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Christina's Reviews > THE FIRE - THE BOMBING OF GERMANY 1940-1945
THE FIRE - THE BOMBING OF GERMANY 1940-1945
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I read this book upon my German father's recommendation. It was not an easy read as a first-born American daughter of German immigrants who lived through World War II as children.
It changed my entire opinion of the Americans and British being the "good guys" of WWII. The complete devastation of most of Germany's city/town centers and the targeting of civilian populations horrified me. (A lot of effort was invested in figuring out how to create the perfect fire storm which would destroy the closely built wooden city centers which mostly dated back to the Middle Ages.)
I now realize that there really are not "good guys" in war - there is no black and white, only varying shades of grey.
It changed my entire opinion of the Americans and British being the "good guys" of WWII. The complete devastation of most of Germany's city/town centers and the targeting of civilian populations horrified me. (A lot of effort was invested in figuring out how to create the perfect fire storm which would destroy the closely built wooden city centers which mostly dated back to the Middle Ages.)
I now realize that there really are not "good guys" in war - there is no black and white, only varying shades of grey.
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Finished Reading
December 12, 2007
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One thing among many that the author does not discuss in his selective history of bombing is that the British learned from the Germans how to burn down cities. They studied the German blitz in clinical detail.
So I would argue not to feel too sorry. The moral here is "Don't start what you can't finish" - and don't cry when your cities get burned down around you after you've burned London, Birmingham, Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw, and Stalingrad.
I am awed, given the level of destruction visited upon Germany, that it is now the world's third largest economy - and the largest economy in Europe. This in a country about the size of the state of Montana.
Germany's resurrection is one of the great miracles of the world.
Siddhartha Banerjee