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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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)

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...

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)

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Author  13 books97 followers

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.

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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.

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Leave it to a philosopher to create more problems and raise more objections than he attempts to solve, Grayling attempts to make the case that area bombing was inadequate means to be used against Germany and Japan, or jus in bello, and arguing that Governments must respect international war treaties which reduce the capabilities of Nations and its means of waging war and uphold human rights. He attacks historical arguments of the Allies saying that it was a necessary use of force against against a vicious enemy and the appeal to the barbarity of war to justify the crimes of the Allies against the Axis.

But in all objections, I believe his arguments do not make the case adequately enough to destroy the utilitarian aspects of area bombing and its use in fighting a war that was against an enemy that deserved the use of the strategy, and how we can see in a revisionist analysis of history, that absolute and total victory for the allies was the best outcome of the war as opposed to Grayling's suggestion that the war ended before 1945 and thus no need to have launched the area bombing campaigns of 1945.

Grayling builds his argument off of the jus in bello principle, that means used ought to be proportional to the end required. He says that the Allies wanted to win the war, and could have done without the use of area bombing. If the allies had this goal in mind, they ought to have stuck to purely military and industrial targets which would stymie the war-making capacity of nazi germany, however to make civilians a target of the this bombing was unjust and not required by the end to acheive this end.

Clearly from this argument, Grayling does not understand the nature of war. He does quote variously from Sun-Tsu and Carl Von Clausewitz, which I believe demonstrate the point that goal of war is to win and to use any means necessary. But someone like Grayling would ask: Do you believe that nations can resort to barbarism in order to win a war? This kind of question reflects ignorance, and is framed in a war that is completely loaded. It does not mean that nations ought to resort to barbarism, but they ought to fight a war smartly, and this means using an adequate proportion of violence and means that the enemies also employs, as Grayling said, jus in bello. And this is precisely the case of area bombing.

There is a genuine objection to raise that the Japanese and Germans committed war crimes that far outweigh the carpet bombing campaigns done by RAF and USAAF. The Japanese and their rape of nanking, bombing civilians similarly to the Germans and their Blitzkrieg strategy, and need I mention the Holocaust, one of the worst war crimes in modern times. Grayling would say that this is wrong based on the analogy he gives on someone who tries to justify murder based on what their victims did. Grayling says that we ought not to resort to their barbarism.

This is false, because he raises an age-old objection to war by trying to apply murder in society to murder in war, which can be supported by a just war theory. One cannot apply the civilian crime of murder to military crimes committed in war, however, I agree, not in all cases. But this brings me to the Utilitarian and just principle of carpet bombings that uphold the morality of carpet bombing.

The Japanese and Germans were a formidable enemy, strong and vicious, and fanatically loyal to their leader to their own personal death and destruction of the collective. Carpet Bombing, in Germany's case, struck a psychological blow to German invincibility, in which Hitler promised the people through Goering that a not single Allied aircraft would fly into Germany. The Germans believed in their invincibility, and once the Allied bombers were able to carry the war to Germany, this undermined Hitler's demagogic cult and promises which was used to keep Germans in support of the war. In Japan's case, the US destroyed Japanese fanaticism to the emperor by unleashing a force never seen which made the Japanese come to their senses and realize the war was over. These are legitimate utilitarian reasons which support the carpet bombing campaigns and the Atomic bomb drops over Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Grayling would say: Even at the expense of targeting civilians? As I said before, mentioning the crimes of the Axis, we can see that area bombing was justified against the fanaticism of the Axis, and that civilians who live in a country of war are a part of the war itself. Civilians pay taxes and facilitate policies carried out by their governments in times of war. For instance, the German people helped facilitate the Holocaust by ostracizing Jews into ghettoes and not speaking out against their round-up and deportation to concentration camps which were built in and around their community. Passivity in a time of war is to side with the country and its war-time policies, and if they do not want to take part in the war, must leave or make known their objections to the war.Hum

Grayling though would make the case that Human rights ought to be respected, and thus non-combatants should be left out of conflict as much as possible. The issue of Human rights in which Grayling brings up is problematic, since in the World War, governments did not respect human rights clearly. The issue of human rights is also problematic because if it's up to governments to uphold human rights, what happens if they don't? They must have some higher body of government to enforce it. This makes human rights forced down upon by governments, whereas the intrinsic value of human beings should be upheld as a source in-themselves, and not left to governments to obey treaties and declarations in which may countries and warring bodies ignore. Modern examples of this include ISIS, which clearly do not respect human rights, and Assad's regime, which turn chemical weapons onto their own population. But who will stop them, only if a force greater than government could step in and stop them, but it's not the actual fact of human intrinsic worth that is stopping them.

As for history and posterity, the use of carpet bombing still is upheld. Grayling suggests that the war was over before 1945, and could have easily been accomplished without the carpet bombing strategy. In retrospect, i think we ought to see the end of World War II in its complete victory for the allies as a good thing. If the allies settled for peace with countries like Germany and Japan, we would have gone to the table for peace with nations that were corrupt, dangerous, and violent. The complete dismantlement of Germany and the end of the Nazi government ended Nazi war crimes in the Holocaust, and the unconditional surrender of Japan to the Allies helped to regain the sovereignty of countries occupied by Imperial Japan, and similarly with Germany. Although in many regards it was not a perfect peace, but it brought an end to governments which endangered the future of mankind.

As Trotsky said, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." This shows the far-reaching aspects of war and its interlocutors, even non-combatants. Bertrand Russell said "that war does not determine winner from losers, but from who's left." We are all in a sense survivors of war, and especially World War II, in war where 60 million people were killed, and in a sense, everyone was a participant, if they served themselves or watched it first-hand or through the newspaper and radio broadcasts. Grayling's argument does trump the utilitarian outcomes of carpet bombing. I do believe in the person's right to object to war and to be a pacifist, but I think that many pacifist objections do not fully grasp the understanding of war and how it can be used as a wise and strategic use of government policy. Pacifists can be correct about the barbarity of war, but if we were to allow Nazi Germany to exist and submit to their quests for world domination, I believe that we would have all lost tremendously.

Author  21 books96 followers

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.

Author  10 books126 followers

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.

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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.

Author  5 books19 followers

Comments while reading:

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.

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...

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.

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.

232 reviews8 followers

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.

1,110 reviews12 followers

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.

9 reviews1 follower

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.

Author  9 books10 followers

435 reviews17 followers

14 reviews3 followers

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

58 reviews

516 reviews32 followers

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.

96 reviews

52 reviews

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.

5,980 reviews34 followers

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.

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.

526 reviews17 followers

Highly recommended.

247 reviews15 followers

Grayling is a philosopher, not a historian, but I don't think that this necessarily affects how the book was written. He gives a short biography of himself, and it is clear he has a lot of knowledge about these bombing campaigns and understands the history well. The introduction is excellent; it lays out exactly what questions Grayling attempts to answer or addresses and how he is going to do this throughout the book. What I really liked about this was how he introduced the controversial nature of this topic. He lets the readers know that serious discussion about the bombings are often brushed aside because they are still seen as controversial. Many think debating their morality or necessity takes away from the bravery of the men who carried them out. Others think that it takes the focus away from the horrendous things the Nazis did, or attempts to equate the Allied and Axis war aims and events. Grayling explicitly states that this is not what he intends to do. He says leaving these questions unaddressed leaves room for right-wing extremists in Germany to use this topic for their own aims. More generally, he feels it's something that needs to be discussed before we become too removed from the Second World War and leave the topic as-is.

One thing I really liked was Grayling stating that explanations are not justifications. Regardless of whatever reasons the Allies had for their bombings, it does not automatically mean they are justified. Surely there could have been some other way to come about ending the war than indiscriminately bombing cities and terrorizing citizens (and, therefore, non-combatants). While the US in Germany had strategic goals of bombing factories and oil fields, the British bombed cities in hopes of lowering the morale of Germany's citizens (which, Grayling points out, did not happen). Grayling shows that area bombing did not even halt production in Germany - rather, it increased until toward the very end of the war. He also suggests that this did not even remove large amounts of troops or weapons from the front to help the cities. Of course, it diverted some, but was not the reason Germany lost the war. To add to this, Germans learned how to react to bombings (since these cities were bombed repeatedly) and were thoroughly prepared.

These area bombings went beyond necessity. Grayling shows how successful American strategic bombing was, but also notes that if you aim for military targets, civilians casualties are inevitable. Homes might be destroyed and people will be killed, especially if targets aren't 100% clear. These things, however unfortunate, are a reality. With that being said, the British indiscriminately bombed entire cities. They also bombed cities simply because they hadn't been bombed, such as Dresden or Wurzburg, neither of which had any military significance.

As I read, I wondered why Grayling did not include many (any?) German sources for the book. Thankfully, he did address this toward the end, as he states that he wanted to give information from the victors' perspective. He does provide some examples of what the bombing was like for civilians from survivors which were taken from English sources, which I'm guessing probably consulted original German sources.

I have to agree with others that Grayling is never explicit enough in saying that the bombings were war crimes and immoral. It's obvious that he believes this, even in the chapter on the case supporting the bombings all he does is refute the supposed justifications. However, it seems that he does not want to come across as offensive or be too controversial. In my view, if you're writing a book like this, you might as well just go for it. I think any rational person reading this, even if they don't agree, wouldn't get worked up or be horribly offended if Grayling flat out said, yes, these bombing should be considered war crimes and were unnecessary. I think his wording needed to be more concrete.

The other thing I'd point out is that Germany is the main focus of the book. To me, anyways, Japan always seemed like an afterthought, left for a couple paragraphs at the end of a chapter, or quickly thrown in amid a chapter. While I totally see why Grayling included it as it fits right in with what the Allies were doing in Germany, I almost think he should have left it out. I don't think there was enough focus on it to warrant being part of the book.

Overall, it was a good read and I think Grayling tackled the topic very well. I would definitely recommend it for those interested in history, especially World War II, obviously.