February 13, 1945: Air raids over Dresden by the USAAF and RAF begin.
The infamous Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden took place only months before the end of the war in Europe. Like Tokyo, Dresden was firebombed, ravaged by firestorms set by the thousands of incendiary bombs that were dropped over the city between February 13 and 15. During these fire attacks, the heat of the air spiked to a peak temperature of 2700 °F, and infernos on the ground sucked people in, burning hundreds to thousands of people literally to cinders.
Dresden was a city of both industrial and military importance, and it had, until 1945, avoided the worst of the Allies’ air raids, making it a logical target for an air attack. At the same time, the city was a cultural center (a point emphasized by German propaganda), it possessed a high population of refugees, and by this time in 1945 the German war effort was already crumbling; as a result, many questioned the legitimacy of the act and the justification for it. Some civilians even believed that the Allies would carefully spare Dresden because of its cultural significance, even as a gesture of goodwill, but either way, Dresden was mostly unprotected from air raids - it was a soft target. One British historian called it “excessive” but not “completely irrational’ on the part of the Allies. Others believe that part of the British motivation in carrying out the attack was simple payback against the destructive raids conducted by the Luftwaffe early in the war; however, the bombing of Dresden claimed nearly the same amount of civilian lives as the eight-month-long Blitz of London - around 25,000.
Excerpts from Voices from the Third Reich:
There was a rushing sound in the air, and trees were cracking and falling down. Only later did I realize that this was from the fire…. Earlier, while we were leaving our house, a friend had gone by who had on white gloves… And from under a fallen tree, a hand in a white glove was slowly opening and closing.
There was an unmistakable roar in the air: the fire. The thundering fire reminded me of the biblical catastrophes I had heard about in my education in the humanities. I was aghast. I can’t describe seeing this city burn in any other way. The color had changed as well. It was no longer pinkish-red. The fire had become a furious white and yellow, and the sky was just one massive mountain of cloud…
The next day was Ash Wednesday. The streets of Dresden were filled with debris and bricks. You had to walk on top of it to get anywhere. Dead people were lined on either side of the street - women, children, and soldiers. I remember seeing children with backpacks lying there with their faces to the ground. While walking down that street I heard a man cry out, “Mother!”… He was standing on top of a huge pile of bricks, underneath which his mother was buried.
Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the bombing of Dresden as an American soldier imprisoned in the city, and the influence of the experience can be seen in several of his works, although the event is most notably featured in his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five.