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 Der Brand (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, The Fire, 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 most recent 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. He has published books on the Anglo-American air raids on German cities and towns. These have been regarded as controversial, as the understanding of these air raids as war crimes is still not accepted by some.
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)
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, 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, making no judgement about the morality of Allied bombing.
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".
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.