New book on WW II takes fresh look at Allied bombings on Germany

But the taboo has been shattered and the topic burst into the nation’s consciousness with a new book — The Fire — Germany and the Bombardment 1940-1945 by historian Joerg Friedrich — which condemns the attacks as war crimes and indirectly suggests that they may be comparable to the Holocaust.

The book, climbing the German bestseller lists with more than 1,20,000 copies sold, claims the British-led attacks on German cities were a morally dubious and militarily questionable campaign to turn the population against Adolf Hitler.

And with German opposition to a looming war in Iraq now putting strains on NATO and Europe’s relations with the US, the chilling account of the deaths of up to 40,000 civilians in a single February 1945 raid on Dresden has added further momentum to the country’s growing peace movement.

It has also sparked a lively debate among historians in Germany and Britain, where many criticise Friedrich for what they call a lopsided narrative that fails to reflect the fact that Nazi Germany was first to launch air strikes on civilians in Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, London and Coventry.

Many other historians and newspapers, such as the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, have nevertheless praised the book as pioneering for shedding new light on a long overlooked subject.

Even Klaus Naumann, commander of Germany’s armed forces in the 1990s and retired head of NATO’s military planning committee, recently joined the debate by saying the attacks on the civilian targets could not be justified.

‘‘The bombardment of German towns and cities that went on for five years during WW II has no parallel in history,’’ Friedrich writes. ‘‘More than 1,000 cities and villages were bombed. Nearly a million tonnes of explosives were dropped on 30 million civilians — mostly women, children and the elderly.’’

Friedrich stops short of labelling Winston Churchill, Britain’s war time Prime Minister, a ‘‘war criminal’’ but uses emotionally loaded words to describe the bombing, which began in 1940 as a retaliation against German attacks on London.

He says the attacks were supported by scientific research to develop the most destructive fire storms to kill the greatest number of civilians.

Friedrich calls the attacks, which also cost 55,000 Allied pilots and crew members their lives, a ‘‘mass extermination’’ and refers to the cellars where cowering civilians were ‘‘gassed’’ to death as ‘‘crematoriums’’. Such language has drawn sharp criticism for the apparently intended comparison with the Holocaust.

Friedrich’s main accusation is that the most destructive Allied attacks came in 1945 at a point when the war was already all but decided.

He points out that half of the 6,35,000 civilians who died were killed in raids in the final nine months. He also notes that industrial output in Germany peaked in mid-1944, suggesting the attacks barely dented the country’s war production. (Reuters)