Firestorm: The true story of the firebombing of Germany and Japan

by Paul Ham

The Allied air war against German and Japanese civilians was the greatest mass slaughter of non-combatants in military history. It was premeditated, planned and executed with callous indifference to the suffering on the ground. It conformed to new military ideas that ‘strategic bombing’ of homes and civilians would crush the spirit of the enemy to resist. This ‘experiment’, as Bomber Harris, of British Bomber Command, described it, continued for months – killing 100,000 people in single nights of slaughter in Dresden and Tokyo. But what did ‘terror bombing’ actually achieve? Did it break the Japanese and German regimes? In this graphic account, Paul Ham examines the truth about the air war in 1944 and 1945. Firestorm is based on an edited extract from Hiroshima Nagasaki, the complete history of the atomic bomb by Paul Ham, published by HarperCollins Publishers.

35 pages

First published July 2, 2013

About the author

PAUL HAM is a historian specialising in 20th century conflict, war and politics. Born and raised in Sydney, Paul has spent his working life in London, Sydney and Paris. He teaches narrative non-fiction at SciencesPo in Reims and English at l'École de guerre in Paris. His books have been published to critical acclaim in Australia, Britain and the United States, and include: 'Hiroshima Nagasaki', a controversial new history of the atomic bombings (HarperCollins Australia 2010, Penguin Random House UK 2011, & Pan Macmillan USA 2014-15); '1914: The Year The World Ended' (Penguin Random House 2013); 'Sandakan' (Penguin Random House 2011); 'Vietnam: The Australian War' and 'Kokoda' (both published by HarperCollins, 2007 and 2004). Paul has co-written two ABC documentaries based on his work: 'Kokoda' (2010), a 2-part series on the defeat of the Japanese army in Papua in 1942 (shortlisted for the New York Documentary prize); and 'All the Way' (2012), about Australia's difficult alliance with America during the Vietnam War, which he also narrated and presented (it won the UN's Media Peace prize). Paul is the founding director of Hampress, an independent ebook publisher, and a regular contributor to Kindle Single, Amazon's new 'short book' publishing platform, for which he has written '1913: The Eve of War' and 'Young Hitler', co-written 'Honey, We Forgot the Kids', and published several titles by other authors. Hampress welcomes your ideas! A former Australia correspondent for The Sunday Times (1998-2012), Paul has a Masters degree in Economic History from London School of Economics. He lives in Sydney and Paris, and takes time off now and then to organise the Big Fat Poetry Pig-Out, an annual poetry recital, for charity.

Some relevant links:

http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Ham/e/B001...

https://www.hampress.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ham

http://us.macmillan.com/hiroshimanaga...

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/hir...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...

http://www.amazon.com/Sandakan-Paul-H...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42...

http://www.randomhouse.com.au/authors...

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/97807...