Description
Book SynopsisAs Allied air force bombers mercilessly pound Nazi Germany every night in late 1943, the decision is made to send a number of journalists on a mission to Berlin. One of them was a young American journalist Lowell Bennett, who had made his name reporting on the Allied invasion of Tunisia.
When their Avro Lancaster is hit by Luftwaffe fighters, everyone is forced to bail out. Bennett was taken prisoner upon landing in Germany. Before delivering him to a prison camp for the duration of the war, Bennett’s captor, a German officer, decides to take him on a tour of various German cities, a submarine base, and the Ruhr in order to let the journalist see for himself the terrible suffering of the civilian population, the prime target of Allied bombing.
In this vivid first-hand account of his experiences, Bennett expresses his indignation at this selective bombing and vehemently criticises the Allies' strategic bombing policies. Controversial at the time of its publication in 1945, Bennett's account remains the only first-hand report by an Allied journalist of the RAF and USAAF bombing raids seen from ground level.
Trade ReviewLowell Bennett did not write as a journalist but in the honest and human prose of the best in memoirs, a work well received in 1945 that still takes the reader on a great adventure today. The author raises blunt questions about the failure and waste of the allied air campaigns that might also be asked of the United States in Korea and Vietnam years later. * New York Journal of Books *
Bennett’s writings remain the only firsthand reports by an Allied journalist of the RAF and USAAF bombing raids seen at the ground level. * ARGunners.com *
Lowell Bennett did not write as a journalist but in the honest and human prose of the best in memoirs, a work well received in 1945 that still takes the reader on a great adventure today. * New York Journal of Books *
Table of Contents1. Assignment Over Germany 2. Parachute to Berlin 3. Unexpected Visitor 4. To Solitary Confinement 5. Questions and Answers 6. Nazidom’s Guest 7. Wartime Tourist 8. Daylight Bombing Commentary 9. Ravaged Ruhr 10. Escape 11. Slata Praha 12. Gestapo Interlude 13. Illegal Tourism 14. Chain-Letter Sabotage 15. The House That Flak Built 16. Not as Briefed 17. Pow Wow 18. May Day Liberation 19. Flight to Civilization
