Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945

Makes an interesting read because there is so much controversy about the bombing, i.e. was it necessary etc. Regardless where your opinion falls, it is necessary to confront one undeniable fact - at the end of the Second World War the German people were so badly beaten that they had utterly no will to resist at all, despite German efforts to set up roaming bands of insurgents (the "werewolves," etc.). Alfons Heck's memoir is instructive in this regard, how small acts of resistance on the part of individual German units were met with overwhelming and vastly lopsided force, and how demoralizing this was to the average German. I believe this is what William F. Buckley meant when he said regarding the current war in Iraq, that the only means available to defeat the insurgency involves measures that we will not consent to use. Think about that. Was the bombing of Dresden horrible? Sure it was. Were civilians the target? You bet they were, in part. But was that a war worth winning by any means necessary? I defy you to watch Shoah and then try answering "no." The bottom line is that the Germans picked a fight, acted like a nation of serial killers and then were treated in kind. That sums it up pretty well I think. But yeah, the book is a good read.

Taylor writes clearly and covers the many aspects of the wartime bombing of Dresden well. Some commentators have thought that his vision was too expansive, that his chapters in Part One were unnecessary and that the scope of Dresden was too encompassing. To my mind, however, I found his early chapters on Dresden's history and the city's military significance during WWII an integral part of the story of Dresden and the role it plays in modern 20th century history. In Part Two from page 251 through page 332 the reader is given as full an account as possible of what happens on the ground when the bombing crews "get it right". I have not read any other books about the Allied air offensive against the Axis powers during WWII and after reading this book there is little likelihood that I will-one is enough and Dresden is that one. Taylor's final chapters in Part Three cover the propaganda made by, particularly, Goebbels after the full extent of the city's destruction became known. Taylor also takes time to discuss the mistakes, his words, made by the Allied Air Command in reporting the raid and it's significance to the war effort. Taylor believes it was at this point where the allies made bad mistakes- mistakes that have heavily contributed to the far-right use of this raid on Dresden for it's own propaganda purposes in our contemporary world. If you have any interest in the Second World War and beyond that, in that war's impact on our world 66 years after, then I would urge you to read this wonderful history.

Dresden is the first book that tells of its destruction in detail (and its consequences) more from the perspective of the Dresdeners by the RAF Bomber Command and USAF Eighth Air Force during the closing stages of World War II. Powerfully told, Frederick Taylor unearths a myriad of first-hand accounts from his painstaking research and weaves a narrative that both destroys many of the myths of that grew up from the firestorm, primarily from propaganda, but raises several questions. Was it a legitimate target? Could the wholesale obliteration of the city center have been avoided?The British knew of the firestorm potential from its study of the destruction of Coventry in 1940, and the 1943 raid on Hamburg. Yet, Dresden remained a charmed, cultural city, devoid of military potential. Taylor shows us this was not entirely accurate-it was both a vital communications center, especially in the latter stages of the war as the Russian approached on the eastern front, and that increasingly it was a specialized industrial and armaments location. It also becomes painfully clear that unlike many other German cities, protection from air raids was sadly neglected. Some people have maintained that the Dresden firebombing was unique, but from reading the book I gathered it was not. Rather it was a case of things going "horribly right" instead of horribly wrong, as was the instance with many large-scale "city-busting" operations. Indeed, Dresden was not, perhaps the worst example of area bombing. Proportionally, the destruction of Pforzheim, which came later, was worse.Ignore the first few chapters (unless you're a fan of more ancient history), and start with chapter 4. You will gradually become absorbed in the background of events leading up to the evening of February 13, 1945. The accounts of the bombing and the fire are riveting: I was unable to put the book down and lost half a night's sleep to find out the conclusion. And when you finish the book, you might feel like I did, saddened by the atrocity of war, appalled by this Sodom and Gomorrah-like carnage. It almost made me feel shamed to be a member of the human race.In our current war with Iraq, we would do well to remember what's it like to be at the receiving end of "shock and awe," that the overwhelming number of casualties are not the enemy, but innocent civilians caught up under circumstances in which they have no control.

Mr. Taylor has written a very readable, well researched book on the most (in)famous Allied bombing effort in Germany. He gives a fine history of the city of Dresen, and air war theories from the 1920's, and decribes earlier bombing attacks like London, Warsaw, Coventry, Hamburg, and Essen. He shows that there were many war based industries in Dresden, mainly consumer businesses like camera switched to war time weaponry. The incredible suffering of civilians is also described, families burnt alive or suffocated, a group of well heeled restauranters who are trapped and commit suicide together, and thousands more. The German medical/ health response is surprisingly strong, given the huge difficulties. His final death and casualties may be low, and he seems to suggest that Dresden "had it coming", though he does show some compassion for all sides. Alexander's Mckee's earlier study describes much more from the side of the British pilots, who were not happy with the results of the bombing, and seemed perhaps misled by the RAF leadership. All in all, despite some controversial conclusion, a very worthy addition to the vast WW2 library!

Except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think what happened to Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 comes as about as close as possible to a vision of hell on earth.My opinion is that this book is a deeply moving piece of scholarship that clears away the myths surrounding the doom that came to the "Florence on the Elbe" at the end of World War II. Yet it does so without diminishing one bit the horror of it all.The book's best parts are the chapters dealing with the firestorm that swept through the city. However, the sections that address the history of "area bombing" and the "science" of burning a city are also highly informative. My only criticism is that on page 171, the author makes no less than three factual errors about the 1944-45 Ardennes Campaign:1. Sepp Dietrich did not command the "SS Panzer Division." He commanded the "Sixth SS Panzer Army" (consisting of a mix of SS units and Volksgrenadier divisions).2. Hasso Von Manteuffel did not command the "Fifth Panzer Division." He was the commander of the "Fifth Panzer Army."3. General Patton did not rescue the "First Airborne Division at Bastogne." He relieved the "101st Airborne Division." This error is particularly surprising since the author makes a correct reference to that fact on the same page.Now, I want to close with a few words about revisionist reviews like the one that I've seen here which gave the book one star.The Germans and Japanese (with Italy in a supporting role) started a war of unprecedented viciousness which killed tens of millions of people. As the author points out, it is laughable for revisionists to condemn the Allies for fighting back with everything at their disposal. Some of the things that were done to Germany and Japan were wrong or excessive and caused considerable loss of innocent life. Yet they shrink into relative insignificance compared to the deliberate, "stare in your victims' faces when you kill them" genocide that the Germans and Japanese perpetrated.This being said, I weep for the people incinerated in Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and many other places. However, I feel much more pity for the entirely innocent victims of Auschwitz, Belsen, Treblinka, Nanking, and scores of other places where Germans and Japanese dishonored their nations by stooping into previously uncharted depths of evil.No one deserves the terrible fates that many German and Japanese cities endured. The deaths of individual Germans and Japanese are tragedies. But on a grand scale, what happened to those two countries is a classic example of sowing the seeds and reaping a whirlwind of destruction. After what those two nations did to the rest of the world, they had it coming.So I don't regard Dresden as a sin or mistake. It was one of terrible necessities of war, which advances in technology have made obsolete.