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July/August 2003 Editorial The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Bombing of Hamburg by Richard Deats
Fellowship created something of a firestorm of its own when in March 1944 it published "Massacre by Bombing" by English writer and FOR member Vera Brittain, the carefully documented story of the obliteration bombing of Germany by the Allies. The publication of her work prompted front-page coverage in American newspapers. Even President Roosevelt addressed the issue. Brittain, who majored in International Relations at the Oxford Honour School of Modern History and who had lived through six hundred German air raids on London, hardly fit the charge of "Nazi apologist" thrown at her, and her impeccable scholarship held up to the criticisms leveled at it. Truth, war’s first casualty, is very unpleasant to face during the heat of battle. Those who speak it are often labeled traitors. In 1939, at the outset of World War II, the Germans initiated the bombing of cities such as Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, and Birmingham. They were called barbarians for the indiscriminate destruction of population centers and the killing and maiming of innocent men, women, and children that took place. However, as Brittain wrote, "The destruction of Hamburg, between July 24 and August 2, 1943, like the later mass attacks on Berlin, may testify to our capacity to win the war, but it also provides irrefutable evidence of the moral and spiritual abyss into which we have descended." She quoted a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer who had flown over Hamburg as saying, "'The term raid is no longer expressive enough for what is happening. From what I have seen in two of the six air attacks made within 71 hours, the destruction is truly devastating. In comparison the enemy raids on London were child’s play.' (The Daily Telegraph, August 6, 1943)." She also quoted the Basle News (September 20, 1943), which said that more people died in a few hours in the bombing of Hamburg than had died in all of the raids on London since the beginning of the war. This kind
of bombing was developed from the political theory of "Morale The carpet bombing of population centers with hundreds of thousands of explosives and incendiary bombs not only leveled vast areas of the city under attack but created firestorms that sucked up all the oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere. In Hamburg, the blanket of fire reached a height of six kilometers. This created "a rush of air…reaching the strength of a typhoon" and destroying all in its path, including tens of thousands of people incinerated in shelters. "The people who remained in these rooms were not only suffocated and charred but reduced to ashes. In other words, these rooms which, without exception, became death-chambers … must have reached a temperature such as is not reached in the burning chambers of a crematorium. One doctor who supervised the salvaging of bodies remarked that the incineration of the bones had in many cases been more complete in the cellars than it is in the normal process of cremation. Obviously, it is impossible to identify the bodies, as all the belongings of the people have also been reduced to ashes." Vera Brittain’s complete report can be found at http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/fellowship_march 1944/ or ordered for $3.00 from Fellowship, Box 271, Nyack, NY 10960. I visited
the memorial to the destruction of Hamburg when I was in Germany
last September at the invitation of Pastor Achim Strehlke, who
was an FOR intern in 1984.
He is War is an institution that is as outmoded and evil as slavery. Slavery persisted for centuries, undergirded by religious and economic justifications, until these reasons were exposed as hollow and barbaric. Just as the abolitionists persisted until slavery was abolished, so the movement to abolish war must persist until war too is abolished. The science of warfare continues to develop with ever more lethal weapons of mass destruction. "Smart" bombs add precision to bombing today (though many innocents are still killed) but they should not lull us into thereby accepting war and its arsenal of death, including the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons that place civilization at risk. We must work for the resurgence of the movement against war. Instead of taking the lead in this movement, the US is presently using its great military and economic power to assert pre-emptive and first strike policies that attack the very heart of the concept of multilateral treaties and international law aimed at ridding the world of the true axis of evil: hunger, poverty, disease, and illiteracy. Building a world where the earth's resources are used for life instead of death is a goal truly worth working for. Jonathan Schell’s prescient and visionary new book, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (reviewed in this issue by Walter Wink and available from the FOR Bookstore) makes clear the way that nonviolent approaches and movements—what Schell calls "cooperative power"—have been gaining strength and momentum in history over the destructive and violent approaches to social problems, which he calls "coercive power." Indeed, he says, "rule based on violence is in its nature not only destructive but in the long run self-destructive and...authentic, enduring power must be based on nonviolent action." This vision will guide us forward.
Richard Deats editor@forusa.org
©2003 Fellowship of Reconciliation |
July 25,
2003 is the sixtieth anniversary of the obliteration bombing
of Hamburg, Germany by the Allied Air Forces during World
War
II. With the military code name "Operation Gomorrah," the
campaign to destroy Hamburg was part of the strategy to lay
waste German cities, including those with no military value,
such as refugee-packed Dresden. Eventually eighty million incendiary
bombs were dropped on Germany in the extended campaign.