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Jörg Friedrich (author)

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Jörg Friedrich (often also spelt Joerg or just Jorg in English) is a Berlin-based writer of books on history commonly described as an "independent German Historian". Friedrich is best known for his publication of a book widely seen as criticising the bombing of Dresden.

Friedrich, formerly a Trotskyite anti-war activistTemplate:Fn, now describes himself as a revisionist historian, a guise in which he has sold hundreds of thousands of books in Germany. He is well connected in German political and military circles, including friendships with the former German Chancellor.

Life and Career

Born in Essen in 1944, Jörg Friedrich became a Trotskyite and, during the Vietnam war an anti-war protester. Following from that, he began to write books on the history of the war in Germany and work as an independent historian, researching post war justice and the Nuremberg Trials. His books have always been controversial and have largely sold through this controversial analysis and the publicity surrounding them.

Analysis of Friedrich's position

As a left wing historian who has written strongly on the horrors committed by the German state under the Nazis, Friedrich's position has, in the past, always been assumed to be anti-Nazi with anti-war tendencies focused towards Germany taking responsibility for its actions during the war.

"his previous work examining Wehrmacht crimes and Nazi justice enables him to approach the subject without risking automatic dismissal as a right-wing apologist." (from the Peifer review of Der Brandt)Template:Fn

However, the discussion surrounding his books on the allied bombing campaign has lead to a reappraisal of his position and a re-examination of his earlier books. His criticism of post-war Germany and denazification, which was previously been understood as a being a criticism of power-politics and the selective prosecution of those not useful to the new administration can now be seen as a direct criticism of interference in German national sovereignty:

"Jörg Friedrich describes the denazifcation program as a form of political purge with no basis in international law. The Hague rules of land warfare do not authorize an occupier to undertake any such interference in the enemys domestic affairs." Template:Fn

Once taken in this light, alongside Friedrich's recent admission that he is a "revisionist historian"Template:Fn, Friedrich's modern books and the choices and omissions he has made in them have been seen to take on a rather different meaning. Friedrich admits the well known fact that Germany initiated bombing of civilians in the UK by bombing London, although he claims the first raid was "accidental" thereby leaving the Britain as the first nation in his book to "deliberately" bomb non-military targets. Less well know bombings, such as that of the Polish town of Wielun within the first two hours of the war and prior to any attack on Germany, either by air or land, are left out. Friedrich, who's primary claim to fame is as a military historian mentions the British use of explosive weapons followed by incendiary, a mixture designed to create large fires, but fails to mention that such tactics had already been deployed by Germany in Poland and Russia, and that the use of air power to create firestorms was a German development from the Spanish Civil War first seen in actions such as the Bombing of Guernica.

Friedrich was told to publish his book of Dresden photographs by Former German Chancellor Schroeder, however a pre-requisite was given, that equivalent photographs of Polish and British victims should be shown. He has made repeatedly mentioned Schroeder's endorsement, but actually admitted failing to fulfil the conditions, explaining that the archives of the UK Government would not allow him to publish such photographs. In fact, many of the photographs of the Blitz in London belong to private collections such as that of George Rodger of Magnum's. By choosing his comparison of Dresden to be with the bombing of London, Friedrich avoids covering the topics of Stalingrad, where 40,000 Soviet civilians are known to have been killed in one day of German bombing, Leningrad where approximately a million Soviet civilians were killed or with Warsaw where, 200,000 Polish civilians were killed in the Warsaw Uprising, often in ground based attacks which used a similar mixture of explosive and incendiary weapons to those used by the allies in Germany, but, by contrast to Dresden, where general areas were targeted, also involved deliberate and selective targeting of clearly marked Hospitals with dive bombers and ground forces.

Friedrich has specifically attempted to claim the position of an objective historianTemplate:Fn, making no judgement about the morality of Allied bombingTemplate:Fn. Many reviews of his books have pointed out that the language Friedrich uses in his books, with words such as "Einsatzgruppen" (the name of Nazi death squads) used to describe allied pilots and "crematoria" (as in the crematoria of Auschwitz) to describe the air raid shelters in which Dresden residents died. This has lead to accusations that Friedrich "is downright reckless" and is attempting to make the reader consider a parallel to "the Nazi dehumanisation of the Jews.". Template:Fn

Taken together, two explanations have been given for Friedrich's recent books and their choice of topics. The first is that Friedrich maintains strong anti-war feelings and with the looming War in Iraq and other global conflicts, Friedrich wanted to join in the general German anti-war feelings and implicitly criticise the policy of attacks on foreign non-military targets in Iraq. Friedrich has himself rejected this explanation stating that he 'is dismayed that "The Fire" has bolstered the pacifist argument against German participation in an Iraq war'Template:Fn

The second explanation which has been given is that Friedrich, whilst probably still anti-Nazi, has been acting as a German Nationalist and trying to relativise the crimes of the German Nation in WWII as just some among many committed by all nations involved in the war.

Other related historians

Comparisons between the bombing of Dresden and the extermination of the Jews in the second world war were first made popular through the work of the holocaust denier David Irving. Whilst Jörg Friedrich, who operates within German law, where holocaust denial as carried out by Irving would be illegal, does not directly made that comparison, he has described the death of civilians killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in their cellars as "gassing", the attacks in general as a "massacre" and claimed that the attacks of 1945 had little or no military value.

Irving was the first person to claim a death toll of over 100,000 for the bombing of Dresden, which even he was later forced to withdraw. Jörg Friedrich has never made such extreme claims, although his claim of 40,000 is 5000 more than the highest range of the official estimate and 15,000 above current best estimates of 25000 (see Bombing of Dresden).

More close to the mainstream of historical research, other German historians have also covered the suffering of the German people during the war. The bombing of Dresden had been covered in detail by Götz BerganderTemplate:Fn prior to Friedrich's book..

Friedrich has cooperated with historians from various countries including with Peter Maguire during the creation of his book "Land and War".

Influence on German and international debate on the war

Friedrich's books have not been well received by all in Germany. ARD, a public television channel, wrote "the Fire" ("Der Brandt") off as a "provocation"Template:Fn and Süddeutsche Zeitung recommended throwing his latest book, "Places of Fire" directly into the garbage.

Even with these strong criticisms, Friedrich has had considerable public success, Der Brandt was serialised in the German tabloid Der Bild and has had a serious influence on German national debate. Friedrich has claimed that this has meant that German civilians who had never previously talked about their wartime experiences have begun to tell about this phase in history which was previously documented primarily from the point of view of influence on the war. At other times, revision of the outlook on the war has taken place, with Klaus Naumann, a former NATO General and friend of Friedrich's, accusing Churchill of war crimes during a joint promotional interview with FriedrichTemplate:Fn.

Both in Germany and abroad, neo-Nazi groups have seized on the book as proving that the air war was begun by the UK. Claims that the book shows that bombings of German towns in 1940 were the first attacks on civilians of the war, based on the omission of attacks in Poland, are common. The equation of bombing of Dresden with the Holocaust is made explicit and even inverted, the murder of unarmed and compliant civilians in the Holocaust described as a "decision" of Hitler for strategic reasons whilst the bombing of heavily defended civilian targets directly involved both in the production for war and the carrying out of the holocaust becomes a "war crime" and a "massacre".

Bibliography

Brandstätten (2003) (Places of Fire / Cities of Fire)

Friedrich's latest book, covering similar material to Der Brand.

Der Brand, Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945. Jörg Friedrich. Propyläen Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-549-07165-5.

The book which brought Friedrich to fame, and has sold over 186,000 copiesTemplate:Fn, covering the bombing of German cities. Starting with technology and mechanisms but then concentration on effect on the ground and the horror of bombing for the German civilians trapped in it. See reviews below.

Das Gesetz des Krieges: Das deutsche Heer in Russland, 1941 bis 1945 : der Prozess gegen das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, (The rules of war: The German Army in Russia, 1941 to 1945, the trial of the Wehrmacht High CommandTemplate:Fn) Jörg Friedrich, Piper, ISBN 3492031161

a book including strong criticism of the way that the Nuremberg trials have come to be percieved in Germany, placing blame at least partly on the American instigators of the trials.

Freispruch für die Nazi-Justiz: Die Urteile gegen NS-Richter seit 1948 : eine Dokumentation (Rororo aktuell) (Aquittal for Nazi-Justice: The sentencing of NS-Judges since 1948Template:Fn), Jörg Friedrich, Rowohlt, 1983, ISBN 3499153483

Reviews

Due to the level of controversy it has raised, a number of reviews of the German edition of "Der Brand" have been written in English and published in English language journals and/or made available on the Internet. These reviews, made shortly after the publication of the book, and prior to Friedrich's public statements have tended to treat the inaccuracies and omissions in Friedrich's books as carelessness, although criticism of the language used has been almost universal.

Comparison of reviews made in Germany with those in the USA and the UK is also interesting. Some of the differences which exist may be seen as being due to different points of view, however specific aspects of the book (for example, the most commonly mentioned failure to provide context) are reliably mentioned in English language reviews whilst being included strongly in some German reviews and missing entirely in others.

  • Review: Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg, 1940-1945, Douglas Peifer, Air and Space Power Chronicles, Spring 2004Template:Fn
Peifer provides a detailed review of the book, which finds that it is "Highly effective as a literary dirge and lamentation, it comes up short when judged by the standards of the history discipline". Perhaps more importantly he states that the language is "deliberately provocative", that the book's unclear chronology can be misleading and that the lack of clear references included makes it unverifiable. Even given these flaws, Fifer finds that "for those willing to make the effort, reading the piece is worthwhile".
  • Review of Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945; A Narrative of Loss, Joerg Arnold, Department of History, University of Southampton,Template:Fn
Perhaps best summarised by it's final line, "As a narrative of loss, Der Brand succeeds like few other texts, but as a historical treatment of the allied air war, it is seriously deficient." this review analyses in particular the use of sources within Friedrich's work and also his refusal to apply analysis to the reasons for the bombing. A particularly strong criticism is in Arnold's contrast between Friedrich's overt claim that the bombing had nothing to do with the holocaust his implicit linkage of the two subjects through his use of the language of the holocaust to describe the effects of the bombings.
  • Jörg Friedrich: Der Brand, Franz Kaessl, Öbib online (German Language).Template:Fn
From it's opening sentence "The fate of German civilians in the Second World War was treated as a taboo topic for many decades", this review contrasts strongly with most English language reviews. It points to the example of Günter Grass as an author recently discovered the suffering of the war, whilst reviews elsewhere have claimed that Grass's work of the 1960s is actually a far more powerful portrait of the effects of wars on civiliansTemplate:Fn. In the end the review concludes that the book should give a new view on history, not a new assignment of blame.
  • The Destruction of Germany, Ian Buruma, in The New York Review of BooksTemplate:Fn

Notes

  • Template:Fnb The rules of war: The German Army in Russia, 1941 to 1945, the trial of the Wehrmacht High Command is not a standard translation of the title, but one made for this article.
  • Template:Fnb Acquittal for Nazi-Justice: The sentencing of NS-Judges since 1948 is not a standard translation of the title, but one made for this article. NS stands for National Socialist / Nazi.

References

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