Inferno: the Devastation of Hamburg, 1943 Free

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Become a member to get exclusive early access to our latest reviews too! Browse our magazines. Submit your novel for review. Our features are original articles from our 1943 magazines these will say where they were Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg published or original articles commissioned for this site. It is also where our staff first look for news and features for the site. Our membership is worldwide, but we still like to meet up - and many members travel 1943 of miles to do so. Here you can find out about our conferences and chapter meetings, and can check the important dates for our Awards and magazine. In the summer of British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg. For ten days the city was pounded with 9, tons of bombs; the fires they created burned for a month and were visible for miles. A devastation with a loss of 1943 that was on the scale of the death toll of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and yet Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg the event has been almost forgotten by the collective consciousness. Leaflets warning of the impending air strike were dropped days before, but the people of Hamburg believed that they were well prepared 1943 the British and Americans would want to preserve buildings and positions that might prove useful to them like the harbour. Hamburg had not seen any bombing sinceand whatever happened it surely could not be too bad. The use of eyewitness accounts from the bombers and the bombed brings home to the reader the full extent of human suffering and gives a balanced account of both sides. The British and Americans thought, erroneously, that such all-out air strikes would hasten an end to the war, but the survivors of Operation Gomorrah were resilient and the war was eventually won by slow fighting across land. Inferno is the first exploration of the Hamburg firestorm for almost thirty Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg it is a well researched, well written account of the human face of war. Toggle navigation. Browse our magazines Submit your novel for review. All articles Browse by Tag Browse Guides. Browse articles by tag Choose a tag Rochester Mrs. Bombing of Hamburg in World War II - Wikipedia

Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. Introduction He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. Despite his natural fear during an air raid, he often found himself willing the bombers on, almost hoping for the opportunity to witness a truly catastrophic event. Rather than going to the shelter he would stand spellbound on his balcony watching the explosions rising above the city. He did not blame the British and American airmen for the havoc they were wreaking, but saw it rather as the inevitable expression of man's urge to destroy -- an urge that was mirrored in his own morbid fascination. The fact that this fascination was accompanied by a simultaneous Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, both at what was happening before him and at his own emotions, did not lessen the power of his darkest cravings. There is a sense in which the whole of the Second World War can be seen as a battle between these dark cravings -- the human urge to destroy and the desire to keep such instincts in check. From the victors' point of view the war has often been portrayed as an almost mythical struggle by the "free" world to rein in the destructive urges of Hitler's regime. And yet the Allies were just as destructive toward their enemies as the Axis powers ever were -- necessarily so, since destruction is the very business of war. The tragedy of this particular conflict was that both sides should so completely abandon all restraint, until there was no way out of the war but by 1943 total devastation of one side or the other. Nowhere is this more apparent than Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg the bomber war. Each side began bombing with relative caution -- especially the British, who promised early on that all bombing would be confined to strictly military objectives. Each side gradually descended into varying degrees of what the Germans called Schrecklichkeit "frightfulness" -- the deliberate terrorizing of civilian populations. And each side accompanied its bomber raids not only with increasingly bloodthirsty calls for the utter destruction of its enemy, but with jubilation whenever that destruction was partially achieved. The uncomfortable elation experienced by Nossack at the bombing of 1943 own city was merely a token of what was happening across the whole of Europe. At the end of the war, when things had returned to "normality," both sides tried to distance themselves from these events. This denial of the past has been most pronounced in Germany, where it seemed that the only way the population could cope with the horrors they had witnessed was to pretend they had never happened. Inthe Swedish journalist Stig Dagerman described traveling through the moonscape of Hamburg on 1943 train: Despite the massive 1943 of ruins Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg a single other passenger looked out of the window. Dagerman was immediately identified as a foreigner precisely because he looked out. The story is an apt metaphor for the way Germans have collectively avoided looking at the ordeal they experienced. Until recently, there have been very few German authors willing to engage emotionally with the subject, because to do so would 1943 too many wounds. The peculiar mix of collective guilt for being a part of a nation that unleashed war upon the world, and anger at the heartlessness of their 1943 treatment -- so that they were simultaneously both perpetrators and victims of atrocity -- has made it much easier simply to turn away and pretend that life continued as normal. In Britain and America there has been a corresponding avoidance of the consequences of our bombing war. We know all about what it was Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg for our airmen, and the bravery they displayed in the face of formidable German flak and fighter defenses is a strong part of our collective folklore. There are countless books about the airmen's experience -- about the stress of waiting at dispersal, the nerves of the long flight into battle, the terror of flying through flak, or even of being shot down by fighters. This is as it should be -- these are the things we did, and it Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg important that we remember them. But after the bombs have been dropped, and the surviving bombers have returned home, that's where the story tends to end. What happened on the ground, to the cities full of people beneath those falling bombs, is rarely talked about; even 1943 it is discussed, it is usually only in terms of the buildings and factories destroyed, with only a cursory mention of civilian casualties. We, too, like to pretend 1943 nothing terrible actually came of those Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg. I am talking here about our collective 1943. The airmen themselves are among the few of us who actually do seem to have thought about it, understood what it was they were doing, and either come Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg terms with it or made a conscious decision not to try to square the impossible -- there was a war on, and they 1943 what we don't, that war is a terrible thing out of which no one comes out looking good. The one exception 1943 this rule is, of course, Dresden. The disproportional amount of attention Dresden gets is our one act of contrition for the destruction we rained down on the cities of Germany. There are various reasons why this particular city has become the emblem for our guilt -- it was a truly beautiful city, the scale of its destruction within just a few days was awe-inspiring, and since it occurred toward the end of the war many people have wondered with hindsight whether it was not an unnecessary tragedy. All this is worthy of discussion, but it does not excuse our forgetfulness about other cities in Germany. Berlin suffered more bombing destruction in terms of area than any other city in the war: almost four times as much as Dresden. Just as many Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg died in Hamburg as in Dresden, if not more, and in ways that were every bit as horrific. It happened eighteen months before Dresden, at a time when much of Germany was still confident of final victory. It was a far greater shock to the system than Dresden was, unleashing almost a million refugees across a nation that had still not quite accepted the consequences of bombing. These refugees brought with them tales of unimaginable horror: fires hot enough to melt glass, a firestorm strong enough to uproot trees and hurl them into the flames, and rumors of Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, people killed within the space of just a few days and nights although in fact the total was more like 45, I have been consistently surprised by the general ignorance of these facts among my own countrymen. In the course of the two years of writing this book I have come across very few people outside the world of military historians who knew that Hamburg was ever bombed at all, let alone the sheer scale of Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg destruction that took place. On the Continent the bombing of Hamburg is a byword for horror, and yet in Britain few people know it even happened. In North America, too, there is widespread ignorance of the basic facts, although to some extent America's geographical and emotional distance from Hamburg excuses this. Even those who have heard of the Hamburg firestorm are generally unaware of its ghastly human consequences. The main purpose of this book is to put this right. My intention is to convey the events as they appeared at the time, not only to the British and American airmen who fought their way across the skies of Europe, but to the people of Hamburg who became the victims of their bombs. Hamburg was a Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg and prosperous city before it was destroyed, and I will explain some of the Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg history in Part I, and try to re-create the atmosphere in this Hansestadt in the years leading up to The logic is that it is only by knowing what was there before the bombing that we can truly appreciate what was lost -- both physically and psychologically. I have devoted several chapters to the immediate and long-term aftermath of the firestorm because this has Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg adequately been described before, in Germany or abroad. The effect of the catastrophe Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg the German people, and on Germany itself, was extremely far-reaching, and continues to cause controversy today. The second purpose of this book is to try to correct the erroneous belief that war is somehow a glorious or heroic undertaking. During the course of my research I have interviewed dozens of bomber veterans, and they are unanimous on this point: There is nothing glorious about sitting in a Lancaster or a B bomber for upward of five 1943, in the freezing temperatures of the upper atmosphere, waiting to see if you will live to return home safely. At best it is dull, at its worst it can be utterly terrifying: The rare moments of exhilaration are insignificant compared to this. There is nothing glorious about being bombed, either, as the British learned during the Blitz when over 40, British civilians were killed. The most infamous German raid was on the city of Coventry, where local industries, civilian houses, and historic buildings in the center of the city were completely devastated. In their collective imagination this is what British people believe it must have been like for the Germans -- a little like Coventry, or perhaps slightly worse. This is a false impression. Coventry suffered only a single major bombing raid -- Essen was bombed on a much larger scale, twenty-eight times. Hamburg is on another level altogether. What happened in Hamburg is more accurately compared to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Until recently America did not really know what it was like to be bombed at all. Geographically remote from any hostile neighbors, the United States has always enjoyed almost total immunity from air attack, and until a few years ago it had never been seriously threatened. The shock was therefore all the greater when a group of Al Qaeda terrorists flew two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center on September 11, The sheer horror of this action still consumes Americans with righteous indignation -- and so it should -- but tragic as this event was, it was essentially only the destruction of a handful of buildings. True, almost 3, 1943 perished, but imagine the sense of awe, of shock, if it had been the whole of Lower Manhattan that Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg been destroyed. Imagine an area from the tip of the island all the way up to Madison Square Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg consumed by a single fire, and the rest of the city as far as Central Park reduced to rubble. What would have been America's reaction if the death toll had not been 2, but ten times that number, fifteen times? Imagine eight square miles of the city without a single building left standing -- mountains of rubble literally Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg far as the eye can see, corpses littering 1943 streets, the smell of decay pervading everything. Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg is what happened in Hamburg Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg the summer of This book would not have been possible without the help of scores of former Allied airmen and German civilians who consented to be interviewed. Their willingness to share their diaries and to rake over painful memories from more than sixty years ago has been quite humbling, and I can only thank them for the patience with which they answered my questions. I am aware that there is something distasteful about some of the questions I was obliged to ask, especially in the specific details I demanded. Indeed, when Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg people who lived through the firestorm I often found myself experiencing a mixture of emotions similar to that described by Nossack as he watched the bombers fly over his city -- excitement at the prospect of gathering good material, a perverse hope that their descriptions would become even more graphic, and a faint sense of shame at the inappropriateness of my enthusiasm. Writing about catastrophe or, for that matter, reading about it is not the same as experiencing it, and there is inevitably something voyeuristic about examining someone else's misery in this sort of detail. I hope, therefore, that this book will convey not merely my own uncomfortable fascination at the terrifying stories Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg people told me, but also the lingering feeling of revulsion they have communicated to me at the human cost of war. There is no space here to list the scores of people and institutions 1943 both sides of the Atlantic who have helped me over the Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg few years. Some of them are named in an Acknowledgments section at the end of this book, but this cannot do justice to the enormous contribution these people have made, or to Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg selfless enthusiasm for my project. There are, however, a handful of people who deserve special mention. Paul Wolf was a huge help in gathering elusive American material, and Sonia Stammwitz helped with the translation of some of the denser German documents, as did Jenny Piening and Sylvia Goulding. Ion Trewin and Ian Drury both took time out of their busy schedules to read early drafts of the manuscript, and their comments were extremely useful. Last I must thank Liza and Gabriel for giving me a reason to leave my study each evening, and lock away the terrible stories and photographs that have been my companions by day. Several years of research into some of the most frightening Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg of the twentieth century have taught me not to take Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg presence for granted. Home 1 Books 2. Read an excerpt of this book! Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Explore Now. Buy As Gift. Overview In the summer ofBritish and American bombers launched an 1943 on the German city of Hamburg that was unlike anything the world had ever seen. For ten days they pounded the city with over 9, tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map. The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month and were visible for miles. The people of Hamburg had no time to understand what had hit them. As they emerged from their ruined cellars and air raid shelters, they were confronted with a unique vision of hell: a sea 1943 flame that stretched 1943 the horizon, the burned-out husks of fire engines that had tried to rescue them, roads that had become flaming rivers of melted tarmac. Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, by Keith Lowe | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble®

This is without doubt the best book I have yet read on the Allied bombing campaign against Germany during the Second World War. It concentrates on one incident in that campaign, the "battle 1943 Hamburg" of 24 July-3 August In the process they carried out six major raids, killing 1943, people and for a short period caused a major panic in most of the German high command. The book is divided 1943 three parts. Part One looks at the history of Hamburg and the rise of the Nazis, and provides us with some interesting background material. Part Two looks at the actual bombing itself, beginning with a look at the wider bombing campaign, then the planning for the attack on Hamburg and then moves on to look at each of the raids in turn. Here Lowe follows the same order of events as the raids themselves, starting with the bomber crews on their bases in England, following them to Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg and back, and then taking us down into the streets of the city. Part Three looks at the aftermath of the bombing, from the immediate aftermath of the raids to the post-war memorials and the debates that followed. Inevitably this is a somber book. Every heavy air raid caused casualties, often in particularly gruesome ways, but the bombing of Hamburg 1943 the largest firestorm yet seen, which resulted in scenes of a truly horrific nature, Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg Lowe Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg not and does not avoid. One of the great strengths of this book are the first hand accounts of the events it describes. Lowe includes eye witness accounts from Allied bomber pilots, German night fighter aces, the people of Hamburg and the slave labourers who were forced to work in the city. I do have some minor niggles with this book - the author refers to "liberated" Germany on a few occasions, which I feel rather misrepresents the situation - "conquered" or "occupied" would rather better represent the situation at the end of the war. He also comments on the collapse of the German economy after the Allies arrived, especially on the food shortages, without remembering that the wartime German economy depended very largely on slave labour and supplies stolen from occupied Europe, but these are very minor issues. The final chapter clinches this book's status as a masterpiece. After remaining scrupulously factual throughout the book, here Lowe gives his own conclusions on the Allied bombing campaign. Without this section the catastrophe that befell Hamburg would have entirely without context and the book might have left a rather different taste in the mouth, but Lowe's thoughtful comments on the motivation behind the bombing war and the attitude that he believes we should take to the victims of the bombing provide a brilliantly balanced ending to what deserves to become a classic work of history. Help - F. Follow DrJohnRickard.