Among the dead cities

As the war on terror grinds on, there are ethical lessons to be learned from the fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II in which hundreds of thousands of civilians perished. 

Among The Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan | A.C Grayling | Walker & Company | 2006 | 384 pages | US$15.95pb
ISBN: 0802715656

Imagine an attack on a civilian population aimed at causing maximum hurt, shock, disruption and terror. 9/11? Resistance in Iraq? No, the Allied bombing of Hamburg in late July of 1943. Operation Gomorrah created a firestorm in which temperatures reached 800 degrees Celsius, oxygen was sucked out of bomb shelters, and thousands of non-combatant men, women and children ended up so shrivelled that dazed refugees took the corpses of loved ones with them packed into their suitcases. Everyone has heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many of us remember the fire bombing of Tokyo in March 1945? Some 1,667 tons of incendiary bombs fell on 15 square miles of the most densely populated parts of the city. The resulting fire storm killed 85,000 people.

Among the Dead Cities is a moral evaluation of the Allies’ area bombing campaign and an attempt to purify the historical memory of the victors. At a time when torture is seriously being contemplated in the War on Terror, A. C. Grayling, a philosopher at the University of London and Oxford, has provided us with an ABC of ethics that reminds us that not all is fair in love and war.

Indeed the bombing campaign was at its most devastating in the final months of a war that had already been won. By the end of the war Harris was targeting certain German cities for bombing, not because they had any strategic importance, but simply because they had yet to be bombed!

Grayling is careful to distance himself from neo-Nazi apologists. He says that the Allied pilots flew bravely, that the Nazi atrocities were on a much worse scale than anything the Allies committed and that the Nazis were the first to instigate area bombing with their aerial attacks on Warsaw in 1939, Rotterdam in 1940 and the London Blitz. Still, the Allies do have a case to answer. Allied bombing killed 800,000 civilians.

Why in February of 1942 did the British War Cabinet decide to destroy all German cities with a population of over 100,000? A key factor was the replacement of Sir Richard Peirse at Bomber Command HQ by Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris. In preparation for this new posting Air Staff issued the following directive: "The primary objective of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population, and in particular on the industrial workers."

Harris’ desperate attempts to "carry the war to the Germans" led him to target civilians as a means of halting the German war effort. He believed, wrongly, that morale would break if Allied bombing were able to pulverise German monuments, libraries, churches and housing. The London blitz had shown that the bombing of civilians actually strengthened resolve. The German belief that the Allies were trying to reduce them to the pastoral status of New Zealand had a similar effect of galvanising their citizen’s efforts at quick rebuilding.

In the end, victory in World War II was largely a matter of production. It was the industrial might of the USA and the American strategic bombing of German oil supplies, something Harris vigorously resisted, that led to Germany’s demise. Harris’ campaign for area bombing only began in earnest when the tide of the war had already turned. Indeed the bombing campaign was at its most devastating in the final months of a war that had already been won. By the end of the war Harris was targeting certain German cities for bombing, not because they had any strategic importance, but simply because they had yet to be bombed!

Grayling is at pains to show that, whether or not area bombing was a war crime in the legal sense of the term, it was certainly against the spirit of international law and in itself offended against natural justice. Area bombing was a controversial volte-face from Chamberlain’s assurances at the beginning of hostilities that civilians would not be targeted. Pacifists like Vera Brittain wrote stern condemnations of this campaign that resonated with Londoners who knew at first hand about the horrors of civilian bombing. Her anti-bombing tract "Seeds of Chaos: What Mass Bombing Really Means" (1944) closed with the following claim, "the callous cruelty which has caused us to destroy innocent human life in Europe’s most crowded cities, and the vandalism which has obliterated historic treasures in some of her loveliest, will appear to future civilisation as an extreme form of criminal lunacy with which our political and military leaders deliberately allowed themselves to become afflicted."

Various excuses are given for the saturation bombing of civilians. Sir Arthur Harris gave the following in his memoirs, Bomber Offensive. "In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a comparatively humane method. For one thing, it saved the flower of youth of this country and of our allies from being mown down by the military in the field, as it was in Flanders… But the point is often made that bombing is specially wicked because it causes causalities among civilians. This is true, but then all wars have caused causalities among civilians. For instance, [in] the last war… our blockade of Germany… caused nearly 800,000 deaths – naturally these were mainly of women and children and old people because at all costs the enemy had had to keep his fighting men fed."

Vera Brittain had already written in Seeds of Chaos that the substitution of civilian deaths for military lives is no different to a soldier using a civilian as a shield on the battlefield. Whilst a certain degree of "collateral damage" can be afforded by the principle of double effect, it must not be disproportionate. Grayling says of such killing that it "violates the principle established by Aquinas and Grotius that a just action in war is a proportionate one. To stop guns being made by killing an armaments worker and his family and neighbours is disproportionate."

As for Harris’ second claim that civilians always get killed in war, let us remember that two wrongs don’t make a right. Says Grayling: "imagine a murderer defending himself by saying that there have always been murders, and that anyway he only murdered two people when someone else had murdered five." In the same vein we cannot excuse the carpet bombing by saying that the Germans were only reaping the whirlwind of what they had sewn.

Father Gillis, then editor of the Catholic World, had pointed out the logic of this argument at the time by stating that Vera Brittain’s opponents were arguing "missionaries should eat cannibals because cannibals eat missionaries". Perhaps another argument for bombing cities like Hiroshima, Nagaski and Dresden was to demonstrate to the Russians what Allied bombing was capable of. The cruelty of such an exercise in real Politik speaks for itself.

After a careful examination of the Allies’ own records and the reasons given by Bombing Command, Grayling comes to the following conclusions:

"Was area bombing necessary? No.

Was it proportionate? No.

Was it against the humanitarian principles that people have been striving to enunciate as a way of controlling and limiting war? Yes.

Was it against the general moral standards of the kind recognised and agreed in Western civilisation in the last five centuries, or even 2,000 years? Yes.

Was it against what mature national laws provide in the way of outlawing murder, bodily harm, and destruction of property? Yes.

In short and in sum: was area bombing wrong? Yes.

Very wrong? Yes.

… Should airmen have refused to carry out the area bombing raids? Yes."

What does this purification of the victors’ memory mean for the Coalition of the Willing today? We are at risk of going down the same ill thought-out utilitarian path. Recent US military manuals allow for economic targets (not just war industries) and the breaking of civilian morale as fair objectives for attack (cf. the Annotated Supplement to the Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations 8.1.1. Air Force Doctrine Document 1 (1997)). Among the Dead Cities is a timely reminder to our governments that might is not always right.

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Comments (15)

Joseph Pich said...

What do you do when terrorists hide among civilians? Could Dr Richard Umbers, give us his opinion?

Australia | Friday, 22 June 2007 at 3:22 pm

Dominic Galeon said...

I think A. C. Grayling is right in assessing the area bombing campaigns the Allies made during World War II. As to the question of Mr. Pich, i think the situation is not very similar, and even if it is, Dr. Umbers already has an answer to it in the above article.
Just a side-note, there is a good film that showed the effects of the area bombing in Japan, it is an animation called "Grave of the Fireflies". You might want to see it.

Philippines | Saturday, 23 June 2007 at 1:38 pm

Peter Fitzsimons said...

Why do people always have to ridicule New Zealand when New Zealand had nothing to do with the issue at stake? I think the gratuitous comment about New Zealand should be deleted from the article.

New Zealand | Sunday, 24 June 2007 at 12:48 pm

Paul D. said...

"He says that ... the Nazi atrocities were on a much worse scale than anything the Allies committed .... Still, the Allies do have a case to answer. Allied bombing killed 800,000 civilians."

I wonder... by what metric are the Nazis' murders (in the low millions) "much worse" than the Allies' 800,000 murders? How even do we have to make the numbers before the average person sees the horror of what *both sides* did during the war?

The leaders on both sides, and many or most of the soldiers, were murderers — simple as that.

The more I learn, the more I realize everything I've been bought about history is bullshit. WW2 wasn't a just war any more than robbing a bank is just robbery.

Japan | Sunday, 24 June 2007 at 6:28 pm

some insignificant arab said...

"We are at risk of going down the same ill thought-out utilitarian path."
Depending on which media source you're glued to, you are at risk of going that path yet.

As far as any of the poor doomed people I personally know from the third world are concerned, (phillipines, mid-east countries/pakistan ... etc), your contry/military already went further down that path long ago than anyone else and has more blood on its hands number-wise in its short history than anyone you can write books or film movies about, and it's still ongoing to this very moment without so much as a pause despite your peoples claim to having a voice in the affairs of their country & their leaders, but your hypocrites still have the self-righteous conviction to lecture the world about right/wrong, whether it be someone from japan/china/afghanistan/iraq/iran/palestine/korea/mexico/cuba/african-countries (the list goes on but I'll stick to the ones you've robbed/starved/wrecked/divided one way or another).

Saudi Arabia | Sunday, 24 June 2007 at 10:15 pm

Joe Watson said...

The issue of Allied atrocities may have remained long dormant but we should not close our eyes to the infinitely worse wrongs that they were fighting against.

Australia | Monday, 25 June 2007 at 7:26 am

Christopher Canaris said...

Perhaps the saddest part of this story is the impact on the “perpetrators.” My mother’s brother whom I never met was a highly decorated pilot who flew as part of a Polish Air Force squadron with RAF Bomber command. He had been a trainee pilot in air force pilot in Poland at the outbreak of WWII thus knowing first hand the impact of bombing on those on the ground. He was lucky enough to escape to France and then the UK where of course he would have seen the impact of the Blitz (small stuff by comparison with anything the Allies ever inflicted on Germany or Japan). He flew 56 missions for Bomber Command. He committed suicide in 1944.

My mother, who became a doctor, spent the last fifteen years of her medical career in the Australian Department of Veterans Affairs assessing disability pension entitlements. In the process, she read all too many service records. In a recent conversation with me, she said she realised only then just how awful it was for the Bomber crews. Apart from the horrible dangers they all faced, many if not most had some notion of what they were actually causing on the ground. She remarked that her brother had always been a sensitive soul and that she thought this knowledge must have weighed very heavily on him.

As a family, we have often wondered whether this contributed to his tragic death.

My father spent his wartime years under German occupation in Athens. In 1941, The Germans precision bombed Piraeus (the port of Athens) with Stukas with devastating effect on Allied shipping. Later in the war, American flyers bombed Piraeus at high altitude apparently hitting all of Piraeus except for the actual harbour. My father who then lived in Piraeus remembers walking over dismembered civilian bodies as the family decided to leave for the comparative safety of Athens. The Greeks were allies under military occupation and Piraeus was a legitimate military target. However, the collateral damage (aren’t euphemism wonderful?) far outweighed any military benefits.

I am not a pacifist but I am extraordinarily grateful to God that I have never had to fight in a war or contribute to such a decision. The enormity of the evil unleashed is unspeakable. Whether you are on the right or wrong side, whether your cause is just or unjust, you are likely to see or have to do things to which no human being ought ever be exposed.

Australia | Monday, 25 June 2007 at 10:05 am

Relic said...

I agree that mass air bombing is terrible, I think that war is terrible .This is why no one should go into it light heartedly.However once commited I think playing "nice" will lose you a war a get your people killed.Most all great conqueror's throughout history had zero mercy on the civilain populace.
Do not go to war for the "romance" of it, for there is none,go instead to slaughter until the objective is complete.
THEN you can rebuild and win the hearts and minds of those lucky enough to survive. I dont recall any war that was actually won by invading the enemy and "convincing" the people that your better than what they have grown accustom too.
It certainly didnt work in Vietnam.What may have worked in Nam would have been the complete destruction of Hanoi, but we'll never know..Im just glad its over, the vietnamese are a cool people..As terrible as these bombings of civilians were I would say that the population of Dresden was more glad to see the allies on the ground there after the bombings than they ever would have been without the bombings altogether.
Bottom line if you go to war then go to WAR all out and finish it quick, by ANY means neccessary.
It would appear that the muhajadeen have figured that out, why cant we before its too late?
Otherwise, dont go to war..
Much respect to all soldiers on all sides of any past wars.
Its never easy.

United States | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 5:44 am

john said...

some insignificant arab said...

this header sounds arrogant, even it aims to be funny.

United Kingdom | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 5:39 pm

Ray Marshall said...

Paul D. said:
"He says that ... the Nazi atrocities were on a much worse scale than anything the Allies committed .... Still, the Allies do have a case to answer. Allied bombing killed 800,000 civilians."

"I wonder... by what metric are the Nazis' murders (in the low millions) "much worse" than the Allies' 800,000 murders? How even do we have to make the numbers before the average person sees the horror of what *both sides* did during the war?"

"The leaders on both sides, and many or most of the soldiers, were murderers — simple as that."


I wonder how many innocents the Nazis would have killed had the allies not engaged in bombing? The Soviet Union may never have been defeated, but they probably never could have launched the counter-offensives that led to the end of the Holocaust.

It is so easy 60 years later to make judgments on military decisions made during World War II by generals who possessed five per cent of the information we have at our disposal.

United States | Tuesday, 26 June 2007 at 9:51 pm

Christopher Canaris said...

The Allies were guilty of far more than merely bombing civilians.

For example,their “unconditional surrender” policy deprived the nascent but real German resistance movement of oxygen wedging the German military into a desperate stand to prevent the dismembering of their country. It stifled serious opposition to Hitler and undermined any likelihood of his removal (barring two unsuccessful assassination attempts). It prolonged the war unduly causing innumerable civilian and military deaths on both sides.

I write as an Australian whose parents were both born in Poland and who both fled in 1939. Many of my family and my wife’s family (she is of Polish-Jewish background – her father also fled Poland in 1939) suffered and perished at the hands of the Nazis. I have no desire to be an apologist in any shape or form for the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, unless we recognise the evils that “our” side perpetrated in the fighting of an inevitable and necessary war, we run the risk of perpetuating the very evils that so many died to prevent.

Australia | Wednesday, 27 June 2007 at 10:29 am

Fr Richard Umbers said...

To be worthy of the name human, any activity we perform must be according to right reason. War is no exception. Nobody believes that "anything goes" so long as it produces victory. It would not take any great feat of the imagination to create scenarios in which we would say "No, you must not do that." If breaking civilian morale meant asking soldiers to carry out systematic rape or threatening to blow up all primary schools we would have to reject such policies as intrinsically evil.

Australia | Saturday, 30 June 2007 at 4:59 pm

zubin said...

Elizabeth Anscombe famously made a (strong) case against the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in her essay 'Mr Truman's Degree'. I must confess that while I understand some of the arguments given in defence (and which - almost - unanimously cast it as 'regrettable') they never seem to address her main point(s): "For me to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder, and murder is one of the worst of human actions." (This little quotation doesn't do justice to the essay and its argumentation and grim wit). Arguments about whether the justifications proffered were vindicated risk begging the question insofar as they are almost debating the efficacy of the acts in light of their intentions and thereby begging the question about the taking of innocent life. (Attempts to construe Japanese civilians as combatants strike me as bordering on the clumsy - and whatever the merit of these arguments, the children who were killed cannot on any reasonable account be cast as combatants). Again, the undoubted atrocities committed by, among others, the Nazis don't really justify the killing of innocents. (Incidentally, as many point out, had Hitler or some Nazi generals had an a-bomb and decided to drop it on Coventry, it wouldn't take a legal historian to consider how this would have been dealt with at Nuremburg). I intend none of this in a provocative way, but would be interested to know how this issue of killing innocents can be reasonably sidestepped.

Just a few more points. Ray Marshall, you write: "I wonder how many innocents the Nazis would have killed had the allies not engaged in bombing?" How does the (purported but reasonable, I grant) issue of Nazi killing innocents justify Allied killing of innocents? Does the act which your question implicitly condemns when perpetrated by the Nazis become justifiable and legitimate when the Allies perpetrate it?

United Kingdom | Tuesday, 3 July 2007 at 9:32 am

Alan McConnell said...

I wonder if the following is a comment by the reviewer or if it is taken from the book itself.

"It was the industrial might of the USA and the American strategic bombing of German oil supplies, something Harris vigorously resisted, that led to Germany’s demise."

This might be a comforting thought to those of us in the West but it's a mile away from the truth. The Germans were defeated primarily by the Russians - after Kursk (you have heard of the battle of Kursk haven't you?) and argably even before that the Eastern front was a one way street.

I'll say that again since it doesn't seem to be the perceived wisdom. The Germans were defeated primarily by the Russians.

United Kingdom | Friday, 17 August 2007 at 2:03 am

barry morgan said...

Now with the advantage of hindsight it is easy to criticize. Yes it seems that Harris was seriously wrong with his policy of carpet bommbing and the appalling destruction it wreaked on innocent people and Europen heritage. However without trying to defend the allies actions it is easy to criticize with the benefit of all the historical information we now have. Then, there were no satelites, radar was crude and still in its infancy, aircraft by today's technology crude and not very efficient. Remember that the British stopped day light bombing because of the extraordinary losses they were sustaining. Their aircraft production could not keep up with the losses. Bombing at night with the technology then available was very much a hit and miss affair. The US airforce continued daylight bombing which necessitated doing so from height. It wasn't until the arrival of the Mustang late in the war that they had fighter cover; until then they flew unprotected except for their own weapons which from accounts weren't much help against the
Luftwaffe fighters. Its easy to say now these things were being done unnecessarily when that war was virtually won, but back then with the communications available I doubt the Allies were so certain of victory. Using the atom bomb against civilians was an appalling act but once again considering events at the time one can understand if not approve what was done. The US was not even sure if the bomb would work and apparently they only had a couple. Their arguement was that an invasion of the mainland would have been resisted to the last Japanese with resultant massive allied troop losses. Having already been engaged in the worst war the world had experienced with already huge losses and experience of fighting a fanatical enemy the decision to use the bomb can be understood.
Do I approve? No, but I can understand.
Was Bomber Harris wrong? Yes, and his decision to target civilian populations really can't be excused. However once again a lot of industrial targets were part of cities and trying to accurately bomb such targets with the crude instrumentation then available was impossible.
It was war and I wonder how today's critics would have felt then and how forcefully they would have argued their position around the table in the war room.
It was a terrible period. Those who prosecuted the war no longer have to explain to us.

Australia | Thursday, 17 January 2008 at 8:38 pm

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