A controversial German historian is at the centre of a row over his latest book which includes gruesome photos of German civilians killed by allied bombing during the second world war.
Jörg Friedrich defended the decision yesterday to publish the photographs showing the incinerated bodies of German women and children, most of them killed by British bombs. His book, Fire Sites, published at last week's Frankfurt Book Fair, argues that the RAF's relentless bombing campaign against German cities in the last months of the war served no military purpose. He claims that Winston Churchill's decision to bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime.
"The bombing left an entire generation traumatised. But it was never discussed," he told the Guardian.
Mr Friedrich, whose previous book Der Brand or The Fire prompted a storm of publicity and sold 186,000 copies, said that about 600,000 civilians died during the allied bombing of German cities, including 72,000 children. Some 45,000 people died on one night during the immense firestorms that engulfed Hamburg in July 1943. But the German victims were over shadowed by the far greater evil of the Holocaust.
Many Germans regarded the British destruction of their cities as retribution for Nazi crimes, Mr Friedrich said. "The second world war is traditionally portrayed as a struggle between good and evil. But it wasn't as simple as that," he said. The photos in Fire Sites are grim and reveal that many victims were asphyxiated in their cellars. In Dresden, SS workers from a nearby concentration camp were called in to dispose of heaps of bodies.
Policemen, architects and air protection officers took the photos. Most had lain in the archives of German towns for more than half a century, before Mr Friedrich found them. He said yesterday he had approached the National Archives in Kew, west London, for photos of British victims of German bombing but was told they could not be released. His book concedes that Germany started the air war in late 1940, when 14,000 British civilians died in German raids.
He acknowledged that he was a revisionist but said he was describing what happened. "During my public lectures Germans now in their 70s and 80s have stood up. They have described, with tears in their eyes, what happened to their families."