried as war criminals.

In the course of explaining the history of bombing, Knell produces a very interesting history of the years between the turn of the century and the Second World War, sparing neither the Allied or Axis governments for their roles in fomenting the war as well as the failure of various disarmanent schemes.

At times, Knell gets beyond his depth discussing questions of internetional relations and history that he is not familiar with. Likewise, his prose is not that of a professional writer and the publisher did not devote sufficient resources to copy-edit this book well, an increasing problem in the publishing industry.

I would have been happier if there were more evident documentation and examples of what Knell discusses in the abstract. While he refers to firestorms throughout his book, Knell never explains how the firestorms were created. Much of this book might be confusing to someone who had not learned this elsewhere.

However, the bigger question is posed about the origin of the horror of the area bombings that he justly condemns. Its useless savagery comes out of the equally savage rivalries between the big business cliques that run the imperialist countries of Western Europe, Japan, and America which flared in totwo World Wars so far and could flare up again should crisis conditions like those in the 1930s return. The military and the billionaires they serve still have complete disregard for the great majority of working people, youth, farmers, and other regular people that lead to millions of deaths in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afganistan, Iraq, and other wars.

After all from area bombing, they went on to nuclear weapons whose task was not just to destroy a city, but to destroy the world. Chiding them about the savagery of the bombing, mourning the innocent victims of the wars, and proposing international law is not enough. The disease must be cured at its root. Production and government for the profits of the wealthy must be replaced with production for the needs of the producers and the people of the world, and government by the workers and the farmers.

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Most recent customer reviews

This book is a tragic, missed opportunity.

THIS BOOK IS A TRAGEDY. The author appears to have spend *hundreds* of hours doing research and has blown it with his use of his research.Read more

Published on May 30, 2015 by Pen Name and That A

The myth of the 'good German' is destroyed, too

Up to late 1944, Hermann Knell, a teenager too young to be drafted, was having a comfy-cozy war in his hometown of Wurzburg, a small city in Bavaria.Read more

Published on December 24, 2006 by Harry Eagar

Another apology for the Third Reich

This is a deeply flawed memoir by a German who has yet to acknowledge the responsibility that Germans had for bringing about the Second World War.Read more

Published on July 22, 2006 by J. P. Polley

Faustian Search for the Truth

Driven by a Faustian search for the truth Knell has written a passionate, intelligent and honest book. He has done excellent

research.Read more

Published on December 11, 2004 by w.henry

Are there moral limits to mass killing in wartime?

This is a tough book to review, and I hope you will be patient in reading my input. I'll start with what I perceive to be the book's problems, and then move on to what I admire...Read more

Published on April 29, 2004 by Judge Knott

A logically reasoned yet personally passionate account

To Destroy A City is a fluently written account by Hermann Knell -- a German survivor who was nineteen and living in Wurzburg when, in March of 1945, hundreds of Allied planes...Read more

Published on June 19, 2003 by Midwest Book Review

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