Randall Hansen writes clearly and vividly, describing the British and American bombing campaigns against Germany in World War II. The plural in the previous sentence is one of his points: that the British and Americans conducted two separate and uncoordinated strategic bombing campaigns against Germany. His focus is on the bombing of Germany, so he does not cover in much detail other bombing campaigns where the British and Americans cooperated more effectively, such as the campaign against the French transport system before D-Day.

One of his examples of this lack of cooperation was that after the American daytime raid on Schweinfurt, the Germans feared that RAF bombers would show up that night and disrupt their recovery efforts by plastering the area with incendiary bombs, and that such an attack might prevent them from resuming production there at all. According to Hansen, the Germans were amazed that the RAF never showed up at Schweinfurt, and that the Americans did not follow up there, either.

The person who emerges as the big villain in Hansen's account is Arthur "Bomber" Harris. The British bombing campaign, in particular, was calculated terror bombing aimed specifically at civilians. Harris conceived this campaign and continued to press it home throughout the war, even when it became clear that this was not breaking German morale, that concentrating on other targets (such as oil and transportation) would more materially damage the German war effort, that improved technology and techniques removed the need for blanket area bombing, and even when Churchill gave him a more or less direct order to cease area bombing and concentrate on assigned targets. Amazingly, when Harris pushed back against this directive, Churchill did not reprimand him but caved in and praised Harris for his service to the country. ( )

Good description of the campaign and exploration of the bombing controversy over area vs. precision targets. Worth reading, if only for the extensive presentation of the correspondence between Portal and Harris. Portal, despite being the superior officer cannot budge Harris off of area bombing. Harris was blatantly disobeying orders and Portal was too weak to sack him. ( )

Very interesting, well written, well researched and probably controversial book. Hansen describes the fundamental difference between the British and the American approaches to bombing Germany: an "eliminationist" strategy of area bombing to destroy cities vs precision bombing with priority focus on military objectives. In Hansen's view: "Over the course of the war, the bombing that damaged Germany worse was American". The Americans accepted a higher ratio of losses through their daylight campaigns, and one reason was their concern with the moral implications of bombing civilians as the prime target.

Hansen concludes: "Moral clarity has two sides to it: it gives the Allied war aims moral purpose and it defines the limits within which those aims are pursued. Germany unilaterally launched a war that brought death, destruction, and suffering to tens of millions of people around the globe. The defeat of Germany was both a geopolitical and moral necessity, and the Allies were right to mobilize all of their resources in achieving this goal. It was inevitable that ordinary Germans would find themselves the victims of events. None of this, however, can justify the degree of death and destruction meted out by Harris and tolerated (if intermittently) by Churchill."

The book is also an interesting study on the role of individuals in history. Despite growing qualms about the effectiveness of area bombing, especially after 1943, despite "Bomber" Harris's deliberate blocking of precision bombing against ball bearings, oil, the Luftwaffe and transportation that so damaged the German cause, and this against clear directions set out, despite Harris continuing to level cities right up to the end of the war, no one had the nerve to call him on it and force a change. Churchill could have stopped it but did not. A thoughtful and thought-provoking book.

We'll Bomb them into the Stone Age

It's one of the big philosophical questions of the twentieth century given the totality of destruction WWII had on humanity. In "Fire and Fury," scholar and professor Randall Hansen explores the ethical dimension of the use of area bombing by both the axis and the allies during the war.

Hansen begins the book with an anecdote about the controversy over how to memorialize the bomber squadrons that participated in WWII in the Museum of Canada. He asks: "How can we judge the role that bombing played in the Allied victory? What role does morality play in the execution and evaluation of war?" Hansen goes on to quote Goebbles who said: "we all end up as the greatest heroes or the greatest war criminals."

Hansen's central thesis is: the area bombing (aka carpet bombing) of Germany by the allies failed to achieve its primary objective of destroying industrial armament production and in fact prolonged it.

Throughout the body of the book, Hansen explores the rather ambiguous objectives of area bombing. While superficially stated, the purpose was to destroy the German industry, implicitly many Generals interpreted the purpose to destroy public morale. Hansen concludes that Generals such as Curtis LeMay of the US and Sir Arthur Harris of the RAF felt they had carte blanche to "bomb them into the stone age."

The two major events with major moral implications are: why bombing wasn't used to end Auschwitz; and why was the bombing of Dresden so complete?

The first question has been asked many times. Hansen concludes that by Apr 1944, the first documented record of when the Allied leaders became aware of the concentration camps, 95% of the approx 7 million Jews killed had already taken place, so in the end it would not have saved that many. Still, the logic the Generals gave for not bombing Auschwitz was that the bombs were not precise enough and risked killing civilians. So, they turned around and carpet bombed Berlin, then Dresden killing close to a half million German civilians, where's the logic in that?

Regarding Dresden, Hansen leaves the most destructive bombing campaign of the European theater for last. The stories are horrific, of babies being burned to death in their mother's arms, the totality of it, really sickening for sure. The complete and utter devastation of Dresden left no doubt that the goal of the bombing campaign all along was the "long striven for goal of destroying the 50 leading industrial cities."

Hansen concludes that the memorialization and historiography of the bombing of Germany tends to justify the bombing of innocent civilians based on the faulty assumptions that it somehow prevented more Jews from being killed, and that it helped to bring the war to an end earlier. I was somewhat disappointed that despite the larger moral questions Hansen begins the book with, he ultimately decides to skirt an answer to this fundamentally philosophical question in his conclusion by sticking by his empirical evidence and simply concludes that it was a "moral and strategic failure." Why not answer the moral question directly: was the bombing a war crime? In not doing so Hansen contradicts himself when he states: "We cannot shy away from this conclusion out of a fear of giving succour to the far right or of offending the RAF."

I thought Hansen supported his thesis well overall though I definitely felt that certain chapters of the book acted more as filler than fully supporting his argument, but for a commercial book, I suppose that is OK.

Overall, I think the book is a decent exploration into one of the larger moral implications of bombing and its use in war, specifically in WWII. I would have to say that a basic background in the war is necessary, otherwise you won't understand the basic sequence of events. Despite a few minor flaws, I recommend "Fire and Fury" for anyone wanting to learn more about WWII. ( )