Talk:Jörg Friedrich

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Contents

[edit] Introductory paragraph

The first part of the article is a mess. Could someone take care of the grammar, get the sentences straight and erase parts which are not important or just confusing? Does it matter what some English conservatives call Friedrich (trotzkist or whatever)? Who is the Chancellor Friedrich is connected to? Does it matter that he's "well connected"? 71.247.157.179 05:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "independent historian"

We have to explain what that means. Anybody a clue? Not affiliated with any academic research center? Not fully accepted within the academic community? Publishing where? 71.247.157.179 05:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Nato General

Here is the next one: " with a former NATO General and friend of Friedrich's accusing Churchill of war crimes" Does anyone know the name of the General? Philip Baird Shearer 09:24, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] German Chancellor

Gerhard Schröder is not a former German Chancellor, but the current one. Could whoever wrote this amend it to say whatever it ought to say? That is, was it a former German Chancellor (Helmut Kohl?) or Schröder? Saforrest 12:13, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Kohl of course. Thanks for picking that up. Some kind of mental auto-completion / auto-correct automatically completes German Chancellor with Schroeder. Now I've evem put in a correct reference to make up for it. Mozzerati 18:56, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)

[edit] Revisions (by User:Tobias R)

[edit] comments from Tobias with response

Let me explain the additions and removals I have made:

  • "Trotskyist": Friedrich was a member of the APO, which contained a hodge-podge of leftist positions, but I have not found one German source describing him as Trotskyist, so I omitted that.
he was described as "Trotskyist" in the Guardian; that is perfectly acceptable as a source even if German sources do not cover this issue. I suggest providing a contrary source. Given that it's single sourced right now, I have, however rephrased.
Trotskyist simply is not a political label which is used in Germany for the time period in question. That he has been occasionally called one is closer to the truth.
  • "Revisionist": Neither did Friedrich style himself as a revisionist, and he most certainly has not marketed his work under this "guise".
Harding: "Friedrich admits he is a revisionist"
his works certainly appear revisionist, however there may be many reasons why he does not publicise that connection.
I have in no German source seen any indication that Friedrich describes himself as "revisionist" nor that he "accepted that label". Nor did he do so personally when talking at a meeting at our college.
  • Focus on Dresden: This seems to be assumed by the original author, but Friedrich's books cover the whole of the bombing campaign, not just Dresden. "Brandstätten" definitely is not limited to photographs of Dresden.
  • Whilst Dresden is may not be the only focus of his books, his media interviews in which he has suggested that Dresden was a war crime are one of the most important aspects of his views in this area. This makes it a crucial subject. Whilst other cities such as Hamburg have always been more clearly understood as "military" targets, Dresden has often been typed as a cultural capital. This makes controversy over Dresden of special import and worthy of specific attention.
  • Friederich himself says "Dresden symbolisiert den Luftkrieg" (Dresden symbolizes the air war.) which makes it crucial in undestanding his own views of the war.
really people: Read the damn books. Don't talk about something you simply have no idea of. Dresden is not a central point. In fact, in the interview cited, Friedrich states: "Dresden symbolizes aerial war, *but*..." and he goes on to explain that it was merely one point in an extended military campaign.
  • General NPOV issues: Several criticisms of Friedrich were presented as fact; others had nothing to do with his work specifically, but were aimed at a discussion of the issue of air warfare in general (which is not the topic of Friedrich's books) and still others were factually nonsensical (German actions in Russia having effect on the decisions made by the British and German militaries in 1940 and early 1941?)
The bombing of Dresden was part of an action specifically requested by the Soviet authorities and part of Britains attempt to demonstrate that it was actually fighting the war at a time when the Soviets were bearing the brunt of the land war. This directly causally links the two events. However, the issue at point is the moral context of the time. Germany and Japan had specifically stopped the adoption of Geneva conventions against aerial bombardment prior to the war, followed by heavy strategic bombing attacks in their successful attack on Poland. This can be seen to have had two effects.
  • Germany (it's unfortuate at this point that we are also talking about innocent civilians in the abstract, but so be it) had abandoned any moral claim to protection against attacks on civilians.
  • Success through aerial attacks in the defeat of Poland seemed to suggest that it was a valuable strategy. Disentagling it from other, more valid, parts of Blitzkrieg such as cryptography and concentrated attacks by combined forces is something we can only do now with the benefit of hindsight.
  • A key point in Friedrich's case against Churchill is the claim that bombing of civilians in the second world war was initiated by Germany. However, the war was initiated against Poland and Britain's entry into the war was specifically to defend Poland. Early attacks against civilians in Poland are this of relevance to Britain's decisions about such attacks against Germany. Mozzerati 22:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Friedrich does not have a "case against Churchill". Neither is he in the least concerned with the wider context of the war. He writes on the strategic decision-making in Britain, on the technical side of bombing warfare, but mostly about the experience of those who were victims of the attacks. Read the book, for god's sake.

I have also tried to make the language more neutral (Kohl certainly didn't "tell" Friedrich to publish anything, it's not like he is his boss or something :) .)

I have changed this to "convinced" based on the original source
  • Added information: I added some points regarding Friedrich's Bio, and some more points of criticism raised against his work in Germany.
I have found a reference (html) for a Jörg Friedrich as an actor. There's no way to tell if it's the same man however. I'm going to search for more to try to restore your text.
With several online bios claiming he was an actor, I would assume so.
  • Typos: Misspelling of "Brand" as "Brandt" (unless Friedrich has a biography of Willy Brandt in the works ;)) and some others.

Tobias R 11:26, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

thanks for your correction Mozzerati 21:10, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

'From a edit commment " I've read the interview in "Der Tagesspiegel" now. Nowhere does Naumann directly "accuse Churchill of war crimes"."

I've now found the original article online original article and linked it in. Friederich makes the suggestion that not only could Dresden be seen as a crime, but the entire conduct of the war a criminal enterprise ("handelt es sich nicht um ein Kriegsverbrechen, sondern – wenn ich Ihrer Logik folge – um eine verbrecherische Kriegführung"). Naumann does not respond clearly to this, but rather says he wouldn't personally have done it ("Ich kann dazu nur sagen, dass ich meinen Namen niemals dazu hergeben würde, einen solchen Angriff in die Wege zu leiten."), but when Friederich pushes further: for moral or legal reasons ("Aus rechtlichen oder aus moralischen Gründen?), Naumann responds "Aus beiden" - both.
Since all laws other than the laws of war are suspended during a war, the only reasonable meaning is that he believes the bombing would be likely to have been a war crime. Mozzerati 22:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC) (and 12:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC))
From Naumann's POV, this is obvious. Under current German military law, and military action against civilian targets is a war crime. Doesn't say anything about whether it was then.

[edit] specific unsourced edits

Here are some edits for Tobias which still need sources.. They are removed, but should be added back as we find sources covering these topics. I believe most of this below is true and I've found German Tabloid sources for some of them but no reputable source yet.

  • worked as an actor, director and script writer
  • [after the vietname war] worked as a journalist
  • Among others, he contributed to Yad Vashem's Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
  • helped the former deputy chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Robert Kempner, write his autobiography.
  • Jörg Friedrich currently resides in Berlin.
  • Another point of criticism is his portrayal of Nazi vengeance acts against Jews, which some see as an attempt to blame parts of the Holocaust on the Allied bombing campagin. - I saw a source for this in one of the book reviews I think??
  • The 2002 publication of "Der Brand" spawned a new discussion of the topic in Germany, and several new works, some espousing Friedrich's approach, others being critical of his scholarship and his views, have appeared. sort of clearly true, but we should really add specific names of books.

[edit] specific problem edits

There are some edits Tobias made which cannot really stand

  • Friedrich has repeatedly denied that such an intent exists and has explicitely stated that he does not mean to compare the bombing campaign to the Holocaust, as he as been accused of by some critics.

This is literally true, but is seriously misleading, which is why nothing similar to it appears alone in the any reputable source. Words such as "einsatzgruppen" and "gas chamber" have only one meaning in the post war world, along with words like Shoa and Holocaust. When Friedrich uses these words (einzatsgruppen == RAF pilots; gas-chamber == basement where civilians died of carbon-monoxide poisoning from the fumes from the burning buildings) he does directly and clearly make a comparison. Any denial of this link points in a direction which leads towards holocaust denial. That these relations are made is clear; his failure to clearly apologise for any misundestandings of his words is telling. The article as it stands is very far from what should be said about him.

The appropriate wikipedia policy for this is the requierement to cite reputable secondary, not primary sources. Statements about a person by that person should be included from a context where they have been reported by others and any subtexts or misdirection have been analysed. Some of the German reviews of his books do exactly this and are very instructive.

Mozzerati 12:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

So, it is irrelevant in your eyes if the word "Gaskammer" = "Gas Chamber" does not appear in the book? And likewise irrelevant that the word "Einsatzgruppe" is still used in a generic sense in German (or is the local fire brigade were I live an SS unit in disguise?) Again, you seem to have no idea of what you are talking about. And what about the insinuation that Friedrich would deny the Holocaust if he was allowed to. What are your sources for that, now?
The whole article is simply one big slander without any serious sources except personal opinion, and then you ask for negative evidence when someone removes the most crass nonsense?
The "secondary over primary sources" is patently ridiculous. If a newspaper claims "F. considers himself XY" that is more believeable than himself stating "I consider myself XY" in an interview? Furthermore, you are being exceedingly selective with sources - the positive reviews of Der Brand or even the positive aspects entirely missing. Nor are there any sources for many statements ("well connected in military circles"? "Relativism"?)
I rather suspected this right from the start and I am in no mood for an edit-war... shouldn't have even edited the spelling, but left the article as the biased misspelled mess that it was. Suffice to say, the article as it now stands is a political pamphlet, not an encyclopedia article. And what's most ironic, it doesn't really address the most important point of criticism against Der Brand: Its sloppiness in regards to scholarship and research.82.83.221.106 14:05, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


An interesting book would be an analysis of the reaction to an author branching out from one narrow perspective. When Jorg wrote about what bad guys the Nazis were his wiki article would have gushed praise. Now that he has written a couple of books reevaluating the actions of the good guys his wiki articles approaches Irving's in venom. ( You should tighten up the prose in the article there are a couple of places where the article says exactly the opposite of an earlier lamentous section.) Being called a "revisionist" and/or "denier" because he has researches WW2 a little deeper than wiki feels comfortable with - oohhh nasty man ( what level of subservience does wikiish folks want, total? and to what ??? ).159.105.80.141 19:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I altered the sentence in which it was claimed that Friedrich accepted to be called a revisionist historian. Firstly, the sentence was syntactically and semantically a mess. Secondly, it is deeply unfair to claim that Friedrich would accept to be called a revisionist historian in the current sense of that term (i. e. Irvin = revisionist historian). When Friedrich was asked whether he did not fear to be called a revisionist historian he answered that every historian has to be a revisionist. It was clear that in that general sense he would accept to be called a revisionist historian. If one cares to be fair and unbiased it is obvious that Friedrich by no means accepted "revisionist historian" in its usual polemical definition as a label for himself. His answer implicitly drew attention to the fact that "revisionist historian" is indeed not a very intelligent coinage. A mediaevelist who would present a new picture of Charlemagne as a rather mediocre and incompetent ruler would revise conventional wisdom about the emperor and thus be a "revisionist historian". By disregarding the context in which Friedrich "accepted" to be called a revisionist and by silently (and, I suspect, intentionally) misinterpreting his statement the phrase in the sentence was apt to place Friedrich on the same level as someone like Irving. That is wrong and very unfair; I therefore deleted the phrase.141.91.129.5 10:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] J.M. Spaight [i]Bombing Vindicated[/i]

A lot of what is claimed about this book is untrue. Spaight claims (correctly) the opposite of everything that is claimed here. I'll remove these comments.

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 23:03, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Compare this article to the one on Friedrich in Wikipedia.de ...

... and you will understand the difference between a competent and balanced article (that is in no way overly sympathetic to Friedrich!) and a lousy piece of malicious maligning. It's outrageous how Friedrich's work is reduced to the single topic of "Der Brand", as if "Freispruch für die Nazi-Justiz" and "Das Gesetz des Krieges" had never existed. In a meager two-line footnote, "Das Gesetz des Krieges" is falsely portrayed as being a criticsm of the Nürnberg trials, while in fact it is a scathing accusation of the immoral Wehrmacht high command and its support for the Nazi extermination politics in Eastern Europe. Also, Friedrich is simultaneously accused of being both a "left-wing Trotzkist" and "revisionist" (i.e. a Neo-Nazi) without quoting any reliable source. Obviously, some people in Britain have a strong desire to besmirch Friedrich's reputation in an effort to palliate the harrowing effects of the Anglo-Saxon area bombing campaigns from Dresden and Hiroshima over Hanoi to Baghdad and Afghanistan. Incidentally, I don't like Friedrich's polemic and sometimes even arrogant style, and many of his theses are rightfully disputed, but at least I have read most of his books, so I know what I am talking about, and I'm not relying on Fleet Street for information. Reibeisen 23:03, 11 Oktober 2007 (MEZ)

[edit] Extremely POV

The attempt to discredit a respected historian's work merely because a) He describes historical events from the perspective of those human beings who were affected by them, and b) Because he raises the specter of the Allies having possibly done something wrong in the campaign against Nazi Germany is symptomatic of an all-or-nothing, black-and-white view of history that has no place in rational discourse. Put another way, the first victim of war is truth.

I've read "The Fire" (Hello! It's been out in English for more than a year!) and while I think there are many organizational flaws in the work and also some questionable translations and terminology, its accounts of what actually happened on the ground in scores of German cities bears reading for all who question the morality of weapons of mass destruction, which the Allied bombers certainly were.

Nowhere does Friedrich remotely suggest that Nazi Germany was not the aggressor and prime culprit in WWII and its associated horrors. What he does argue, and this only indirectly, is that indiscriminate bombing of civilian centers inevitably kills many human beings -- and destroys much cultural infrastructure -- without necessarily furthering the supposed legitimate military/political objective. This brings to mind Robert McNamara's conclusion about the bombing of North Vietnam: That the means, and the destruction, were out of proportion to the miltary/political objective.

To tar and feather Friedrich with the term "revisionist" seems to imply that historical accounts should never be revised, and that whatever the most widely accepted view is must be inviolate. Nothing more intellectually dishonest can be imagined.

Sca (talk) 21:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, this looks like a smearjob to me. I mean a section on "other related historians" which talks mostly about David Irving? I would like to know if any of the cited sources actually describe Irving and Freidrich as "related," or if that is just some Wikipedian working in some original-research FUD. <eleland/talkedits> 02:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)