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Among The Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan |
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Among The Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan
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by A. C. Grayling
Sales Rank: 156351
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Discount: 25 %
List Price: $15.95
$11.96
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on 6-16-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
Published by: Walker & Company March 20, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0802715656
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0802715654
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 4 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The Allied bombing of Axis cities, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and made smoking ruins of Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima, remains one of the great controversies of WWII; this probing study does the issue full justice. Philosophy professor Grayling (The Meaning of Things) focuses on Britain's "area bombing" of entire German cities, a strategy adopted initially because bombers couldn't hit smaller sites and then, as attitudes hardened, continued as a deliberate attack on civilian morale. Grayling scrupulously considers the justifications for area bombing—that it would shorten the conflict by destroying Germany's economy and will to resist, that civilian workers were also combatants or that it was simply the rough justice of war—and finds them wanting. British bombing, he contends, did little damage to the German war effort at an unconscionable price in innocent lives, in contrast to American pinpoint bombing of industrial and military targets, which succeeded in paralyzing the German economy with few civilian casualties. (The Americans, he sadly notes, resorted to area bombing in their devastating air campaign against Japan.) Drawing on firsthand accounts by theorists, architects, victims and opponents of area bombing, Grayling situates a lucid analysis of the historical data within a rigorous philosophical framework. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Grayling's purpose is not to condone the atrocities carried out by the Axis or to condemn the Allies for carpet bombing cities in Germany and Japan, but to show that, even in a good war, the good guys can do terrible things. He looks at the decision making, the circumstances, and the contemporary debate over the practice that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the destruction of so many cities. While the author discusses the practical military drawbacks of the tactic, he is most engaged with its moral implications. Black-and-white photographs show the effects of the campaign. This is an engaging and readable work, intended to bring readers into contact with the shaded moralities of war.–Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (Hardcover)
A.C. Grayling's "Among the Dead Cities" is a valiant, but ultimately flawed attempt to examine the moral ramifications of the Allied bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan during the Second World War. Few authors in the English-speaking world have yet had the courage to examine this issue and this book is both welcome and valuable, particularly in light of the bearing that this moral dilemma poses on subsequent policies undertaken by the victorious nations. Grayling's main philosophical question here is whether or not the bombings were wrong. In the pursuit of his answer, he examines the possible justifications for the bombing of civilians thoroughly and, for the most part, objectively. His training as a philosopher allows him to neatly torpedo the arguments in favor of the bombing of civilians in a concise and articulate manner, though his historical accuracy is occasionally wrong on some of the details. (For example, in a list of conquered territories and client states from which Hitler obtained resources, he lists Silesia, a region which was mainly populated by German-speaking peoples from the 13th century onwards and had been part of Prussia or Austria since the 15th century.) These instances are fortunately few and usually of a technical nature. Of greater consequence are some of the ways in which he ultimately undermines his own argument. While no book on the European theater of WWII would be complete without mention of the Holocaust, Grayling's constant emphasis on how much worse it was than anything that the Allies had done has the net effect of defusing his own argument. The Holocaust, for all of its horrors, is as incidental to his examination of the morality of the bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan as the criminal history of a man would be in the trial of his sister's rapist. No competent judge would allow such material to be considered in a rape trial and, similarly, the constant evocations of the Holocaust, no matter how horribly wrong it was, do not belong in this book. Weighing the relative "wrongness" of the different events gives the impression of excusing the less wrong one, no matter how much Grayling protests to the contrary in the text. Comparing atrocities to see which is more atrocious is an intellectually useless pursuit and will never lead to the prevention of future atrocities. Grayling seems to be aware of this, but he can't help himself from doing it anyway. Other ways in which he undermines his efforts are his insistence on using the lowest possible casualty figures for the cities that were bombed (25,000 in Dresden?!?) and his reliance on English-language source material alone in making his case. The former he explains as an effort to be conservative and the latter as an effort to maintain his independence from the opinions of the writers of Germany and Japan who are often portrayed as using their civilians' victimhood to attempt to minimize their own culpability in WWII. Both of these are mistakes, though the latter is the more egregious one as it renders the victims voiceless. The understatement of casualty figures is a more minor mistake because there are never reliable casualty figures for events of this magnitude. One need look no further than the attack on the World Trade Center to know that. Overall, though, this book is a definite step in the right direction towards creating a more valid and nuanced picture of the Second World War and the moral complexities thereof.
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