Conflicting Interpretations of Total War: Dresden and the Japanese Atomic Bombings, Fifty Years Later

Abstract

The common American narrative of the Second World War paints the United States and its Allies as a force of justice fighting the tyranny of the Axis. However, the February 1945 firebombing of Dresden and the August 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki challenge this narrative. In both events, the Allies unleashed indiscriminate destruction against civilian populations. Although both events pose similar moral obstacles, the bombings' respective fiftieth anniversaries provoked almost opposite responses from the American public. While few Americans discussed the firebombing of Dresden, fierce debates over how to commemorate the atomic bombings erupted. Most notably, congressional hearings and protests from veterans groups practically shut down a planned Smithsonian exhibit on the atomic bombings. Newspaper stories of historic events offer insight into contemporary perceptions of the past. They address how societies choose to remember their histories. Additionally, large-scale reflection often occurs at an event's fiftieth anniversary. Consequently, February and August 1995 stories from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, three mainstream publications that both mirror and guide American public opinion, reveal how many Americans had grown to regard the events. Stories covering the anniversaries reflected the sentiments above. Coverage of both the Dresden firebombing and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constructed the events as acts of indiscriminate destruction. Additionally, reports on both bombings evoked the concept of total war to explain the targeting of civilians. However, the unified, calm reflection in the Dresden articles stood apart from the impassioned, and often defensive, rhetoric that engulfed the Japan articles. True, journalists could attribute Dresden horrors to the British, while they had to accept American responsibility for the atomic bombings. However, the inability to self-exonerate did not drive media animosity surrounding the atomic bombings' fiftieth anniversary. The American patriotic orthodoxy's need to defend the Second World War as the "good war" did. This ideological intolerance ran counter toward "good war" ideals. Despite the contrasting moods at the fiftieth anniversaries of the firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bombings of Japan, American newspapers explained both events in the context of total war. In total war, militaries see their enemies' civilian populations and civilian infrastructures as part of their enemies' fighting capability. Consequently, civilian populations and civilian infrastructures become legitimate military targets. Historians cite both the firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bombings of Japan as consequences of total war. For example, United States Army War College professor Tami Davis Biddle argues that Allied air forces launched their attack on Dresden to create a humanitarian disaster. This would "drain away food, fuel and medical attention from the German war effort." The 1945 mission, she continues, breached a 1939 Allied call not "to bomb civilians or unfortified cities." Biddle neither defends nor condemns the bombing. Rather, she attempts to clarify some common misperceptions surrounding the event. Her understanding of the firebombing of Dresden roots itself in total war. Civilians and soldiers both need "food, fuel, and medical [care]." By wiping out a civilian center's "food, fuel, and medical" supplies, Nazi Germany would have to redirect supplies destined for its fighting soldiers to its civilian population. This would weaken Nazi Germany's fighting capability. In warfare, a military seeks to neutralize the enemy's fighting capability. Because total war broadens the enemy's fighting capability to include civilian populations and infrastructures, total war broadens wartime targets from expressed military installations to civilian centers. As Biddle shows, this widening of warfare occurred during the firebombing of Dresden.