Firestorm
by Paul Addison and Jeremy R. Crang, Editors
Summary
Firestorm assembles a cast of distinguished scholars to review the origins, conduct, and consequences of the World War II U.S. and British raids on Dresden. Here is a panoramic reassessment of the evidence and the issues, including the question of whether the bombing of the city constitutes a war crime. Firestorm cogently demonstrates the reasons why Dresden has come to symbolize the military and ethical questions involved in the waging of total war.
Excerpt
The phrase “total war” is more a rhetorical device that it is an analytical tool. It does, however, have value when used in relation to the Second World War. Those who fought and endured that war themselves described it as a “total war.”
As a categorisation, therefore, it is at least free of the sin of hindsight; the same does not apply to its application to earlier wars, including the First World War. Moreover, it has at least one connotation that is quite specific. The phrase ‘total war’ had acquired currency in the inter-war years, but it related to the demands likely to be made on the belligerent state more than to the conduct of the war itself. When General Erich Ludendorff’s Der Totale Krieg, first published in 1935, was translated into English, its title was The Nation at War, and ‘der totale Krieg’ was rendered much more accurately as ‘totalitarian war’.
The German warlord’s point was that the next war
would require the mobilisation of the entire nation for the
purposes of its prosecution: the political and social fabric of
the state would be bent to the achievement of a single
purpose. But between 1939 and 1945 total war acquired an
additional and different meaning: it referred to the readiness
to breach the principle of non-combatant immunity, one of the
keystones of just war theory. It defined not what would be
required of one’s own population, but what one would inflict
on the enemy’s.
Civilians had suffered in earlier wars. The key step was the
move from an acceptance that individuals might be the
accidental and even incidental victims of war, which was not
new, to a determination that civilians could be a principal
target for military action, which was. This was of course the
consequence of Ludendorff’s definition of total or totalitarian
war: if entire nations were to be mobilised for the purposes of
the war, then their peoples were potential and even legitimate
targets for the enemy. To that extent it was still possible to
keep some aspects of the argument within the bounds of the
just war tradition. Killing civilians was still a means to an end,
not an end in itself. This was not genocide. It was about
winning the war, not about racial cleansing.
The paradox which the Dresden raid throws into sharp
relief was that Britain was as ready, if not readier than most,
to use this definition of total war, in other words to employ
attacks on the non-combatant population as a means to its
end.
Reviews
”An outstanding book on a subject that will simply not go away”--
”Unashamedly sober and scientific, providing a welcome dose of objectivity”--
“Invaluable context and perspectives...consistently thought-provoking”—Times Literary Supplement
Author's Biography
Paul Addison is an Honorary Fellow in the School of History and Classics at the University of Edinburgh where he was from 1996 to 2005 Director of the Centre for Second World War Studies. His most recent book is Churchill: The Unexpected Hero (2005).
Jeremy A. Crang is senior Lecturer in History and Assistant Director of the Centre for Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The British Army and the People’s War 1939-45 (2000) and co-editor (with Paul Addison) of The Burning Blue: A New History of the Battle of Britain (2000).