December 6, 2003
More German WW2 revisionism
Back in January we posted on the recent shift in German attitudes towards the bombardment of their country during WW2, exemplified in Jörg Friedrich's bestselling Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945 (The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment, 1940-45).
Now Friedrich has come out with a book of photographs on the same theme: Brandstätten (Places of Fire), the subject of an essay by Michael Kimmelman in today's NY Times:
Mr. Friedrich's "Places of Fire" is a collection of photographs of Germany during the war. . . Mr. Friedrich is mysterious about their origin. They seem to have been amassed by the country's efficient record keepers and collected in town archives. They show scenes of Nazis hauling corpses across the smoking ruins of bombed-out Dresden and Hitler Youth clearing dead children from streets in Cologne.Kimmelman rightly doesn't give this much weight, next to the overriding fact that the pictures necessarily present the damage and suffering out of context and in a form that is inherently ennobling.Mr. Friedrich, another Trümmerkind ["child of the rubble"] . . . published an earlier book, "Der Brand" ("The Fire"), which incited charges that he wished to portray Germans as victims and the British and Americans as war criminals. Now "Places of Fire" has caused even more criticism. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung recommended that readers throw it directly into the garbage.
At the encouragement of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Mr. Friedrich says, he included a few photographs showing the effects of Nazi bombing on British and Polish civilians, as a kind of balance. And he has responded that while the decision to publish the German photographs was difficult, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, "forbade these photos of our victims from the German papers."
So we stare at the sensational photographs in Mr. Friedrich's book with our beliefs about the war struggling to anchor images that threaten to come politically untethered before our eyes. The pictures beseech us to feel outrage while they exploit the amoral status of photography, with its deeply misleading reputation for truthfulness.The only way to look at such pictures — because not looking is an unreasonable choice — is therefore to keep their equivocal status in mind. The meaning of words, while fungible like the meaning of photographs, can be easier to control. Sebald ends with a reminder that "the real pioneering achievements in bomb warfare" were by Germans.
The German Sixth Army had reached the Volga in August 1942, he points out, when 1,200 Nazi bombers descended in a single raid on Stalingrad, then swollen by refugees. "During that raid alone, which caused elation among the German troops stationed on the opposite bank," he says, "40,000 people lost their lives."
Posted by David on December 6, 2003 8:57 PM
I have always read that history is written by the winners. Although this is more of a photo book it seems, I would love to read it. The images I have seen in a hardback book called "Signal", items taken from the German armies(?) newspaper has a totally strange feel to them. Panzer General, and Zero, or Tora tora tora, books by the "other side" have given me new outlooks on the subject.
I may try to see if this has been translated and published here.
Posted by: gunner on December 6, 2003 10:45 PM
May history constantly remind us of the consequences of Prometheus' gift, unbound.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey
Summary Report - European War
September 30, 1945
In the attacks on German cities incendiary bombs, ton for ton, were found to have been between four and five times as destructive as high explosive. German fire defenses lacked adequate static and other water reserves replenished by mains independent of the more vulnerable central water supply. However, in the more serious fire raids, any fire-fighting equipment was found to have been of little avail.
Fire storms occurred, the widespread fires generating a violent hurricane-like draft, which fed other fires and made all attempts at control hopeless.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey
Summary Report - Pacific War
July 1, 1946
On 9 March 1945, a basic revision in the method of B-29 attack was instituted. It was decided to bomb the four principal Japanese cities at night from altitudes averaging 7,000 feet. Japanese weakness in night fighters and antiaircraft made this program feasible.
Incendiaries were used instead of high-explosive bombs and the lower altitude permitted a substantial increase in bomb load per plane. One thousand six hundred and sixty-seven tons of bombs were dropped on Tokyo in the first attack. The chosen areas were saturated. Fifteen square miles of Tokyo's most densely populated area were burned to the ground.
The weight and intensity of this attack caught the Japanese by surprise. No subsequent urban area attack was equally destructive. Two days later, an attack of similar magnitude on Nagoya destroyed 2 square miles. In a period of 10 days starting 9 March, a total of 1,595 sorties delivered 9,373 tons of bombs against Tokyo, Nagoya, Osake, and Kobe destroying 31 square miles of those cities at a cost of 22 airplanes. The generally destructive effect of incendiary attacks against Japanese cities had been demonstrated.
Fire can destroy your house and all of your possessions in less than an hour, and it can reduce an entire forest to a pile of ash and charred wood. It's also a terrifying weapon, with nearly unlimited destructive power. Fire kills more people every year than any other force of nature.
Posted by: Peter Shriner on December 7, 2003 10:41 AM
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