Jörg Friedrich (sometimes spelled Joerg or Jorg in English) (born 17 August 1944 in Kitzbühel) is a German author and historian. Friedrich is best known for his publication The Fire (2002, ), in which he portrays the Allied bombing of civilian targets during World War II as systematic and in many ways pointless mass murder. An English translation was published in 2006 by Columbia University Press and met with widespread critical approval. For example, the New York Times said it "describes in stark, unrelenting and very literary detail what happened in city after city as the Allies dropped 80 million incendiary bombs on Germany..... There is... an edginess to Friedrich's writing and commentary, an emotional power."
Friedrich was formerly considered a left-wing antiwar activist and described as a student Trotskyist. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Germany, and some have also been translated into English, Dutch, French and many other languages. He is well connected in German political and military circles and is a friend of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He has published interviews with Rudolf Bahro and Raul Hilberg when their books were published. His new book "14/18 Der Weg nach Versailles" focusses on the First World War.
For his work The Law of War: The German Army in Russia Friedrich has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Life and career Born in Kitzbühel in 1944, he spent his childhood in Essen. Jörg Friedrich became a Trotskyist and, during the Vietnam War, an antiwar protester. Following thereon, he began to write books on the history of the war in Germany and work as an independent historian, researching postwar justice and the Nuremberg Trials. His books have always been controversial and have largely sold through this controversial analysis and the publicity surrounding them.
Criticism of Friedrich's position As a historian who has written strongly on the horrors committed by the German state under the Nazis, Friedrich's position has always been assumed to be anti-Nazi with antiwar tendencies focused towards Germany's 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 Brand)"Review: Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg, 1940/1945" , Douglas Peifer, Air Command and Staff College, Air and Space Power Chronicles, Spring 2004, p121/124 retrieved from http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj04/spr04/spr04.pdf (PDF)
Friedrich admits that Germany initiated bombing of civilians in the UK by bombing London, although he claims the first raid was accidental, thereby leaving Britain as the first nation to deliberately bomb nonmilitary targets. This entirely ignores the German bombing of English cities during the First World War, using Zeppelin and other rigid airships. In April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), German airplanes bombed the town of Guernica, which had no military use or value.
Less well-known bombings, such as that of the Polish town of Wieluń within the first two hours of the war and prior to any attack on Germany, either by air or land, are left out. Friedrich mentions the British use of explosive weapons followed by incendiary, a mixture designed to create large fires. He also mentions that the technique to create firestorms was a German development first seen in the bombing against British cities, such as the Coventry Blitz (14 November 1940) and the Second Great Fire of London (29/30 December 1940).
Friedrich was persuaded to publish his book of Dresden photographs by former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl,"Horrific fire-bombing images published", Ray Furlong, BBC News, 22 October 2003, retrieved 2 February 2005 with the condition that equivalent photographs of Polish and British victims should also be shown.
Friedrich has specifically attempted to claim the position of an objective historian,"Germans Revisit War's Agony, Ending a Taboo", Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 15 March 2003 retrieved 11 August 2014 making no judgement about the morality of Allied bombing."Foes of war find ally in book on WWII air raids", Stevenson Swanson, Chicago Tribune, 7 March 2003, retrieved 16 January 2005 Many reviews of his books have pointed out that the language Friedrich uses in his books, with words such as "Einsatzgruppen" (task force in English) used to describe allied pilots and "crematoria" (as in the crematoria of Auschwitz) to describe the air raid shelters in which Dresden residents died.
One explanation offered for Friedrich's recent books and their choice of topics is that he maintains strong antiwar feelings, and with the looming War in Iraq and other global conflicts, he wanted to join in the general German antiwar feelings and implicitly criticise the policy of attacks on foreign nonmilitary 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"."Foes of war find ally in book on WWII air raids", Stevenson Swanson, Chicago Tribune, 7 March 2003, retrieved 16 January 2005
Other related historians Other German historians closer to the mainstream of historical research have also covered the suffering of the German people during the war. The bombing of Dresden had been covered in detail by Götz Bergander prior to Friedrich's book.Germans Revisit War's Agony, Ending a Taboo, Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 15 March 2003, the book referred to is Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte, Zerstörung, Folgen, by Götz Bergander, 1994, , in German; apparently no English translation is available.
Influence on German and international debate on the war
Friedrich's books have not been well received by some media outlets in Germany. ARD, a public television channel, wrote off "the Fire" ("Der Brand") as a "provocation", and Süddeutsche Zeitung recommended throwing his latest book, Places of Fire, directly into the garbage bin.
Even with these strong criticisms, Friedrich has had considerable public success. The Fire was serialised in the German tabloid 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, saying, during a joint promotional interview with Friedrich, that he now doubted the legality and military need for Churchill's decision to attack Dresden, thereby implying that the attacks were war crimes.Retired German NATO general stirs Churchill war strategy debate , Cayman Net News Online, 2002/12, Retrieved 9 February 2005.Gibt es den gerechten Luftkrieg? (German language), Interview of Friederich and Naumann Kai Müller and Christian Schröder, Tagesspiegel, 2002/12/23, Retrieved 15 December 2005
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 equating of the bombing of Dresden with the Holocaust is made explicit and even inverted (?), with the actions towards Jews described as a decision of Hitler for strategic reasons whilst the needless incineration of hundreds of thousands of defenseless German civilians is reappraised as a war crime and a massacre.
It was not until 15 May 1940, two days after the Rotterdam Blitz, that the British abandoned their policy of using aerial bombing only against military targets and against infrastructure, such as ports and railways west of the Rhine, which were of direct military importance. It is also alleged that Rotterdam was bombed by mistake.Taylor, Frederick. Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 London: Bloomsbury, . Chapter "Call Me Meier", Page 111
Bibliography 14/18. Der Weg nach Versailles. Jörg Friedrich. Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 2014. The author describes World War I as breakdown of civilization that transformed Europe into a battlefield on which law, humanity, Christian values, political common sense and economic reason were trampled upon on all sides.
Yalu. An den Ufern des dritten Weltkrieges. Jörg Friedrich. Propyläen Verlag, Munich 2007. The author discusses the meaning of the Korean War as a pathway to World War III.
The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945. Jörg Friedrich. Translated by Allison Brown. Columbia University Press, New York, 2006. The English translation contains a new afterword by the author "for American and British readers".
Brandstätten (2003) (Places of Fire / Cities of Fire). Friedrich's next book reproduces photographs taken by municipal authorities of German civilians burned to death in the firebomb raids. It is much more graphic than The Fire. The book created a sense of revulsion among reviewers; even Friedrich said "no normal person would want to gaze upon these photos." It has never been translated into English and is unavailable outside Germany and Austria.
The book which brought Friedrich to fame, and has sold over 186,000 copies,, Guardian Newspapers 20 October 2003, retrieved 15 February 2005 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 Command.) Jörg Friedrich, Piper, 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. A book including strong criticism of the way that the Nuremberg trials have come to be perceived 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). (Acquittal for Nazi-Justice: The sentencing of NS-Judges since 1948.) Jörg Friedrich, Rowohlt, 1983. 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.
Reviews Due to the level of controversy it has raised, a number of reviews of the German edition of The Fire 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 U.S. and the UK is also interesting. Some of the differences 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.