Questioning The Reasons For Allied Air War

The white postcard framed within a square of red bears a sign of death. "City gone," it says.

The message was written in the immediate aftermath of the Allied firebombing of the baroque city of Dresden, a series of air raids carried out from Feb. 13-15, 1945. Today, it is one of the surviving documents that help people remember one of the war's most controversial air attacks, directed at a city that had little military significance and served as sanctuary for thousands of refugees who had fled from the Soviet Red Army.

As they do each year, the city's residents held a series of services on Thursday to mark the start of a three-day bombing attack that showered fire on the city. It is not clear how many people died, partly because many victims were incinerated and their ashes mingled with the rubble. The official estimate is 35,000.

"You have to look at the fate of each individual so that afterward you don't simply talk of collateral damage," said Jens Herrmann at one of the Thursday services.

To help keep the memory of those victims alive, the bells of all churches in the city began to toll at 9:45 p.m., the time that the bombs began to fall.

Anniversary gains new meaning

This year's services had special significance for two reasons.

Hanging over Thursday's services was the growing threat of a new war. Even though this war would occur far from Dresden, the city's residents still expressed their dismay that this violence might kill more innocent people. "We, the survivors of the bombing raids, appeal to the world: Help prevent new suffering, new destruction and new death," a declaration said.

This year's anniversary also falls at a time when Germans have begun to re-examine the horrors that the Allied air war brought to their country. The new debate was started with last years's publication of a book called "The Fire - Germany and the Bombardment 1940-1945" by historian Jörg Friedrich.

"The bombardment of German towns and cities that went on for five years during World War II has no parallel in history," Friedrich wrote. "More than 1,000 cities and villages were bombed. Nearly a million tons of explosives were dropped on 30 million civilians -- mostly women, children and the elderly."

An estimated 635,000 civilians were killed and 130 German cities destroyed in the campaign.

Book focuses on suffering

But Friedrich's book goes beyond a recitation of numbers. Using such terms as "mass extermination," "gassed," and "crematoriums," Friedrich describes the suffering of the civilian population who were buried, burned and killed in the attacks with language more commonly used to describe the victims of German campaigns.

He also questions the strategy that led to this suffering. "The British did indeed have the option in 1944-45, a time when Germany was already on its knees, of stopping the senseless carpet bombing campaign," he said in a newspaper interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.

The book's publication started a new examination around the country about the air war, its methods and its goals. The war became the subjects of cover stories in national magazines. "Crimes against the Germans?" the magazine GEO asked on its cover this month. "The taboo subject -- the air war."

The war also was the subject of a documentary on public television last month that showed children eating their meals amid the ruins, elderly residents hobbling over piles of rubble and row after row of bodies lying on streets. And Germany's leading opposition bloc in the German parliament is preparing to formally ask the coalition government how the country should mark the 60th anniversary of the raids around the country.

Critics dislike book's language

Friedrich's book stands in the center of the debate. It has also stood in the center of criticism -- at home and abroad.

German critics, for one, have taken issue with Friedrich's choice of words. In a review of the book that appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hans-Ulrich Wehler wrote: "There is talk of a 'war of annihilation' being waged against the German cities and its residents, although this term was reserved for good reason in the past for the (Nazi) war of annihilation waged against the Jews and Slavs."

Expressing a criticism coming from historians, Wehler wrote: "The danger of Friedrich's book is that in its passion for the helpless victims of the Allied bombing war it could further the cult of victimization that is so widespread in the United States."

Abroad, the book has upset Britons. These critics point out in particular that Friedrich's narrative is lopsided, ignoring the fact that Nazi Germany was the first to launch air raids on civilians in Warsaw, Poland; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Coventry, England; and London.

Thoughts of reconciliation

In defense of his work, Friedrich said he saw the book in a larger context. "The culture of reconciliation has expanded to the point that we can now accept the truth," he told the newspaper Die Welt.

In Dresden, that culture of reconciliation has been at work for years. One victim of the raids was a city landmark, the Frauenkirche, the baroque church that for 200 years stood as a monument of the Saxon capital's glory. The church is being rebuilt in an international effort.

Among the thousands of people who have joined the effort are the British who are providing a golden cross for the new dome. The cross was created by a London goldsmith with a special interest in Dresden: His father was a pilot in the air raids.