The Fire

by Friedrich, Jorg

• ISBN13: 9780231133807
• ISBN10: 0231133804
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

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 J& ouml;rg 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 Fireis a rare account of the air raids as they were experienced by the civilians who were their targets.

Table of Contents

1. Weapon	1	(48)
THE APPROACH
Bombs on Wuppertal-Barmen
FIRE PROTECTION ENGINEERS
The high-explosive bomb; the Blockbuster
The inflammability of the German city
The Old Town, the housing block, and the roof
Incendiary materials
The incendiary stick
THE HEAVY BOMBER
The Flying Fortress
Mosquito and Mustang
Marking the night sky with flares
The Master Bomber
Ballistics of the bomb's flight
The creep-back effect
The Bomber's Baedeker
RADAR
Discovering the radio guidance beam
The German Knickebein beam
The German-British radar war
Gee and Oboe; error tolerance
The phantom world of radio-beam guidance
Freya and the Würzburg reflector
The Kammhuber Line
The tinfoil dipole
Production battle, sortie frequency, bomber losses
The introduction of airborne radar
The art of jamming
THE CREW
Navigator, aerial gunners, first pilot
The "shroud"
The flak artillery
The flak searchlights
The German fighter weapon
The "Wild Boar" and the "Tame Boar"
Fear and sacrifice of the bomber pilot
"But to whom could you express such doubts?"
2. Strategy	49	(104)
MORALE BOMBING
Human losses in the air war
German air raids on Warsaw and Rotterdam
Winston Churchill and the never-fought campaign of 1919
World War I; zeppelins
London and Berlin, summer 1940; launching the Strategic Air War
Mastermind of a new doctrine
Bombs on London, fall 1940 Coventry and Dortmund
Churchill's "bold card"
Recruiting the United States for the war
The project of the "exterminating attack"
From Mönchengladbach to Mannheim; the 1940 trials
1941: searching for industrial objectives
1941: abandoning precision raids
The "Area Bombing Directive" of February 14, 1942
Air Marshal Harris and the Lübeck raid
Operation Millennium: the Thousand-Bomber Raid on Cologne
Ideas on the apocalyptic strike
The bomber stream
The First Battle of the Ruhr
The ruins of Remscheid
England's bombing debate: public and church
The conscience of the physicists
The Dambusters Raid and the modern-day Flood
Preparation for germ warfare
The last nine months' apocalypse
The discovery of the firestorm
Pforzheim
Hamburg
Kassel
THE WAY TO THE RHINE
Devastating the invasion areas
Big Week
The bombing of France by the invading Anglo-American army
Air raids on southern Italy
Caen
Blocking the Auschwitz plan
V1 and V2
The Siegfried Line
The Arnhem operation and the demise of Emmerich and Kleve
House-to-house combat in Aachen
The Battle of Huertgen Forest
Breaking out of Huertgen Forest; the destruction of Jülich and Düren
The oil and transportation objectives
Strafer fire
The march to the lower Rhine through Goch and Xanten
Crossing the Rhine and the end of Wesel
The Second Battle of the Ruhr
Encirclement of the Ruhr
Taking the Sauerland region
Meschede
Churchill abandons the air war
The massacre of Swinemünde
3. Land	153	(172)
THE NORTH
Hanseatic cities
Lübeck and Thomas Mann's message
Rostock; the gauleiter
Anklam's columns of smoke
Wismar; the red-hot bricks
Stralsund, the alternative objective
The organ of Stettin
Danzig and the war against the roots
Kiel on both sides of the Firth
Hamburg, or the interruption of the world
The 173 raids on Bremen
The heart of Emden
The Weser fortification
Paderborn and the giant oaks
The cathedral in Minden where Henry the Lion wed
The tunnels of Osnabrück
The viaducts
The Volkssturm militia of Her-ford
Bielefeld and the Bethel asylum
Hildesheim at the train station
The Wewelsburg castle
Soest and the railroad
The cathedral of Münster
Hanover, or the "industrial/rubber" target
Brunswick's Sundays
THE WEST
Rhineland
Rees, founded by St. Irmgard
The Catholic Hospital of Dinslaken Duisburg; the earthquake bomb
The fire brigade of Krefeld
Napoleon in Düsseldorf
Cologne and the battle of the Huns Bonn, the test site
The luck of Koblenz
U.S. Liberators over Bingen
Goethe, Harris, and the siege of Mainz
The hospitable Wiesbaden
The "flaming brands" of Worms
The Palatinate War, Churchill, Mannheim
The geometry of Karlsruhe
The devastation of Breisach
Aachen; the mythos
The Constantine basilica in Trier
Saarbrücken or the "double blow"
The wood of Kaiserslautern
Essen and the million incendiary sticks
The Hitler of Fredeburg
Closing off Dortmund
THE SOUTH
Freiburg near the Burgundy Gate
Würzburg and No. 5 Bomber Group
Nuremberg, the imperial fortress
Augsburg and the fire in the frost
The demolition of Munich
The blocked roads of Stuttgart
Heilbronn and the inverse terror
THE EAST
Leipzig or getting out in time
Magdeburg and the 240 seconds
Halberstadt; the fan
Dresden and Darmstadt; precision destruction
Berlin, the fall
4. Protection	325	(86)
REFUGE IN THE VAULT
Voice of the siren
The cellar
Radiant heat and combustion gases
Kassel's chains of cellars
The mesh of corridors under Dresden's Old Town
The bunkers, fist of reinforced concrete
Tunnels, pipes, slit trenches
The "bunker broads"
The battle to get in
The Jew in the air-raid shelter
"Bunker fever"
HOME FRONT
The funeral ritual
The house community
The air-raid warden
The blackout
Cologne during the Thousand-Bomber night
Water for firefighting
Church tower lookouts and rubble pilots
The water corridor of Brunswick
Buried in rubble
Defusing the duds
Recovering the dead
Hitler's mass-grave prohibition
Identification squads
CARE
Reception centers
Emergency quarters
Eye injuries
Hospital bunkers
The killing of surplus patients
Cash compensation
The black market
System preservation and judicial terror
Looters
Undermining the military morale
The radio-tuning offense
Denunciation
EVACUEES
Flight from Hamburg
Thinning out the cities
Evacuating children from the cities
In the host district
5. We	411	(26)
BAD MOOD, GOOD ATTITUDE
Propaganda figures
Admiration for the stamina of the British
Defiance, powerlessness, germ mail
"Overthrow Hitler and you will have peace!"
The written-off Rhineland
The "fuss about the Cologne cathedral"
The collapse of confidence in victory
REPRISAL
Hitler's last public speech
"The British people must be exterminated"
Bombing victims
Observations of the foreign workers
The reprisal weapon
The lynching of bailed-out pilots
6. I	437	(22)
SENSORY PERCEPTION
Danger and sound
The membrane of anxiety
The loss of voice
Subjective time and real time
EMOTION
Increased suggestibility
Interrupted perception
"As if it wasn't me"
Emotional paralysis
EXPERIENCE
Swaying walls Drowning in fire-quenching water
Bombarded hospital
Child deaths
A child's perception
Human remains
7. Stone	459	(22)
IMMOVABLES
Goethe's birthplace in Frankfurt
Castles Saving the Beethoven House in Bonn Encasing the Bamberg Horseman
TRANSPORT
Sculptures in the high choir of the Cologne Cathedral
Baroque altars, church windows
Panel paintings on the road
Archival materials
Train ride of the state archives
BOOKS
Incunabula
Fire in the Bavarian State Library
Flight of the books to rock, salt, and potash
The largest book-burning of all time
The resilience of paper
EDITORIAL REMARKS	481	(2)
AFTERWORD FOR AMERICAN AND BRITISH READERS NOTES	483	(16)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	499	(72)
IMAGE SOURCES	571
INDEX	513

Excerpts

Jörg Friedrich unravels the history behind: The Flying Fortress The Master Bomber The creep-back effect The German-British radar war The Kammhuber Line The art of jamming The "Wild Boar" and the "Tame Boar" Winston Churchill and the never-fought campaign of 1919 Operation Millennium: the Thousand-Bomber Raid on Cologne The ruins of Remscheid The conscience of the physicists The Dambusters Raid and the modern-day Flood The Arnhem operation and the demise of Emmerich and Kleve The massacre of Swinemünde Lübeck and Thomas Mann's message Anklam's columns of smoke Wismar; the red-hot bricks Danzig and the war against the roots Hamburg, or the interruption of the world The cathedral in Minden where Henry the Lion wed Bielefeld and the Bethel asylum Duisburg; the earthquake bomb The luck of Koblenz The "flaming brands" of Worms Augsburg and the fire in the frost Heilbronn and the inverse terror Identification squads The largest book-burning of all time.