The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945
Exhaustive and harrowing … Friedrich's aim seems to be not only to wrest the history of German suffering from the clutch of the far right but to rescue the glories of German history from the twelve years of Hitler's thousand-year Reich.(Ian BurumaNew York Review of Books)The Firerepresents the continuation of Friedrich's generation's indictment of National Socialism—except now the finger is pointed at the Allies, and sympathy is extended to the civilian Germans who were their victims.(The Nation)What W. G. Sebald lamented about the lack of open discourse on the air war appears to have been blown apart with the publication ofThe Fire.(Noah IsenbergBookforum)Jörg Friedrich's achievement inThe Firehas been to tell this tale of death and destruction with a rare plasticity and vividness.(German Historical Institute London Bulletin)Riveting.(TIME Europe)[Jörg Friedrich] describes in stark, unrelenting and very literary detail what happened in city after city as the Allies dropped 80 million incendiary bombs on Germany.... There is … an edginess to Friedrich's writing and commentary, an emotional power.(New York Times)Jörg Friedrich tells the story from the viewpoint of the bombed with... great skill and objectivity.(Paul JohnsonThe American Spectator)Thorough and methodical... Friedrich's book underscores that precision bombing is anything but a scientific enterprise.(Stanley HoffmanForeign Affairs)Mr. Friedrich deserves credit for both his diligence and his descriptive powers.(Economist)An indictment both of Hitler's appropriation of German history and of the Allies' destruction of a nation's culture... Thoughtful and detailed.(Library Journal)This is a book that demands to be read, no matter how uncomfortable the experience.(David CesaraniThe Independent)[A] haunting book… forceful, incendiary.(Atlantic Monthly)A well-documented piece of historical writing... [that] is also a poignant, lyrical and terrible account of human suffering.(Adam R. SeippHouston Chronicle)A vivid and powerful critique of war... [The Fireis] fascinating, ground-breaking, and thought-provoking.(Roger MoorhouseBBC History Magazine)Recommended.(Choice)A contribution to the German literature of remembrance; it is also a passionate denunciation of the excesses of the air war.(Harold DornTechnology and Culture1900-01-00)