Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan

by A.C. Grayling

When Nuremberg was scouted in 1945 as a possible site for the Nazi war crime trials, an American damage survey of Germany described it as being "among the dead cities" of that country, for it was 90% destroyed, its population decimated, its facilities lost. As a place to put Nazis on trial, it symbolized the devastation Nazism brought upon Germany, while providing evidence of the destruction the Allies wrought on the country in the course of the war. In Among the Dead Cities, the acclaimed philosopher A. C. Grayling asks the provocative question, how would the Allies have fared if judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Trials? Arguing persuasively that the victor nations have never had to consider the morality of their policies during World War II, he offers a powerful, moral re-examination of the Allied bombing campaigns against civilians in Germany and Japan, in the light of principles enshrined in the post-war conventions on human rights and the laws of war. Intended to weaken those countries' ability and will to make war, the bombings nonetheless destroyed centuries of culture and killed some 800,000 non-combatants, injuring and traumatizing hundreds of thousands more in Hamburg, Dresden, and scores of other German cities, in Tokyo, and finally in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Was this bombing offensive justified by the necessities of war," Grayling writes, "or was it a crime against humanity? These questions mark one of the great remaining controversies of the Second World War." Their resolution is especially relevant in this time of terrorist threat, as governments debate how far to go in the name of security. Grayling begins by narrating the Royal Air Force's and U. S. Army Air Force's dramatic and dangerous missions over Germany and Japan between 1942 and 1945. Through the eyes of survivors, he describes the terrifying experience on the ground as bombs created inferno and devastation among often-unprepared men, women, and children. He examines the mindset and thought-process of those who planned the campaigns in the heat and pressure of war, and faced with a ruthless enemy. Grayling chronicles the voices that, though in the minority, loudly opposed attacks on civilians, exploring in detail whether the bombings ever achieved their goal of denting the will to wage war. Based on the facts and evidence, he makes a meticulous case for, and one against, civilian bombing, and only then offers his own judgment. Acknowledging that they in no way equated to the death and destruction for which Nazi and Japanese aggression was responsible, he nonetheless concludes that the bombing campaigns were morally indefensible, and more, that accepting responsibility, even six decades later, is both a historical necessity and a moral imperative. Rarely is the victor's history re-examined, and A. C. Grayling does so with deep respect and with a sense of urgency "to get a proper understanding for how peoples and states can and should behave in times of conflict." Addressing one of today's key moral issues, Among the Dead Cities is both a dramatic retelling of the World War II saga, and vitally important reading for our time.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, War, World War II, Japan, Military History

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Anthony Clifford "A. C." Grayling is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

He is a director and contributor at Prospect Magazine, as well as a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic. He has described himself as "a man of the left" and is associated in Britain with the new atheism movement, and is sometimes described as the 'Fifth Horseman of New Atheism'. He appears in the British media discussing philosophy.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents an interesting thought experiment: was the Allied air war against Germany and Japan a war crime?

You don't really see a lot of books like these. The ones you do see tend to scream agenda, which makes them historically questionable. Among the Dead Cities does not suffer from this defect. If anything, it is too equable for its own good.

Any book tackling the subject of potential Allied war crimes risks running afoul of the Greatest Generation Crowd (defined by their resemblance to Tom Brokaw and their distaste for anything French). The standard objection to any such discussion is that we (meaning 21st century Americans) aren't fit to judge mid-20th century soldiers fighting the greatest war in history (this is the same line of reasoning that compels us to accept the dubious morality of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, those slave-holding scions of liberty). Of course, such an argument misses the point. We can judge them. In fact, that generation has been judged. By their peers. At Nuremberg and Tokyo. By the International Military Tribunals. It's just that America, Great Britain and Russia never had to sit in the dock.

Philosopher A.C. Grayling puts them in the dock. His book is as meticulous as a trial brief. It starts with the briefest of overviews of the bomber war against Germany and Japan, paying a great deal of attention to Britain's Bomber Command, especially over Hamburg. The story then moves on to the experience of those beneath the bombs, which looks at the effect of bombing on civilian morale and a nation's ability to make war.

Four-story-high blocks of flats were like glowing mounds of stone right down to the basement. Everything seemed to have melted...Women and children were so charred as to be unrecognizable; those that had died through lack of oxygen were half charred and recognizable. Their brains tumbled from their burst temples and their insides from the soft parts under the ribs...The smallest children lay like fried eels on the pavement. Even in death they showed signs of how they must have suffered - their hands and arms stretched out as if to protect themselves from that pitiless heat.

Next, you get the viewpoint of the bomber, and the various rationales given for area bombing, which included destroying civilian morale, drawing defenses away from the front line, and decreasing armament production. Grayling then intersperses this history lesson with an interesting overview of contemporary bombing-protests, to show that some people disagreed with area bombing even while it occurred. The book's final two chapters make the case for and against area bombing.

The verdict is not surprising (at least not to me; I didn't purchase a book authored by a philosopher espousing a "we should have dropped three nukes!" line of argument): Grayling determines that Allied area bombing was a war crime. In doing so, he pokes holes in certain area-bombing supports, such as the idea that bombing lowers civilian morale (in reality, over time, area bombing does just the opposite). He also makes a weak argument that America's precision bombing was far more effectual. (In light of the contemporary overpraise heaped on the Norden bombsight, Grayling's reasoning here is a bit shaky. Indeed, this section is emblematic of the book's shortcomings: simply put, philosphical rigor is not the same as historical rigor. I never trusted that Grayling had spent enough time with this subject to be assured of the soundness of his history).

My overall reaction to this book was "fine." It was fine. A resounding, stop-the-presses, call home immediately "fine."

But "fine" doesn't do it for me. At least not here. My problem is that this book completely lacks any passion and conviction. If you've got a point to make, make it! Shove it in my face! Make me eat your point like the neighborhood bullies used to make me eat grass! Challenge my assumptions; get me riled up.

Alas, none of that happened. It's as though Grayling was scared of that midnight visit from the ghost of Stephen Ambrose. He jumps through hoops and does cartwheels to remain uncontroversial. In a way, Grayling's approach is almost quaint. He could have gone the agent provocateur route, pulled a Ward Churchill, and sold quite a few copies of Among the Dead Cities. Instead, he wrote an "on the other hand" kind of book, in which everything is qualified, and every bitter conclusion is smeared with layers of grape jam (or your topping of choice) in order to go down smooth.

What this book needed was a little provocation. It needed Grayling to stop hemming and hawing and just answer his own question.

Was the Allied area-bombing of Germany and Japan a war crime? Was it morally reprehensible? Yes and yes. Emphatically yes. By any measure, including the metrics established by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Trials. General Curtis Lemay - General Buck Turgidson himself - admitted that he would've been tried as a war criminal if America had lost the war. That's the only difference between America/Britain/Russia on one hand, and Germany/Japan on the other: the Allies were never put on trial.

Of course (and this is a big "of course), this does not place the Allies and the Axis on the same moral footing. To the contary, the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers are vastly different in terms of culpability, motives, and mitigating circumstances. That is to say, simply, that the Axis started it. (Sometimes playground philosophy is the most elegant philosophy).

For purposes of this argument, though, there is a difference between explanations and excuses. Saying that we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in order to shorten the war and avoid an invasion (a debatable point in and of itself) is an explanation, not an excuse. If you don't believe me, try switching out the variables. Japan and Germany had their explanations, too; that didn't excuse their actions.

My other criticism is what this book did not do. Despite Among the Dead Cities' obvious contempoary implications, Grayling never extrapolates his verdict to the present day. I mean, the elephant in the room is "the War on Terror," but Grayling doesn't touch that with a 50-foot pole.

Allow me to explain. There is a certain argument that area bombing is justified because every civilian in an enemy-nation is somehow culpable (either as a factory worker, a war supporter, or a passive non-supporter). This is a form of imperfect justice. When you bomb Dresden, you aren't killing the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Those people are at the death camps, which aren't being bombed. And when you bomb Hiroshima, you aren't killing the perpetrators of the Baatan death march; those soldiers are in the Philippines. Instead, you are going after the support system, however attenuated or tacit that support might be. This is an argument for area-bombing. It's also the mindset of any number of terrorist groups who attack Western targets symbolizing capitalism or militarism.

Perhaps I'm asking too much from Grayling to expect such a comparison (however obvious it appeared to me). I suppose it would've been professionally dangerous in our consensus-loving, banality-seeking world (especially for anyone teaching at a public institution). And maybe it's just too incendiary to handle, no matter how thoughtful you are. Still, I would've liked to see Grayling try to tackle this question. At the very least, it'd add some texture to a historical time period that has been glossed over and romanticized in recent years by the aforementioned Brokaw, Ambrose, and the dynamic duo of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks

(This should not be taken as criticism of the work these men have done capturing the stories of individual soldiers, stories that would otherwise have been lost. To the contrary - now I'm equivocating like Grayling - they have brought history to a wide audience that might not have cared about history before. It's just important to remember that World War II wasn't as simple as Gramps heading over to Europe and shoving an American flag up Hitler's bum).

As it is, the book stands as a thoughtful, carefully outlined argument. It has as its virtues reason, logic, and lucidity. It has as its shortcoming a noticeable lack of verve.

[Vheissu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grayling's book is a measured, balanced, and fair inquiry into Allied area bombing during the Second World War. Grayling concludes that area bombing in the war was "immoral," "criminal," and "very wrong." His argument is convincing, although I confess I had already come to these conclusions before reading his book and was therefore predisposed to his point of view.

His argument is simple and straightforward. Without repeating his factual support, which has been mentioned in other reviews on GR, Grayling asserts that area bombing:

1. was not necessary for victory in Europe or Japan;
2. inflicted damages that were disproportionate to the military objectives derived therefrom;
3. contravened the humanitarian principles that people and nations have sought since the mid-nineteenth century in order to control and limit war;
4. offended the moral standards of Western civilization established over the last 500 years, if not also 2,000 years;
5. at a minimum violated national laws prohibiting murder, bodily harm, and destruction of property.

One Voice: Pacifist Writings from the Second World War by Vera Brittain

Like Vera Brittain before him, Grayling's book was pilloried by veterans, veteran associations, and others who refuse to entertain even the slightest criticism of U.S. foreign and military policy. Most prominent among his critics is the U.S. Air Force Association, publisher of Air Force Magazine and the The Almanac of Airpower. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I have subscribed to Air Force Magazine for approximately 35 years and am an admirer of the USAF, just as Grayling is an admirer of the RAF.) Writing in the June 2006 edition of the magazine, recently retired Editor in Chief, Robert S. Dudney, provides a scathing review of Grayling's book ("Of Airpower and Morality"). Rather than repeat what Grayling has written and what reviewers have already said about his book, I would like to address some of Dudney's complaints in order to offer a rebuttal of his comments and a defense of Grayling.

Among other things, Dudney writes:

It must infuriate World War II bomber veterans for critics to suggest that they are war criminals...For Grayling, guilt flows even to individual airmen; they, after all, failed to back away from what he believes were immoral deeds.

Not quite. Grayling indicts government and military leaders for permitting area bombing, knowing full well the consequences, as well as airmen who had a keen awareness of the missions and did not refuse to complete. Grayling excuses, however, those airmen who were not completely aware of the consequences of their missions because of the exhortations of their superiors, the support of public opinion, or even their own, personal hatred of the enemy. The diminished capacity of some airmen to comprehend the cruelty and futility of area bombing is an affirmative defense for Grayling (p. 277).

The first point to make is that World War II airmen, to the exasperation of their academic critics, are convinced their area-bombing efforts did, in fact, contribute to victory. They do not grant to Grayling his pivotal claim that Allied area-bombing in Europe and Japan had little military impact. This is a key count in his “war crimes” indictment; without military justification for bombing cities, there could be no moral one.

It should not be surprising that those who risked life and limb in defense of their country should construe their missions as meaningful contributions to the achievement of peace. This, however, was not the conclusion of the postwar U.S. Strategic Bombing Surveys, The Campaigns of the Pacific War and Guide to the Reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. While the surveys reported that precision bombing by the Eight and Fifteenth Air Forces in Europe contributed significantly to V-E day, they made no such claim regarding area bombing, in either Europe or the Pacific.

Moreover, in Germany, area bombing kept anti-aircraft guns and troops pinned down and away from other fronts. Hitler’s minister of armaments, Albert Speer, left no doubt about this. “The real importance of the air war consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion of Europe,” said Speer.

Grayling points out that precision bombing would have produced exactly the same diversion of German forces as area bombing, except without the moral degeneracy of the latter. Moreover, once German air defenses collapsed completely in late 1944, the Allies increased the intensity of area bombing. In that respect, Dudney claims:

Critics overreach with another claim: that the Allies continued to pound away months—perhaps years—after the Axis nations were beaten. Doing so, they argue, was morally wrong. But how, one may ask, could Allied leaders—or anyone else—know at the time when Germany and Japan were defeated? Stalin could create a serious reversal of the war all by himself. Hitler’s V-2 rockets and nuclear arms program caused deep anxieties. In the Pacific, Japan’s fanatical defenses of Iwo Jima and Okinawa made it clear that Tokyo, in 1945, planned for a grisly fight to the finish.

The complete collapse of air defenses in both Germany and Japan by the end of 1944 might have tipped off Allied leaders that the end was in sight. Remember, the Allies increased their area bombing after the collapse of Axis air defenses rather than reducing it. Dudney's comments concerning Hitler's Vengeance weapons and nuclear research programs are odd, since neither were located in urban areas. How did bombing Berlin or Dresden reduce the threats of V-1 and V-2 weapons in isolated Peenemünde? And why would Stalin strike a deal with Hitler in 1944 or 1945 while the Red Army was winning and proceeding apace to the German capital? With respect to an invasion of Japan, the Americans had no plans to invade Kyushu until late October or early November, 1945, and Honshu was slated for summer 1946. American intelligence, however, believed that Japan would be forced to surrender by September or early October, 1945, at the latest because of the naval blockade, not because of the area bombing.

Finally, the war crimes accusation has about it the aroma of ex post facto moralizing. As even critics of the bombing concede, the Allied attacks on Axis cities did not constitute a war crime at the time of World War II. The relevant international proscription didn’t appear until 1977, more than three decades after specific military acts which the academics now condemn.

The charge of ex post facto prosecution was leveled at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, of course, where Nazis were charged by the Allies with, among other things, wanton destruction of cities and artifacts that were the common heritage of mankind, along with "devastation not justified by military necessity." Lest the German defendants claim a tu quoque defense, essentially that "you did the same things," the Tribunal simply prohibited defenses on that basis.

The argument that "relevant international proscription [against area bombing] didn’t appear until 1977" is both preposterous and historically wrong. 1977 is the year that the United States signed the Fourth Geneva Convention Protocol, which was negotiated and approved by most of the international community in 1949. States had negotiated various conventions and treaties at least since the mid-nineteenth century aimed at controlling war and prohibiting the deliberate targeting of undefended cities and non-combatants. On September 1, 1939, the date of Germany's invasion of Poland, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the following warning to the early adversaries:

THE ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centres of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth in the past few years, which have resulted in the maiming and death of thousands of defenseless women and children, has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.

If resort is had to this sort of inhuman barbarism during the period of tragic conflagration with which the world is now confronted, hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, who have no responsibility for, and who are not even remotely participating in, the hostilities which have broken out, now will lose their lives.

Strangely enough, perhaps, Dudney contradicts one of his own contributors regarding the "legality" of area bombing. Writing in the September 2002 edition of Air Force Magazine , Phillip S. Meilinger, author of Airpower: Myths and Facts, writes:

No one in the Air Corps hierarchy during the 1930s advocated such an strategy [the bombing of urban centers]. On the contrary, for military, legal, and humanitarian reasons, such an air strategy was expressly rejected. (Emphasis added)

Grayling argues with proper legal support that the prohibition against indiscriminate targeting of civilians and non-combatants has today become a peremptory norm of customary international law (ius cogens), binding on all states irrespective of whether they accept the norm or not (e.g., the United States). Even if the RAF and USAAF did not violate the "law" as it was at the time, they clearly violated the laws that were in development then and that have become binding today.

Finally, Dudney expresses his suspicion that Grayling's "target" really isn't World War II bombing, but instead, and quoting Michael Burleigh that,

...it is British and American pilots operating over Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps Iran, whom the professor would like to see in the dock...

This suspicion is wholly unwarranted. The U.S. military has spent decades developing "smart, precision-guided" weapons. While these weapons occasionally miss their mark because of intelligence failures or equipment failures or simply the "fog of war," no one seriously believes that the U.S. Air Force is intentionally targeting non-combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan, or perhaps Iran. Certainly your obedient correspondent does not believe that, dear reader.

Nonetheless, the arguments above do have contemporary relevance with respect to nuclear weapons, especially high yield thermonuclear bombs (5 megatons or more). These are the ultimate, indiscriminate weapons. The only practical use of hydrogen bombs is to incinerate the enemy's population, which today is pretty clearly a crime against humanity. Moreover, there is no legitimate military objective that might render the use of hydrogen bombs necessary because there would cease to be an adversary with which to negotiate surrender terms, much less to occupy!

Furthermore, the generally accepted purpose of nuclear stockpiles, deterrence, is itself of questionable legality. The UN Charter, of which the Unites States is a state party, provides:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. (Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 4)

What is nuclear deterrence other than a threat to use indiscriminate weapons against the territorial integrity or political independence of our adversaries?

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terribly interesting book. It's a book that'll change your understanding of the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan during the Second World War. I've read a considerable amount of military history and thought I understood the bombing campaign. But Grayling presents details and perspectives new to me. For instance, I was aware that the Americans bombed by day while the British bombed by night. And I thought the 2 campaigns were directed against targets supporting the enemy war effort. I was unaware there were 2 bombing philosophies, that of the British against cities and populations and that of the Americans against military targets. The book's careful discussion of the reasons behind the 2 philosophies is fascinating. I was unaware that among the Allies there were dissenting voices who protested the fate of Dresden and other cities. I'd never understood the British bombing campaign as area bombing designed to reduce Germany to an agricultural state so that it could never again build industrial strength to threaten Europe. Grayling discusses, too, how the looming presence of the Soviets worried the British and Americans so that near the end of the war they began to worry the bomb damage inflicted would prevent the German postwar recovery they were learning would be necessary to offset Soviet ambitions. Grayling uses the word culturecide to describe British bombing objectives in Germany. On the other side of the world when American bombers became able to reach Japan during the final months of the war, the same doctrine of area bombing against cities and populations prevailed, along with the same moral issues. As an aside, currently reading a book on 2oth century strategy by Colin S Gray, I thought it interesting that he defends American methods in Japan as the only way of attacking the dispersals of industry within the cities. Gray's concerns are entirely strategic while Grayling's addressing morality, but the debate's an interesting one. Grayling does touch on the possible necessity of area bomging of Japanese cities. He writes that by the time the Allied advance brought the strategic bombers within range of the home islands, Japan's situation was such that it couldn't win, though avoiding an invasion of the homeland became important to the Allies. In 7 chapters Grayling carefully describes the bombing campaign from the perspectives of bombers and those bombed, the military objectives, arguments both in favor of and against area bombing, and convincingly concludes the campaign of firebomging of cities and populations during the war was immoral. His argument is carefully laid out. It's structured and layered and developed point by documented point to present a conclusion as definite as a legal brief. Yet near the end he gives weight to the school of thought that it would've been immoral for the Allies to have lost the war, and that fact justifies any means to win. The entire menu of issues discussed in Grayling's book provides a fascinating discourse. Of importance to the debate is weighing area bombing against the atrocities of the war which came to light near the war's end. He writes a telling anecdote about Churchill watching a film of a bombing mission. Horrified at the effect the bombs have on the city and imagining wht it must be like on the ground, he asks, "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?" Grayling concludes we did. His moral argument, as I said, is convincing. But the book explains all sides of a complex, disturbing side of the war. Though his argument is firm, he understands why there's still controversy. In writing my impressions here I've touched on only a small portion of the intellectual wealth of Grayling's book. I want to say this is one of the most important books on the subject. I can only say for sure it's a book important to my understanding of the war and that it's significant enough I'll make use of its information and ideas in the future. I doubt it'll have any significant bearing on the conduct of war.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking and troubling - Mr. Grayling makes a convincing case that the nighttime area - bombing of German cities in Germany by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command, which was explicitly aimed at their civilian populations, was immoral by the standards of pre- and post-war treaties and of the Nuremberg trials; he bases his case on the arguments that these bombings were not necessary or even critical in defeating Nazi Germany, unlike the daylight bombing raids by the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) targeted at specific factories, railyards, and other strategic targets, and that they were also not proportional to any advantage the Allies hoped they would achieve. He does an excellent job of thoroughly analyzing arguments for and against his thesis.

He extends the same argument to the USAAF's mass bombings of Japanese cities, both the firebombings of Tokyo and others and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but with much less rigorous analysis. I believe this assertion needs to be questioned at least as intensively as the part of his case focused on the bombings of German cities, though, both because of the differences in both the workings of Japanese war industries, which were much more decentralized into cottage industries throughout residential areas than was true in Germany, and because of the differences in the psychologies and attitudes of these two Axis powers. Specifically he states that both city-bombing campaigns took place mostly or completely after the defeats of the targeted countries had become somewhere between very likely and inevitable. However, he is silent regarding the documented fact that the Japanese government was grimly determined to keep fighting no matter how many cities were bombed, even after the expected Allied invasion of the home islands, to the extent that they were preparing small children to attack American soldiers with pointed sticks. Even after Hiroshima they initially refused to surrender, and all evidence is that without the atomic bombs they would have kept fighting until their entire nation was forcibly overrun. That invasion and conquest on land would have caused the deaths of several hundred thousand American servicemen and probably several million Japanese soldiers and civilians. In light of that, I would argue that the atomic bombs were both necessary and proportional, and were the least of the available evils.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm at a loss for words for how profound this book is, but I want to say something about it.
More philosophical inquiry than war chronicle, (although his analysis of the effects of bombing civilian targets is stark and detailed) this book seeks to find an answer to the question of essentially whether the ends of winning a just war ever justify the means of doing something morally evil to obtain it. The author goes about this in stages of examining what the world looked like at the beginning of the war, the thought processes behind the decision to bomb civilian targets, the aftermath of those decisions(the descriptions of Allied fire bombings on Japanese and German civilians are heartrending and extremely difficult to read), some prominent figures who voiced moral objections to it, and finally the cases for and against it.
Grayling's arguments are so clear, persuasive, and well reasoned that it is difficult to walk away from this book and not feel what happened in Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other cities were morally reprehensible actions. This is not to say they were on a par with the atrocities committed by the Japanese and the Nazis. Grayling makes it extremely clear he does not see an equivalent and argues that the precision bombing of military targets carried out by Britain and the US was morally justified and effective. But a wrong remains a wrong. As he points out, a man who murders 2 people rarely argues that his crime is less worthy of punishment than a man who murdered 5. If there is no adherence to some kind of a moral code, even in a state of emergency, the peace that is won is obtained at such a cost that it will invariably be paid for with a reckoning later down the line.

[Tony · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly argued and inadequately researched. The author's high opinion of himself shines through. Don't bother reading this sanctimonious drivel. If Grayling is one of the best contemporary philosophers (in his opinion at least) then Russell can rot easily in his grave.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone who has wondered about the morality of the RAF area bombing of Germany or the USAAF area bombing of Japan, this should book should clarify exactly why it was wrong. Grayling examines both the pros and cons of the bombing and its justifications and confirms just that.

Grayling is aware of neo-Nazi attempts to reduce Nazi culpability by labelling the bombing offensive a war crime and goes to some lengths to dispute these claims.

All in all, a balanced and objective look at a subject that has troubled my generation since the war.

[Emerson Stokes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a bit biased for four-engined heavy bombers, so I may have veered towards one side at the beginning of the book. I thought the book started off fine with the history of the British bombing campaign, but it just got progressively worse.

To start, the author goes into very great detail about the British bombing campaign in Europe, but his account of the bombing campaign in the Pacific is wholly inadequate. The author spends some 60 pages describing the European bombing campaign. The author then describes the Pacific bombing campaign in a matter of 3.5 pages. There is this whole story the author dedicated to Bomber Command and its personalities only for him to then go “and the Americans firebombed a few cities and dropped some nukes in Japan” before shrugging nonchalantly. I also feel like he relies too much on other people’s words in his historical and moral arguments for the bombing of Japanese cities, giving off the impression that he hasn’t read too much into it.

Which leads to a second issue. The sources used to argue certain points also feel inadequate. The author mainly uses primary sources from WW2 and immediately after, only really using secondary authors when… well, when it fits his argument. This particularly matters when arguing whether mass bombing had an effect on enemy production capacity. For this, the author mainly uses the United States Strategic Bombing Survey done after the war for Europe (with occasional mentions of the pernicious self-aggrandizing Albert Speer), which states that bombing a marginal impact on enemy war production. However, for the Pacific, the author notes that the USSBS claims that mass bombing was the MAJOR contributor to Japanese surrender (even excluding the nuclear bombs), causing the author to retreat to the words of another historian whose conclusions on the bombing campaign more fits his arguments. I don’t think this is a really good use of historical sources, to use someone as a completely authoritative source in one part and then dismiss it entirely in a different matter of the same overall subject is a bit like cherry-picking examples to use for your argument. Moreover, studies have been done more recently which tend more towards mass bombing having a more profound effect than the USSBS states, making the author’s claims seem out of date.

The Mind of the Bomber is the most egregious chapter overall from a reader perspective because it does not contribute much to the book and seems almost insidious in some regards. It starts off with a long tangent about the history of bombing from bombs dropped by hot air balloon in the 1890s up to 1939, which I did not feel was needed. Then it makes several personal attacks on those in American and British military leadership, suggesting that they might have been racist and/or Germanophobes who were all children of Henry Morgenthau’s plan to pastoralize Germany. He does so unconvincingly for the Pacific and refutes his own claim for Europe, making one wonder why this chapter exists at all.

Lastly, there are the moral chapters which supposedly make the case for and against mass bombing. For the against bombing chapter, the author states without conviction that just war theory and international law is against mass bombing. Thanks, but if that’s all that was required for peace and heaven on earth then we wouldn’t be here talking about mass bombings now would we? His case against mass bombing is just so underwhelming and un-nuanced that it just feels so underwhelming. The for bombing chapter isn’t really a chapter that argues for bombing, but instead the author uses the arguments of the long-since deceased Bomber Command leaders (Harris chief among them) and refutes in a few succinct paragraphs. Once again, the author doesn’t really do the whole debate any justice, and doesn’t really take it in a convincing or interesting direction (as well as having problems with his historical claims as mentioned previously).

If there’s one thing that the book has impacted me, it’s in feeling a greater pang of guilt for the cultural destruction that occurred during the Second World War. It is almost despairing to read about how the British and Germans took turns destroying each other’s historical architecture and culture while living in the present day with the knowledge that they would be replaced with much less interesting or visually appealing structures.

Overall however, “inadequate” is the word which I use to describe this book. It is inadequate in detail in certain areas, inadequate in sourcing in others, and inadequate in moral conviction or competence in argument for the crucial chapters which should have theoretically argued the two sides of the argument.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by the British philosopher, Anthony Grayling, examines whether or not the practice of area bombing (as opposed to precision bombing) during World War II was justified. He states both sides of the argument fairly but comes down on the side of those who maintain that area bombing is immoral.

The bombing of German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, to name two obvious examples, was a war crime on the part of the Allies. Pretending that it was not because Nazi Germany was so evil is a morally unsound argument. And, to be honest, engaging in a literal holocaust of German civilians renders those who carried it out little better than those whom they were opposing. The author himself does not go this far, though he maintains that whitewashing the Allies conduct only serves to feed neo-Nazi narratives. One does not have to go as far as the neo-Nazis, however, to recognise that the goodies v. baddies portrayal of the Second World War is much too simplistic.

If I were to make one criticism of the book (remembering that it is written by a philosopher, not a historian) is that he presumes World War II was a just war too easily without rigidly interrogating that thesis sufficiently. Obviously, I agree that Nazi Germany was a bad regime, though that observation does not, in and of itself, justify Britain going to war with it. He does, nevertheless, make reference to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas's views concerning just war theory.

[David Gross · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.C. Grayling’s Among the Dead Cities means to offer something like a formal moral and legal judgment on the (largely British and American) policy of using area bombing to destroy German and Japanese cities and kill their residents during World War II.

Grayling meticulously describes how the policy of destroying cities developed and what goals it was meant to serve and how technology, the progress of the war, bureaucratic infighting, war theory, propaganda, and international posturing shaped and drove the policy.

He looks both at the reasoning applied by the policymakers during the war, and at subsequent actual and possible defenses and justifications for the policy. Against this he looks at the rather inchoate laws of war of the time, at the norms that though not formally coded into law were considered to be sufficiently self-evident to serve as the basis for the Nuremberg trials, and at subsequent attempts to formalize international law concerning the protection of civilian populations during war.

He also takes some time to describe what the area bombing campaigns looked like from the perspective of the crews that flew the missions and of the victims who lived in the cities being bombed. And he spends some time looking at the contemporary debate about the policy, and the work of some groups and individuals to temper it.

He concludes that by even the minimal legal standards and norms of just conduct during war, this policy was criminal and morally repugnant. Of the justifications offered for it, many are not justifications at all, while the ones that might be valid (largely variations on “the Allies were obligated to do whatever would be most effective to defeat such an evil threat”) fail on factual grounds: in particular, the area bombing campaigns were objectively ineffective failures at their goal of striking blows against the Axis war machines, particularly in comparison to other uses that could have been made by the Allies of the personnel, technology, and armaments involved.

Here he stops, with little more than a trite “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”-style reflection on the project. He addresses the culpability of the non-policy-making individuals who carried out the bombings in a single paragraph, says little to nothing about the culpability of the larger public in its support for the campaign (or its ongoing justification of it), only briefly nods at the fact that the major theory behind the area bombings — that anything that degrades the morale of the enemy’s civilian population is a valid war aim — is the same theory that animates the grandchild of Dresden and Hiroshima: “shock and awe.”

What must be done after this indictment has been handed down? Lots of passive voice stuff, sadly: a more honest appreciation of the character of the war needs be infused, a fact should be profoundly and frankly regretted, moral atrocities ought to be recognized, points should by now be maturely and dispassionately accepted, records should be gotten straight, and so forth.

That seems mighty weak stuff, considering that policies and weapons of mass destruction are far from things of the past, and individual decisions whether to support or oppose these policies are available to all of us.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been on my queue for a while. I was prompted to go back to it after reading a recent book on the Dresden raids and reflecting on a trip last year to Lincolnshire, UK to see the Bomber Command Centre.

This probably a more forgiving four stars than I should give to this book. I appreciate what the author attempted and thought it was worth a try. Having said that, I do not know what this adds to prior and subsequent work on they Strategic Bomber Offensive of the RAF in WW2. The “so what?”question looms large. At the same time, Professor Grayling offers a moral assessment of the bombing at a time when lots of people are still alive who either experienced or knew directly of the bombing and the war. It is possible that his effort is not universally understood or appreciated.

So what is he attempting to do? He wants to come up with a moral judgement regarding the Bomber offensive in WW2. He thinks that enough time has passed and enough is known about the offensive and its consequences to cast a hard look on this part of the war and speak the truth about it. There is plenty of precedent for this. A recent example is the approach taken in Germany, after reunification, to squarely address the Nazi era, especially through its documentation centers. Regarding strategic bombing, whether nuclear or nonnuclear, there has also been a long history since WW2 and Vietnam that has cultivated more sophisticated thinking on the morality of war. To this can be added the experiences of the War Crimes Tribunals following the Yugoslav Civil war, prompting recollections of WW2 and considerations of “Genocide” and “Crimes against Humanity”.

Given these experiences and what we already know about the Bomber War, it is possible to present the general details of what happened and then consider the various criticisms of the offensive and the defenses for it in order to come up with an overall indictment and an assessment of whether the indictment is supported or supportable. Professor Grayling does this admirably and comes to conclusions about the history that seems consistent with the work of other historians. The moral questions are there as well. Was it justified by the war? Was it necessary to stop the Nazis, who did much worse? Did the offensive help to win the war or save allied lives? Did it shorten the war? How was strategic bombing different in Japan and does that matter for a moral judgement?

It is important to note here that Grayling is not the first to look at these issues by a long shot. For example, in one of his first books, Max Hastings examines the Bomber War in detail and comes with with a similar sort of analysis about what happened and what difference it made. If one visits the new Bomber Command museum center in Lincolnshire, UK, these sorts of issues are tied to virtually every exhibit. This was a controversial part of the war.

Professor Grayling works through his analysis and renders his judgement. It is edifying to see how this sort of analysis is done. Grayling does what he sets out to do. I will not provide spoilers although it is easy to anticipate how the analysis ends up.

After working through the book, I am left wondering just what the point was. My thinking on the bombing has been clarified but I doubt I changed any conclusions. It is a complex story but also a well documented one. While it is easy enough to come to some conclusions, I am still unsure how doing so changes anything. Even so, I am glad I read though it.

[Tyson Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Final thoughts:
This was a slog to get through. Grayling is of the school of "use 100 words where 10 will suffice" writing, which is obviously very helpful in discussing war crimes. But this is also an important text and topic which shows how immoral much of the actions of WW2 were. Easiest just to read the Judgement and Postscript chapters.

Comments while reading:
Grayling writes like he is trying to fit entire paragraphs into his sentences.

Shaun made a good video recently covering the bombing of Japan. The take-away is that area bombing was used in Japan very deliberately to attack non-military targets so that it would be noticed (have the most psychological impact) and force the Japanese to a quicker full concession. I.e. The allies wanted to carve up Japan without any negotiations (which Japan had been requesting for quite some time at that point) and preferably before Stalin got involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTg...

This review makes a couple of very interesting comments. The parts about Churchill are to be expected as many are unaware of just how terrible he was and how he essentially genocided Bengal among just some of his deeds. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://crimesofbritain.com/the-crime...

Culturcide: an interesting idea. Military were trying to effectively wipe out not just industry used for war, but also culture and society. Send the Germans back to an agrarian state with bombing of all cities with more than 100k people. That's pretty dark.

If there is a summary of the bombing, bombed, and resistance sections of this book, I think it would be the words righteous anger and malevolence. There was a level of malevolence to those in charge of targeting civilians. They justify these actions, but ultimately they have an enemy they want to attack and hurt. And their supporters tend to be fueled by righteous anger. This enemy attacks us, let's attack them back, let's pay it back 10-fold.

In amongst that, it is comforting to read that there were those who pointed out the depravity of these actions. Often the people least likely to want "revenge" were those who had suffered, realising that others would suffer too.

Less heartening is how common that righteous anger is deployed even now. Whether it be against other countries, other peoples, other ideas, criminals, etc., the common theme is wanting to make others suffer for some perceived sleight. Yet no one seems to want to stop that cycle of violence and find a different way to right wrongs.

In the case against, Grayling starts by pointing out moral philosophy is dealing with agreed values across humanity. But then, for some reason, he makes a simplistic jab at pacifists and their rejection of just war... Sure, tell me all about how fascists suddenly sprang forth the day war was declared, and that there was no chance to stop them prior, nor direct causes for their creation in the post-WW1 policies of the allies.

[Efrem Sepulveda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.C. Grayling's book on the aerial bombardment of Germany and Japan is one that makes the public think about the horrors of war. What World War I did to combat troops, the Second World War did to civilians in terms of bringing the ghastliness of the martial activity to people.

Grayling contends that the indiscriminate bombardment of the Axis powers was unecessary and that it brought dishonor to the Allies which fought for freedom and democracy. Grayling contends that the use of precision bombing of factories and oil refineries was far more effective in bring the war to a close. In his work of 280 pages plus appendix, the author takes steps to point out that while the bombardments were immoral, they did not hold a candle to the massive atrocities carried by Japan and especially Germany via the Holocaust. He divides his book into various chapters that expresses the viewpoint of the bombed, the ones who did the bombing and contains the voices of dissent to the bombing including Geoege Bell, Bishop of Chicester and Vera Brittain who wrote a book (Seed of Chaos) rebuking the attacks as early as 1943 when the outcome of the war was still in doubt. Grayling uses the arguments of philosophers such as Aquinas, Augustine and others to determine whether area bombing was just. In his final chapter, Judgement, he contends that the bombing was not just and he closed his book with words by Ms. Brittain that the conduct of the bombing will evidence criminal lunacy of the political leaders of that time to future generations.

The last part of the book contains an appendix of all of the aerial attacks that were carried out by RAF Bomber Commnand from 1940 until the close of the war, an extensive bibliography and an index. Some might disagree with Grayling's thesis, but I think he makes a sound argument in terms of needless loss of lives. He could have put much of the text containing treaties and conventions in a separate appendix, but I think the book was not long-winded and kept its arguments brief. Four stars.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a difficult book to grade, as I found myself in complete agreement with the author's premise but thought the book was written poorly. This book should have focused on the technical arguments on area bombing such as bomb sights and weather, but seemed to simple repeat over and over the moral implications and personal questioning of several key leaders to illustrate that the Allies knew what they were doing was wrong. I feel that justifications were also not fairly addressed, as little weight is given to Japanese cultural beliefs or the desire to show advancing Soviets the utter destruction the Western allies could bring down upon them should the Communists not stop in Germany.

I am probably being generous with the 3 stars because I do agree with the author often enough, but surely wish this topic was better addressed in proper arguments in the book. I have a somewhat unique perspective, as I had family on both sides...my mother being bombed and uncles on my dad's side serving the Allies. Hearing my mother's stories leave me little doubt of Allied intent; my mother survived P-47 fighters strafing and bombing her schoolyard with the pilot so low she said she could see his face looking at her after he dropped his bomb (which fortunately was a dud as he was too low for the bomb to arm). Other kids nearby were not so lucky as the bullets did not miss.

Every side in war commits war crimes. Sometimes terrible things are done for the right reasons. This book did provoke some deep thoughts in me on warfare, and it might just give you some soul searching as well.

[Ernest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is the targeting of civilians in war ever justified? This weighty moral question is the subject of this book by noted philosopher A.C. Grayling. Grayling starts by outlining the historical background of the bombings during World War II. Although not a professional historian, I appreciated learning about this as it is something I did not know much about. Not only does Grayling set out the facts of the actual bombings, but goes behind them to explore the people involved in planning and executing the operations and the mindsets they had. This alone would have been it a useful book.

It is Grayling’s examination of whether the targeting of civilians is ever justified that gives the book its central depth. In analysing the moral question (for and against the proposition), he is almost overscrupulous in setting out, probing and reasoning through the assumptions, moral logic, and conclusions he identifies and draws. Some may have wish for a stronger, more overtly emotive and vociferous position, but I found this presentation strengthened rather than weakened the force of his argument.

This is not an easy question to intellectual grapple with. The moral dilemmas are complex, the possibility of conflating issues easy, and it is, rightly, a difficult time in history to revisit. Nevertheless, it behoves us not just as citizens of the world, but as those for whom those questions are still very much present today. A.C. Grayling has made a most welcomed contribution in this area.

[Tim James Milburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly the kind of book which philosophers need to write. Your typical work of philosophy gives you a lot of abstract ideas, thought experiments, and so on, to chew on. This is great, but these works of philosophy don't contain much in the way of actual, researched, real-life information which is pertinent to the question being asked.

Here Grayling provides his readers with loads of information about the Allied bombing campaigns, and interperses this with philosophical analysis of the ethical issues involved. I was also surprised with Grayling's fascination with aircraft, which somehow seemed the last thing I would expect.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one isn't a light read, nor is it a quick one. Basically, if you aren't fascinated (and you should be) with WWII, Among the Dead Cities might come across as typically boring history. However, it is a far cry from boring history and provides an interesting, clear definition of what a just war is and how governments gain or lose moral credibilty based on the actions they take. Obviously, a quietly important book in this day and age.

[TheIron Paw · Rating 3 out of 5]

A review of the allied bombing campaigns from a moral philosophical perspective. In the first part of the book, Grayling provides a succinct and balanced review of the history of the bombing campaign and the theories underpinning strategic bombing. In the last part, he reviews the moral-philosophical arguments in favour and against strategic bombing that targets civilians. Overall, a worthwhile read from both the historical and philosophical perspectives.

[Mohammed Khogir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A provocative thought-inducing book, who doesn't like one of those !?

The book is meticulously well-researched and well argued and tackles the ethical and moral standing of the allied area-bombing campaign during world war II superbly

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtfully articulated and cogently argued.

[Len Roberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

moral food for thought...

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very opinionated book. You can tell the author is a philosopher, does not think backup support is necessary for his conclusions.

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.C. Grayling wrote "Among the Dead Cities" partly out of fear that if America and Britain didn't honestly reckon with their controversial pasts, then extremist groups would happily use those moral failures to de-legitimize the entire idea of liberal democracy. Which is probably the single best reason to write a book, no? The charge of "hypocrisy" is still pretty heavy, and still an effective way of galvanizing a lot of support for insane right-wing initiatives (it worked to pretty powerful effect against, oh, the Clinton-led Democratic party, and in many other now-conservative countries around the world in the past couple of years). Hence, it's the task of honest scholars to look at atrocity carefully and to report the truth without compromise. But this task can be very difficult-- and even perhaps dangerous-- if the atrocities you're examining were committed by major powers, especially the major powers who "won" our good war, World War II, against Hitler's Germany.

The first three quarters of "Among the Dead Cities" tell a history of the bombing campaigns against German and Japanese civilians. I think a majority of Americans are familiar with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and many (if not most) are semi-aware (probably via Kurt Vonnegut) that the British intentionally engulfed the neighborhoods of Dresden in flames. What I was not aware of-- what Grayling makes painfully clear here-- is how many more cities had to suffer and die in order to prove what end up being completely unfounded ideas about "breaking morale." Just before the atomic bombs were dropped, Tokyo was burned to the ground, and hundreds of thousands of others Japanese lost homes and lives in "conventional" bombing missions. In the European theater, the wildly inaccurate, costly but mostly fruitless shelling of German cities went on for nearly half a decade. (It's interesting, and telling, that Grayling can devote most of his book to the Hamburg bombings, which were as destructive and horrific as any other-- just done with weapons that lend themselves to "grand ideas" about war and surrender.)

Grayling is fair, and he gives a great deal of space to the "Mind of the Bomber," and carefully delineates every argument given during and after the war for why women and children and the elderly had to be eviscerated in their homes. But by the time he's put American and Britain "on trial," and subjected them to the sort of judgment applied against Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, it is sadly apparent what his "verdict" will be.

It's obviously important to read for pleasure but it must be important to to read for... the exact opposite of pleasure. This book will not make you happy unless you're a psycho. But my god it's so fucking necessary.

[Virtue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Total war, which involved targeting civilian populations and causing humanitarian catastrophe, was invented by the Union general William Sherman. This barbaric and de facto criminal way of waging war was further expanded during and after the World War II. It takes a massive rejection of humanity, and quite a few of stupidity, to decide that you are the good guy and your enemy is the bad guy, and that there are no limits in waging the war, as long as it breaks the bad guy. Arguments that atrocities can shorten wars, because suffering people will rise up against their leaders in the wartime is incredibly stupid and essentially idiotic. Also the arguments that suffering will break the will of enemy to wage the war is completely moronic. It will only inflame and cause more hatred and more determination to resist and retaliate. If you fail to offer your enemy an acceptable peace, because you had dehumanized him, and you only seek his unconditional surrender, you would have to almost annihilate him, because no nation would accept a total loss of sovereignty. Unconditional surrender means having no control over wile foreign armed men on your territory. It means massive murder, rape, looting, destruction of economy, starvation rations, foreign influence over culture, foreigners deciding over civil and criminal cases, foreigners bullying you on checkpoints and stealing private and national property with impunity. No nation would accept it without enormous loss of life and it is immoral to ask it from any nation on Earth. Bombing civilians with strategic bombers is a filthy and nasty war crime and this fact cannot be changed by sly and perverted arguments of corrupted historians, politicians or warmongers. For the sake of this total control over enemy nation and his population, the other side would use inhumane and atrocious means knowing that the winning side of the war is always right and never judged.

[Michael Maciolek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since my interest in the bomber war of WW2 started, I've been looking for this exact book - a discussion on the morality of the bomber campaign, which at times by deisgn and at other times by neccessity involved heavy civilian casualties. The Engligh author focuses on the English area bombing campaign in Europe, however he does discuss the American area/nuclear bombing of Japan as well.

The author arrives at the conclusion that the area bombing campaign (in which the allied bombing forces (mainly English in Europe, but partly American in Japan)) blanketed residential cities with high explosive and incidiary bombs, was morally unjust and a human rights violation. Before ariving at any opinions about the author's conclusion, I would recommend actually reading this book - the author gives weight to the arguments in favor of bombing, and attempts to refute them. He makes the argument that the English area bombing of Europe was disproportionate to the aims it set out to achieve. He states that the American daylight precision bombing campaign in Europe was a justified neccessity - though plenty of civilians died at the hands of the Americans, the goal was not to target them and kill them to drain enemy morale, as was the purpose of area bombing. The distinction between American bombing strategy in Europe and Japan is discussed, though my American opinion is that this could have been discussed a bit more.

If you are not interested in ethics of the bombing campaign, this book will probably be very dry. However, for those of us who hold those interests, this was a thriliing read. May purchase this one for my collection.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book which examines the morality of what is called area bombing on the cities of Germany and Japan. (Since this page is part of my Japan and World War II section, I will not go into details on the German bombing, although the book does provide a great deal of information about that as well as about the bombings of Japan).

There are two main types of bombing; precision bombing and area bombing. Precision bombing is, as the name implies, trying to bomb a precise location such as a factory or some facility that makes weapons. It's involves bombing only military targets. Such bombing can be difficult to do.

Area bombing means the bombers come in and drop bombs over a certain area, attempting to destroy whatever is in that area. The target is the area, not necessarily any specific factory, so military targets can be hit, but civilians can also be killed. Such bombing began by the Nazi's in World War II when they bombed London; the practice was carried on when the Allied forces were able to bomb German cities, and the height of the practice was when US forces firebombed Japanese cities, and then used two atomic bombs on two other cities.

The book very early on makes the strong point that, even if the Allied area bombing was an immoral act, it does not compare in scale or horror to how the Jews were treated during the Holocaust. There were around 800,000 civilians, including women and children, killed during the war by area bombing, but that number is only a fraction of the six million Jews and others murdered by the Nazis in the concentration camps.

Still, when something is morally wrong, it's morally wrong, even if it does not affect as many people as something else does.

Apparently the majority of the civilian populations of Britain and the US felt that bombing civilians was acceptable.

The decision to bomb German cities with populations over 100,000 was made in 1942.

The March 9/10 firebombing on Tokyo resulted in over 85,000 dead. The destruction caused was actually greater than that caused by either atomic bomb.

The book notes efficiency of the atomic bomb, since the damage and casualties caused by that one bomb would have required 220 B-29's carrying 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high explosives, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.

Iif area bombing is a moral crime, then the bombings in the last six months of the war in both the European an Japanese theatres of war have what lawyers call an aggravated character-an intensified moral questionability, partly because victory was no loner genuinely doubtful, and partly because the motives for dropping the atom bombs might have been additional to realization of the Allied war aims regarding Japan.

In other words, if area bombing is immoral, it is especially so when done in a situation where the enemy is clearly beaten, even if the enemy has not yet surrendered.

The number of Japanese casualties among soldiers in the war was around 780,000. The number of civilian casualties was around 806,000.

The bombings also helped lower morale since many civilians evacuated the cities, and with them went the stories of the bombings being carried out with little if any Japanese military resistance at all.

German civilian deaths ranged from 305,000 to 500,000.

Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, was not in favor of the use of the atomic bomb. He did manage to get Kyoto removed from the list of possible targets.

Another reason the atomic bomb was used was to impress on Russia how far ahead the US was on atomic bomb research, to make Russia more manageable in Europe.

One possible focus of area bombing is to destroy a country's entire culture. That way the victor can replace it with whatever they want.

The book notes several reasons for the use of the area-bombing. One was a hope that it could shorten the war. Another was blatant anti-Japanese racism. This was due to the way American POWs were killed; the kamikaze attacks; Pearl Harbor, and the general way that the Japanese soldiers fought so fiercely.

No matter how strongly US civilians felt about this, people in the military felt even stronger and some advocated the area-bombing as being justified reaction to what the Japanese military had been doing.

Acts of injustice can be perpetrated in the course of a just war, and if the injustices committed are themselves very great, their commission can threaten the overall justice of the war in which they took place.



>In relation to the rules of war, if the allies had lost, the argument could have been used that the area bombings were inhumane acts committed against any civilian population. Proportionality also be involved. What is questioned, for example, is the amount of military-related structures in Hiroshima, for example, in proportion to the entire area destroyed. If the military structures amounted to only a small percentage of the city, then destroying the entire city just to destroy those structures would be an act out of proportion to the value of the military targets, and thus could be construed as a war crime.

The book has sections of the Geneva Convention protocols in it, and it's easy to see how much of what has happened since them actually violates the protocols.

One argument in that has been given in favor of area-bombing is that there is little difference between the civilian who makes a weapon (or a part of a weapon) and the soldier who actually uses the weapon; thus, the civilians are justified targets.

The book questions whether lowering civilian morale couldn't have been done just as easily by dropping a demonstration atomic bomb somewhere where tens of thousands of civilians would not have been killed, but they would still have understood what could happen to them ultimately

From 1939 through 1945, around 15 million military people were killed in all theaters of war; over 45 million civilians were killed.

Were there alternatives to area bombing? More effective precision bombing could have been undertaken; more isolation of the country by mining the waters could have been done; etc.

There is also the question of whether or not morality has any place in a war at all.

The book holds in the end that the area bombing was an immoral act. The book holds area bombing was not absolutely necessary, it was not proportionate, it was against the general codes of Western civilization, and it was against national laws against murder, bodily harm and destruction of property.

[JerryDeanHalleck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book goes over the allied "obliteration bombing" campaign in WW II. The focus is on the UK and the bombing of Germany. Few know that the UK started area bombing of civilians in WW II, and refused any attempts by Germany to reach an agreement to stop bombing of UK cities and German cities. Or that various pacifists (like Vera Britttan) and Christian leaders objected to the bombing campaign.

Vera Brittain (famous author of Testament of Youth) wrote a pamphlet in 1943, questioning the morality and effectiveness of area bombing and it was discussed in parliment and the press. This made it way to the USA, where it was widely condemned by the USA press and FDR and Eleanor as "Giving aid to the enemy" and "too sentimental". "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out" was the Roosevelt Attitude.

The author goes over the white washing and outright lies provided to the UK/USA public over the bombing campaign. The US Airforce constantly lied about bombing military targets, when in fact they were just engaging in the same area bombing as RAF Bomber Command.

I've given the book three stars, but only because it covers a subject that is rarely discussed.

[David Lai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grayling gives a comprehensive account of the area bombing campaigns against Germany -- there is really very little about the bombing of Japan -- and assesses the cases for and against their being war crimes.

The organisation of the book is somewhat loose, with stuff that one would expect to be in one chapter turning up early in another, or re-appearing later. In particular "The Experience of the Bombed", while starting with vivid personal accounts, quickly moves on to other topics, almost as if the true nature of bombing were too awful to face for long. Moral considerations pervade the book, not just the chapters "The Case Against ... " and "The Defence ... " This vagueness of demarcation lessens the impact of the ultimate condemnation.

A sidelight is the brutal indifference to human suffering of "Bomber" Harris. What a monster!

[Doris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without detracting from the Nazi atrocities or minimizing Japanese aggression, this book examines the culpability on the part of the Allies. Were the Allies justified in area bombing, the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Germany and Japan? Were these wrongs unavoidable, necessary, or committed to counter greater wrongs on the part of the Axis? With the present debate over drone strikes killing citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a very timely book and a discussion we need to have.

[Grant Kisling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this many years ago but the review seems to have disappeared. I remember this being a very interesting look into the statistics of the bombing campaign during ww2 and how it either helped shorten the war or simply caused civilian casualties.

Highly recommended.