Now, some said they felt sad; others, that if the circumstances were the same they'd do it again. Friedrich himself was omnipresent in the media, giving interviews and taking part in discussions. Two generations after the events, 'critical appraisal' was in full swing. Most interviewers and commentators have been suspicious about this. Had the settling of accounts really come out of the blue? The claim that Friedrich's book had broken a taboo was effective in PR terms, but it was incorrect.
Long before his book appeared, there had been studies of the air war, reports by local writers and, on the anniversaries of the attacks, endless articles in newspapers and the illustrated weeklies. In , one of the main television channels showed a four-hour documentary on the subject. Even today there are continuing controversies about particular events. During the Cold War, no East German article recalling the destruction of Dresden's 'cultural treasure' was complete without reference to the 'US killer pilots' and 'Anglo-American air gangsters'; GDR propaganda took, word for word, phrases that Goebbels had rubber-stamped.
In West Germany, the bombing of the civilian population was the preserve of the radical press, right and left-wing, which treated it in an essentially identical manner. As far as the democratic majority was concerned, it wasn't appropriate to accuse their new Nato allies and protectors of former misdeeds. Thus when Friedrich's book appeared a number of critics wondered sneeringly why the courage to demand a reckoning had been found only now that the cold war was at an end.
Others asked whether Friedrich had pointed out sufficiently clearly that Germany had actually started the war. Friedrich says he isn't interested in settling accounts: The most serious historical work on the bombing war so far has been concerned with its politics, strategy, techniques and organisation, giving the view from the strategist's desk or the pilot's cockpit. Born like Sebald in , Friedrich describes what the air war did on the ground.
Friedrich's book is not a lament but it is, in parts, an indictment. It describes in overabundant detail an orgy of devastation which came to an end only in April , when Air Marshal 'Bomber' Harris established to his regret that there were no targets left for Bomber Command to hit. Friedrich's charge is that the outcome of the war was already clear, and many German cities were destroyed for no military reason.
In Pforzheim, a town on the edge of the Black Forest, one third of the inhabitants were killed. The devastation was motivated solely by a wish to punish the German population. Friedrich provides many particulars on the millennial history of cities reduced to ashes in a matter of hours; he can recite anecdotes, legends, myths and prophecies of disaster that came to pass.
And by way of contrast he describes the scientific studies carried out by British incendiary experts on the combustibility of medieval German towns. Because the book takes the form of a montage, the effect is polemical, however laconic the accompanying text. It is a modern, dramatic way to write history: Friedrich's method turns on a variety of causally linked images.
Helmut Schmidt
A fanatical officer plans to defend a village on the edge of the Ruhr with a couple of members of the Hitler Youth. Rather than put any of his soldiers at risk, the American general has the village destroyed by bombs. In the process a Gothic chapel unique to the region is hit. Sisters of Charity and wounded German soldiers, Russian and French prisoners of war and Ukrainian labourers who had thought the church was a safe haven.
Perhaps some of them had stealthily waved to the bombers, as happened with concentration camp internees or Jews in hiding. The writer and broadcaster Ralph Giordano, who had to live in hiding as a young Jewish boy in Hamburg and was lucky to escape with his life from the Operation Gomorrah raid of July , acknowledged on television that the sight of the bombers had filled him with jubilation: But I don't have this feeling any more. Was Friedrich, he asked, ministering to the wish of some Germans to see themselves as special victims?
But the book's central contention is that after the first world war civilised values went by the board. Military planners in the s stopped regarding war as a contest between soldiers on a battleground. Once it became possible for bombers to penetrate deep into the enemy's hinterland and demolish the key sources of his strength, the arms factories, war became a Volkskrieg - every factory worker was a soldier and every nurse a combatant. In Britain, Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard developed an effective theory of air warfare based on this approach.
In Germany, it merged effortlessly with the heroic ideology expounded by National Socialism's chief theorist, Alfred Rosenberg. Friedrich gives a painstaking description of the way the concept of 'moral bombing' came into being. In , following the loss of war material at Dunkirk, the most effective instrument available to the British for participating in the war and relieving its ally the Soviet Union was its initially small bomber fleet. Churchill decided to whip up "a mighty fire" in Hitler's own "backyard", and Harris wanted to set up "an extremely interesting experiment with the Germans".
In May , three German planes on a mission to bomb a French airfield near Dijon went off course and bombed Freiburg. Hitler blamed it on the British and pledged a fivefold revenge. The war of terror was underway. Each side was going to put the other's population to the test. Which would hold out longer, before it overthrew its government and ended the war?
- THE SNOW-IMAGE; A CHILDISH MIRACLE. (Illustrated).
- MIXED BAG;
- Das Wispern der Schatten: Roman (German Edition)?
Former Leaders in Modern Democracies. A Life Lived for Germany".
Об этом товаре
Retrieved 11 November German Politics and Society. Retrieved 1 November Retrieved 19 April Ich empfinde es als bedrohlich. The Will to Win , Toronto: Lester Publishing, page Paul Levinson , Humanities Press, , pp. Badische Zeitung in German. Retrieved 11 September Helmut Schmidt ist tot". Retrieved 25 November Retrieved 23 November Retrieved 24 November Das Kreuz mit dem Dank".
Fondation Jean Monnet pour l'Europe. Helmut Schmidt auszeichnet" in German. Archived from the original PDF on 28 June As a publisher, he remains a pre-eminent catalyst of transatlantic dialogue and debate. Helmut Schmidt am Juni in Leipzig" in German. Helmut Schmidt liest Journalisten die Leviten". Helmut Schmidt fordert Opferbereitschaft".
Helmut Schmidt verkneift sich das Rauchen". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in German. List of Chancellors of Germany.
Our Man in the Mosque
Economy Ministers of Germany. Christa Luft Gerhard Pohl. Finance Ministers of Germany. Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk. Defence Ministers of Germany. Werner von Blomberg — Presidents of the European Council. Herman Van Rompuy Donald Tusk. Germany portal Politics portal Biography portal. Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote. This page was last edited on 16 December , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Hans-Dietrich Genscher Egon Franke. Paul Nevermann Herbert Weichmann. Loki Glaser —; her death.
Sara Koppel Ben-Levy Reichenbach.
- Air Conditioning Application and Design?
- Покупки по категориям!
- meditation for todays world.
- Maurine and Other Poems;
- !
Ludwig Gumpel — , banker. Gustav Ludwig Schmidt — , teacher. Helmut Schmidt — , Chancellor of Germany. Johann Heinrich Benjamin Koch, typesetter. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Helmut Schmidt. Wikiquote has quotations related to: Member of the Bundestag for Hamburg — — Member of the Bundestag for Hamburg-Bergedorf — Senator of the Interior of Hamburg — Federal Minister of Defence — Federal Minister for Economics Federal Minister of Finance — Chancellor of West Germany — President of the European Council All pictures were apparently taken by Ziad Jarrah, and therefore, the BKA assumes, he also took the group photo.
But the investigators at first could not find out where the photo was taken. The intelligence agents from Hamburg, however, knew the place; the prayer room of the Al-Quds mosque in Hamburg Steindamm. Why could the state internal intelligence agency identify the mosque as well as the men on the picture so quickly? Reinhard Wagner, president of the Hamburg state internal intelligence service until August , affirmed after the attacks of September 11 that his service knew nothing about the perpetrators.
Documents in possession of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung [Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading German daily newspaper] speak a different language. The LfV had a collaborator, who was able to supply detailed information on the Al-Quds mosque and its radical regulars. The documents furthermore contradict the often repeated thesis that the terrorists were so-called sleepers who only had to be "activated" upon a signal. Instead, the three suicide pilots and their helpers came together under the noses of various intelligence services and planned probably the most spectacular terror attack in historywhile they were being watched.
The explanations by the LfV regarding the confiscated group photo suggest that the perpetrators were in the focus of the intelligence services already years before the attacks.
The LfV spy not only recognized the mosque on the photo; he could also confirm that the photo was taken in spring The old carpet was replaced by a green-white carpet. The LfV collaborator apparently had even much more detailed knowledge about what happened in the Al-Quds mosque; he identified also on the group photo Abdelghani Mzoudi, who has been arrested since. The 30 year old Moroccan is soon to stand trial in connection with the attacks of September 11 in a German court.
Navigation menu
The LfV seems to have been interested in Mzoudi's activities since long before the attacks of September At least, he appeared so important to the LfV agents that they noted even seemingly trivial details. Mzoudi, according to a note by LfV, "cleans and cooks together with person 4 Abderrazek L. Furthermore, more meeting points of the suicide pilots were known to the informant; he knew for example the "Islam AG", which Mohammed Atta had founded together with other students in at the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg. On the group photo, Mohammed Atta is smiling, leaning on the shoulders of Mohammed Raji.
Raji was arrested immediately after September 11 in Hamburghe was working at the airport at the time. He was released, because not enough evidence could be gathered at first. Raji quickly moved to Morocco, after encouraging an insider of the Hamburg islamist scene to get rid of telephone numbers and contact addresses. Raji was known as a radical Islamist long before September 11 not only to the Hamburg internal intelligence service. The federal internal intelligence service BfV in Cologne had him in focus as well, like probably almost all members of the Hamburg terror cell.
According to an internal report of BfV, this group supported theft, drug trafficking and blackmail in order to be able to conduct "the fight according to Islam". As Takfir follower, Raji has among others contacts to activists in southern Germany. The BfV had not only Raji on their radar, but also other Islamists who belonged to the inner circle of the terror cell. Among them Mounir Al Motassadeq, whose trial at the Hamburg supreme court is being concluded. Motassadeq was being observed by BfV already since , without the authorities being able to snif out the preparations of the terror attack.
For example, Motassadeq traveled with knowledge of BfV via Istanbul to Pakistan, and from there further to a training camp of Al Qaida, where he received training as terrorist. After these facts have been reported in detail by this newspaper three weeks ago, a representative of BfV had to appear as witness in the Hamburg court case. The official notes of BfV in the court proceedings left open the important question: Why of all people was only Motassadeq being observed? Or were maybe the others also being observed, in particular the suicide pilots and their close collaborators?
Said Bahaji was also being observed by BfV. Bahaji was one of the most important supporters of the Hamburg pilots and therefore very familiar with the timeline of the attacksat least he knew exactly when it was time to disappear. Already in August , Bahaji booked his tickets and escaped one week before the attacks from Hamburg to Afghanistan.
According to the research by this newspaper, he was not traveling alone; he was accompanied by two Algeriansone of them was in close contact with Abu Zubaydah, one of the chief planners of Al Qaida. The BfV actually was supposed to have been informed via fax of Bahaji's escape. The BfV agent stated in court that Bahaji was being observed in the course of a "border search".
Thereby, the data of a suspect are stored in a search system, with the remark: The federal border security would have had to inform the BfV via fax, whenever Bahaji left Germany. The BfV has no faxes on Bahaji's travel activities, according to "Lindweiler". Another statement by "Lindweiler" is equally surprising, namely that the three suicide pilots from Hamburg and their helper Binalshibh did not appear in the search machinery of BfV.
Doubts are in place.