The EconomistFebruary 8th 2020 Books & arts 752 fuge. In 2016 ChemChina, a state-owned
group, paid $43bn for Syngenta, a Swiss
seeds-to-pesticides company. Estimates of
the scale of Chinese iptheft, which value it
as high as $600bn a year, are based on wild
extrapolations, Ms Hvistendahl shows.
She also questions whether safeguard-
ing ip is an unalloyed good. Sometimes
tight protection may benefit the powerful
but hamper innovation. One reason cited
for Silicon Valley’s success is its ban on
non-compete agreements, which makes it
easier for whizzes to start their own firms.
What is clear from this book is that
America’s response to China has often
been misguided. The fbi and cia, looking
for new threats after the cold war, piled re-
sources into combating economic espio-
nage, often hamfistedly. Ms Hvistendahl
describes overzealous investigations that
skimped on science and relied on racial
profiling. The agencies have yet to eschew
the idea that China relies mostly on its vast
population, an army of amateur snoops,
rather than technology or covert opera-
tions. This, she says, is “as if China were to
develop a theory of how the ciafunctioned
based on American individualism”. 7S
eventy-five years ago, on February
13th1945,Dresden’scitizenswereweary
andapprehensive.SincethemiddleofJan-
uarytrainspacked withrefugeesfleeing
therelentlessadvanceof theSovietRed
Armyhadbeenarrivingatthecity’shuge
railwaystation.HavingcrossedtheOder,
Marshal Zhukov’s troops were getting
close.Butdespitetheanxiety,Dresdeners
weretrying to summonupthecarnival
moodofFasching,thefestivalthatmarks
ShroveTuesday.Itwasa dayofsocialising
anddrinking,whilechildrendonnedcol-
ourfulcostumesandplayedstreetgames.
At9.40pmwhathadpassedforjollity
cametoa suddenendasthedroneofair-
raidsirensechoedthroughthestreets.Re-
signedlypeoplemadetheirwaytoshelters,
forthemostpartwretchedlyinadequate
basement cellars.Therehad beenmany
falsealarmsinthecity,butonlytworaids
hadmaterialisedtodate.Bothhad been
carriedoutbytheAmericans,eachresult-
inginseveralhundreddeaths.
Dresden’s inhabitants knew only too
wellthedevastationthatmassbombing
raidshadbroughttootherGermancities.
InHamburg,firestormswhippedupbyin-
cendiarybombshadkilled37,000civilians.
Butmanywereconvincedthattheircity,
the“FlorenceoftheElbe”,wouldbespared
becauseofitsculturalimportance.Soon
after10pmthosehopesweredashedasthe
firstwaveof 796 rafbombersbegandrop-
pingtheir4,000lb “blockbuster”bombs,
openinggapingholesinroofsforincendi-
arydevicestofallthrough.Inthecourseofthat single night, the
historicheartofthe city and much of its
suburbsbecameaconflagration that left
around25,000dead.But the Allies were not
finished.Themorning saw another wave of
attacks,thistimeby 311 American B-17s.
Evenafterthedropping of atom bombs on
HiroshimaandNagasaki, Dresden was to
standasa symbolof wanton destruction.
Increasingly, the wider “area bombing”
campaign,whichkilled more than half a
millionEuropeansand of which Dresden
wasatragic climax, was questioned on
bothmoralandmilitary grounds.
Therehave been many books on the
bombingofDresden (not least Kurt Vonne-
gut’s novel, “Slaughterhouse Five”), but
SinclairMcKay’saccount is a worthy addi-
tion.Foronething,it is scrupulously fair.
Beforedescribingthe city’s extraordinary
contribution,fromthe early 18th century
onwards,totheartsand science, he paints
a pictureofa community that had accom-modated itself to Nazism all too comfort-
ably. At the time of the raid, Dresden’s Jew-
ish population, so central to that creativity,
had fallen from more than 6,000 to 198.
Slave labourers toiled in its factories. Even
before the war, the beautiful Semper Syna-
gogue was burned down. How could “such
violent hatred against Jews”, Mr McKay
asks rhetorically, “have festered in a city
that had stood above all for art, and the in-
tellect, and the commingling of cultures?”
He provides a harrowingly detailed nar-
rative of the horrors experienced during
the night of the raid by Dresdeners from
many walks of life, illuminated by eyewit-
ness descriptions, letters and diaries (in-
cluding those of Victor Klemperer, a Jewish
philologist). But he also extends human
sympathy to the mostly very young men
who had been sent to destroy the place, and
whose chances of completing their tours of
duty were slim. Of the 125,000 air crew who
served in the raf’s Bomber Command, 72%
were either killed, seriously wounded or
became prisoners-of-war.
Was the attack a war crime, as many be-
lieve? Winston Churchill’s omission of the
bombing campaign when reeling off Brit-
ish military triumphs in his victory speech
was telling, as was the post-war reluctance
to award its veterans a campaign medal, a
slight still felt deeply by their families. The
campaign’s architect, Sir Arthur Harris,
continued (if unconvincingly) to claim the
“military necessity” of the raid—Britain’s
Soviet allies had been demanding it as a
way to spread chaos behind enemy lines—
while insisting that he was not responsible
for individual targeting decisions.
Mr McKay’s purpose is neither to con-
demn nor condone, but to record what hap-
pened and why. Eschewing easy moralis-
ing, he prefers to reflect on Dresden’s
intensely moving annual ceremony of re-
membrance and the episode’s place in col-
lective memory. Above all, he rejoices in
the modern city’s resurrection. 7War and its aftermathThe inferno
TheFireandtheDarkness:TheBombing
ofDresden,1945.BySinclairMcKay.St
Martin’sPress; 400 pages;$32.50.Published
inBritainas“Dresden:TheFireandthe
Darkness”;Viking;£20After the fireA compassionate new history of an infamous Allied attack