Fire and Fury

When does war end... and slaughter begin?That is the question that drives this compelling re-examination of the Allied aerial bombing campaign and the suffering of German civilians during World War II.During the Second World War, American and British air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some sixty cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving eighty thousand aircrew dead.For decades, observers have minimised the difference between the two campaigns, according equal responsibility to the Americans and the British. In this controversial study, acclaimed historian Randall Hansen shows that painting the American and British campaigns with the same broad brush is both unfair and historically inaccurate.The terrible truth is that most of the British bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of Allied military leadership, leading to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and prolonging the war.By contrast, American precision bombing almost brought the Germans to their knees. Throughout the war, the US campaign was infused with a particularly American fusion of determination, optimism and morality - and played an integral and largely unrecognised role in securing Allied victory in the skies over Europe.