The Strategic Value of Dresden

This is to correct statements made by Richard Wolin in his article “Turning Hitler Into a Growth Industry” [Arts & Letters, March 9, 2005] about the film “Downfall.” Mr. Wolin states “to select Dresden as a target seemed particular [sic] heinous” and “The allied raids served no strategic purpose …”

The most authoritative book on the subject, “Dresden” by Frederick Taylor, punctures the myth that Dresden was not a highly legitimate target: Dresden was the manufacturing center of the Zeiss instrumentation used throughout the German war machine, and was site of the railroad marshalling yards serving the as yet undefeated Germans in the southeast. Dresden was the main north-south, east-west railway junction for all of Germany.

The World War II bombing of Dresden saved many additional Allied lives and shortened the war. In addition to the abovementioned book, my husband can attest to the strategic rationale of the bombing of Dresden. He was a WW II fighter pilot flying missions over Germany.

CAROL LYONS
Irvington, N.Y.

Teachers Union’s Sordid Past

I agree with Diane Ravitch’s letter [“New York City Teachers Union’s Sordid History,” March 7, 2005] that the battle for the soul of the TU was “one of the most fascinating chapters in New York City history.” In 1935, the anti-communist leadership of the union did not walk out, as she claims, because the communist sympathizers “took control” of the union. Rather it left after it failed to convince the AFT to oust members of the communist-led Rank and File Caucus. It was only after the walkout that left-leaning Rank and File gained control of the TU.

Ms. Ravitch is correct to point out that the union had its charter revoked by the AFT in 1941 and that Bella Dodd served as a star witness against the TU in U.S. Senate hearings held in 1952-53. Ms. Ravitch skips over the crusade to destroy the TU, led by Superintendent of Schools William Jansen and the Board of Education with the assistance of the Corporation Counsel and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies.

It is true, as Ms. Ravitch notes, that in 1961 the United Federation of Teachers easily defeated the TU in an election deciding who would collectively bargain for teachers. However, she does not bother to mention that the ranks of their supporters had been decimated in the 1950s by a Board of Education inquisition that led to the firing, forced resignation, and retirement of close to 500 TU members. Nor does she mention that the board had banned the teachers union from operating in the public schools in 1950.

Not one of the teachers fired, forced to resign, or forced to retire were ever found to be incompetent in the classroom. The board and its supporters went after the TU members for their political affiliation.

CLARENCE TAYLOR
Professor of history Baruch College, City University of New York
West Orange, N.Y.

Who Killed Jazz?

Re: “Who Killed Jazz? Nobody,” Will Friedwald, Arts & Letters, March 8, 2005. For what it’s worth, I never said jazz was dead. Only that it is under threat from an unlikely corner – those who wish most to preserve it. This threat is different from the historical ones cited in Mr. Friedwald’s piece in one key respect: For the first time in the music’s history, its creators are asked – some musicians have said practically “required” – to keep the works of the greats in mind as they improvise.

In the GQ article Mr. Friedwald quotes, I argue that this self-conscious embrace of the classic repertoire has no place in music that used to happen in the present tense. But don’t take my word for it: Just look through the CD bins and see if you can find 10 significant jazz documents created in the last decade, representing either new compositional ideas or new discourse or some vital recombination/interpretation of existing forms. Is it some kind of accident that imaginative thinking in jazz slowed to a crawl at the precise moment the history-must-be served mentality became entrenched? Even the bad-old jazzfusion 1970s offered more in the way of musical/conceptual provocation.

It’s surprising that Mr. Friedwald, who in his own work is so attentive to the moments of subtle as well as catalytic change in music, doesn’t recognize this shift. More intellectually disgraceful, though, is his accusation that I’m advocating a “plantation mentality,” that somehow simply by examining and questioning the impact of institutional jazz I’m suggesting it only belongs in juke joints and taverns. That is just plain wrong. Careful readers of my piece will discover that I’m suggesting the opposite: Jazz belongs everywhere, in the streets and the snooty places and on every thinking person’s iPod playlist. But the music needs to get there on its own steam. It needs to earn its spot by being vibrant as music, without the “help” of an organizational structure or a doctrinaire figurehead. The more it seeks to reprise the glory days of 1955, the more it is propped up and celebrated as precious artifact, the less relevant jazz becomes as art – the kind that speaks to what it means to be alive right now.

TOM MOON
Haddonfield, N.J.

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