Absorbing. Compelling. Riveting. Those are just some of the words that spring to mind over this well-written, well-researched book about the Feb 13, 1945 firebombing of Dresden, Germany.

I learned so much about pre-bombing Dresden and, of course, about how the bombing itself played out, and what has happened there since then.

A masterful work of narrative nonfiction which really brought the horror of that night to life. Highly recommended!!

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.) ( )

Excellent. Very readable history. McKay interspersed context with oral histories to paint an accurate and horrific picture of the events of February 1945. Provoked a number of questions about the morality of war. ( )

This is an extremely well written and balanced account of one of the most controversial actions of the Allies in the Second World War: the firebombing of the German city of Dresden by British and US bomber planes on 13-14 February 1945. Its detractors, especially in later decades far distant from the preoccupations and reality of the time, have described it as a war crime and its architect Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris as a war criminal, as an attack on a cultural metropolis of limited military strategic significance, where many refugees had gathered. Harris and others saw it as eliminating a major centre where many peacetime industries had been converted to military use, a vital step in ensuring that the Nazi regime, already dying though it didn't admit it, was finished off properly and forced to recognise the reality of its own demise, in order to save the lives of thousands of Allied pilots and civilians. Others have seen it in more simple terms of revenge as just reprisal for similar Nazi destruction of numerous other cities earlier in the war, notably Coventry, but also Rotterdam and many others. Churchill's views changed over time; while ultimately politically responsible for ordering the firebombing, he seemed to regret it afterwards, and wanted to revert back to a strict focus on purely military targets - though the distinction between military and civilian targets was less clear-cut than many might imagine.

The first third of this book covers the history of Dresden as an artistic and cultural centre and the way in which the Nazis changed, or in some cases failed to change, the character of the city and its people from 1933. Thereafter it follows the experiences of a range of ordinary people, both Dresden residents sheltering from the bombardment and trying to locate family and friends afterwards in a city centre incomprehensibly smashed beyond recognition and where 25,000 people had been killed in one night, and the bomber pilots who had seen large numbers of their fellow pilots shot down and many towns and cities in Britain ravaged and their citizens killed by air raids.

These groups' perceptions on these events may seem utterly irreconcilable. And yet the twinning of Dresden with Coventry in 1959 was surely a very significant event, a joining of two cities both of which had their hearts torn out through war, but which had been rebuilt. More specifically, the destroyed Frauenkirche cathedral in central Dresden, left in ruins through the duration of the communist East German state partly as an attempted reminder to the population of the actions of "imperialist" Americans and British, was rebuilt after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and one of the British craftsmen working on the golden orb and cross at its apex was the son of one of the bomber pilots who took part in the raid.

Ultimately, the raid can only be seen against the context of its time, after five years of total war and an existential struggle for existence that left all its participants desperate and exhausted. This was an engrossing read, and the author lets the reader make his or her own mind up about these cataclysmic events. ( )

The bombing of Dresden (one of my favorite cities) has been told many times. This book focuses on background and experiences of a variety of individuals, some quite well-known such as Kurt Vonnegut of Slaughterhouse-Five fame. The publisher's blurb makes it sound as if the fire-bombing of Dresden was unique. It wasn't. Firebombing was a deliberate campaign to destroy the citizenry and their morale. The Germans tried it, the Americans under LeMay utilized it extensively in Japan before the A-bomb, and the British bomber command under Harris made no bones about it (see Bomber Command by Max Hastings.)

The ethical debate over this practice was not new. It had been discussed during the 1920's and it was known as "terror bombing." The idea was to overwhelm the fire-fighting capabilities of the city demoralize the population, and thus force capitulation. Civilian casualties were considered perfectly justifiable as the girls in the factory manufacturing shells were just as much combatants as soldiers in the field. Killing them in their homes prevented them going to work.

The physics of these infernos was only beginning to be understood, especially following the horrible fire in Wisconsin in 1871 near Peshtigo. Dry conditions and wind and multiple fires combined to create what was called a "fire whirl." The air became so super-heated (the wall of flames was a mile high, some 2,000 degrees Celsius) that it was hot enough to melt sand into glass. It created its own weather system included tornadoes of flame. It became known as the Peshtigo Paradigm, and that's what the war planners wanted.

Following an earthquake and tsunami near Tokyo in 1923 a similar fire happened spreading over many miles. Flames reached skyscraper heights, boiling water in the river.

A western trader called Otis Poole observed: ‘Over everything had settled a thick white dust. And through the yellow fog of dust, still in the air, a copper coloured sun shone upon this silent havoc in sickly reality.’ 18 The death toll was prodigious, in the region of 156,000 lives, though once again it was difficult to be exact when so often, all that remained were fragments of jewelry and headless naked husks.

The goal of military strategists had always been to find the super weapon that would make winning "easy," and force rapid surrender. Dresden was just the latest in a series of terror bombings. It had become a war fought by physicists as well as soldiers. Not to mention meteorologists. The atmospheric conditions for fire-bombing had to be correct.

Freeman Dyson was a statistician for Bomber Command. His first job was to analyze the statistics of the planes that had not returned. He and his colleagues faced the bitter truth of the matter: experience made absolutely no difference to chances of staying alive. A crew that had flown 29 sorties deep into the heart of enemy territory was every bit as likely to become a flashing orange fireball as the crew that was just starting out. By the time they reached thirty sorties, this crew would have only a 25 per cent expectation of survival. McKay provides eyewitness accounts of not just the victims but the airmen as well

"In part, they knew because of the newly adjusted nature of the bombs: as well as high explosives and sticks of incendiaries, here were weapons that deployed burning corrosion: bombs with jellied petroleum and magnesium Unleashed on bricks and mortar, these would create fires that could not be extinguished, but this was also true of human flesh. Anyone touched by these searing substances would find no escape, not even by jumping in rivers or canals.

In Operation Thunderclap , the attack on Berlin, there was an underlying assumption that the virus of Nazism lay deep within the flesh of German society as a whole; this was no longer simply a military force to be vanquished but an entire people. "

"The gesture was human (and possibly widespread – there were accusations of explosives being deliberately offloaded in the North Sea), but the fact remained that few bombs that night were going to land harmlessly. This second wave was to bring with it many more 4,000lb ‘Cookies’ and other varieties of explosives and incendiaries: in total, an additional 1,800 tons of bombs were to be dropped by the second wave, and many in areas that were not yet glowing with that lethal light."

We see not just the horror of the raids but also the resilience of the people. It's a tragic story, well told, scary and emblematic of how the nature of war has changed technologically.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. It affected my opinion not one whit. ( )

A well written book about an unpleasant subject- the fire bombing of Dresden in the last few months of World War II. Described by some survivors, the time leading up to the bombing, and then the strike itself, sets the scene. British and American bombers flew over the city in three waves and unleashed large explosive bombs used to destroy buildings, and fire bombs to catch the rubble on fire. The problems of the fire storm heated the air and ground, so many victims of the bombing were suffocated in the shelters, or baked to death by the intense heat.

At the end of the book, Sinclair McKay discusses the arguments over carpet bombing that destroyed civilian areas in addition to the military objectives. The Dresdeners have resented the Americans as being needlessly cruel, even today. One objection to the book is that although several German bombing raids were mentioned, the carpet bombing of civilian areas in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which began in 1940, and subsequent carpet bombing of London, Bath, Warsaw, Stalingrad and many other cities by the Luftwaffe were not mentioned. This was a terrible part of World War II, and neither side was virtuous.

Some of the surreal events happened during the attack. Some animals were released from the zoo, and disoriented and frightened civilians reported seeing a giraffe walking through the bombed areas. Others mentioned how the brick walls of the underground shelters became to hot to touch, and how the asphalt in the roads outside turned to liquid that stuck to the feet of people trying to get home or to shelter. The cobblestones of the street became so heated from the firestorm that people who fell down burned their hands, Trains were bombed in the station and passengers, many refugees from the Soviet advance in eastern Germany, died while still in their seats waiting for the trains to leave.

An interesting note was that many people in Dresden heard music made by the bombers, bombs and the destruction. Choral Master Rudolph Mauersberger created a requiem for Dresden, constructed from German hymns and folk songs and "...wove them together with the deep chimes of the Kreuzkirche, a resonating choral baritone hum signifying the approaching bombers and and episodes of intense percussion signifying the fire."

Recommended for college libraries, and for military collections of World War II and aviation history. ( )