Product Description

On the night of February 13, 1945, British planes bombed the city of Dresden in Germany, causing devastating fires that obliterated the historic city center and killed thousands of people. The next day U.S. bombers returned for another attack. In all, more than a thousand aircrafts dropped almost 3,500 tons of high explosives, incendiaries, and flares on the city; a conservative estimate of the number killed was 25,000. Sixty years later these raids remain one of the most notorious and controversial episodes in the history of World War II. Firestorm assembles a cast of distinguished scholars, including Sebastian Cox, Donald Bloxham, Tami Davis Biddle, Nicola Lambourne, Sonke Neitzel, Richard Overy, Alan Russell, and Hew Strachan to review the origins, conduct, and consequences of the raids. Firestorm cogently demonstrates the reasons why Dresden has come to symbolize the military and ethical questions involved in the waging of total war.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #492653 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
An outstanding book on a subject that will simply not go away. -- Gary Sheffield in Military Illustrated

Invaluable context and perspectives...consistently thought-provoking. -- Times Literary Supplement

Perhaps the most rewarding of the many books written about the Dresden bombing...Short, easy to read, and of great value. -- Anthony Clayton in Journal of Military History

Unashamedly sober and scientific, providing a welcome dose of objectivity. -- BBC History

About the Author
Paul Addison is Director and Jeremy A. Crang is Assistant Director of the Centre for Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Customer Reviews

A balanced description of the attack and its aftermath
_Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945_ consists of ten chapters (including the retrospect) by ten authorities on various aspects of the Dresden raids, from the post-WWI British military theory which in part justified the raids in the eyes of its planners, to the modern day reconstruction of the city's monuments. I found the multiple perspectives very useful, and a good supplement to the single-author volumes on the topic. For detailed information on the attack itself, read one (or, in the interest of balance, several) of these other volumes. For the larger historical/philosophical/legal aspects of the attack, I'd recommend this book.

Firestorm, the bombing of Dresden
Firestorm: This book could have been written with far fewer words. The format of several different writers was intended to expand the perspective, but it was largely repetetive and judgemental. It was not all that enlightening. On a scale of one to five, it was about a two.

Germany's Hiroshima
When the evil Nazi leaders were convicted at the Nuremburg War Trials, sadly other war criminals were absent. At these trials, others should have been present - including Air Chief Marshall Harris and his American counterpart, not to mention Churchill who was ultimatley responsible for the attack on Dresden. Although these men escaped any form of trial they are responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians whose only crime was that they happened to live in the beautiful city of Dresden.
As many think about St. Valentine's Day, perhaps we should all spare a thought for those who were murdered on the eve of this day. In this book we see what is ostensibly a balanced work on the bombings of Dresden from the viewpoints of several writers. However, this book offers little more than the biased views seen in the similar books by Frederick Taylor and Marshal de Bruhl. Perhaps it might seem cycnical to suggest that some arguments are created or laboured just to provide other 'dimensions'; of course, if an author were to assume the obvious moral viewpoint and condemn these atrocities then there would be nothing to write about. Therefore, in hindsight, contrived arguments are presented in order to try to justify the unjustifiable.
A decade or so ago, at the British tax-payers' expense, a statue was erected to Harris (the architect of this mass-murder) in London. However, little recognition has been given to the many real heroes (who died fighting in action against armed enemy soldiers, not killing defenceless women and children). They gave their lives fighting for their country (and against the evils of terrorism) yet are no more than a name carved on a communal cenotaph.
Marshall Harris once remarked, by way of his defence of the Dresden massacre, that to him the life of a single grenadier was worth more than thousands of the enemy. If this were truly the case then why did he also make the needless sacrifice of several crew members of the Lancasters which were shot down on this infamous operation? They died in vain, fulfilling no strategical function, but just commiting a terrorist act on large scale. Yet, by comparison the British casualties were so few. They had attacked a defenceless city and the German authorities had not thought it worthwhile to defend just a harmless civilian area.
In retrospect, dubious arguments have been put forward - like the one that suggests Dresden might have been a hot-bed for Nazi supporters. Obviously if the population of an entire city are murdered then statistically, it is fair to assume that a few of them might have had certain political sympathies, whether Nazi or communist, etc. This is pure speculation. Dresden was in fact one of the most beautiful cities in the world and known as a cultural centre and the capital of Saxony. This bombing was not only an act of cowardly mass murder but a criminal act of vandalism.
This atrocity seems reminiscent of the persecutions carried out three centuries ago by the Anglo-Scots planters aginst the local Catholic population of Northern Ireland. When, during these incursions, even Irish children were killed, it was remarked that 'little gnits become lice'. Likewise, in Dresden, the little German children were viewed as potential Nazis who had to be wiped out, as did the German women who could give birth to more Nazis. Or possibly, this barbaric act was to punish Germany for the bombings of British cities like Coventry. However, here another dubious question arises.It is now officially recongised that Churchill deliberately sacrificed the expendable citizens of Coventry by lighing up the city - so that German bombers would destroy this historic city of three spires and not the nearby armaments factories.
Despite propaganda and contrived hindsight arguments, the allies knew very well in advance that the city of Dresden did not pose any threat whatsoever. There was no munitions factory in the area, nor was there any strategical justification. It was just an act of evil vindictive malice, committed by a few criminals whose memory is a disgrace to all the real heroes who gave their lives to fight against this very kind of tyrrany. Nor was there any reason to display air supremacy. The year was 1945 and German'y defeat was already almost imminent. Unfortunately, this sad episode teaches us one thing: that trials whether at Nuremburg or in the Hague, only judge leaders of defeated nations, not war criminals of victorious sides, even if those sides were, in the majority, fighting for the moral good.