books about dresden

Since no official estimate had been developed, the numbers were speculative, but newspapers such as the Taylor writes that this propaganda was effective, as it not only influenced attitudes in neutral countries at the time, but also reached the The destruction of the city provoked unease in intellectual circles in Britain.

By this point in the war, the Luftwaffe was severely hampered by a shortage of both pilots and aircraft fuel; the German radar system was also degraded, lowering the warning time to prepare for air attacks. ... We must see to it that our attacks do no more harm to ourselves in the long run than they do to the enemy's war effort.In 1956, Dresden entered a twin-town relationship with A British charity, the Dresden Trust, was formed in 1993 to raise funds in response to the call for help, raising £600,000 from 2,000 people and 100 companies and trusts in Britain.

As the historian Donald Bloxham observed more than a decade ago, Dresden has become the symbol of the Allied bombing campaign and the destruction of German cities, just as Auschwitz has become the symbol of the Holocaust.There are numerous reasons for this, including the architectural splendour and cultural significance of this ‘‘Florence on the Elbe’’. The reconstruction of the surrounding Neumarkt buildings continues to this day.The bombing of Dresden remains controversial and is subject to an ongoing debate by historians and scholars regarding the moral and military justifications surrounding the event.Several factors have made the bombing a unique point of contention and debate. Comment Report abuse. The Dresden bombings achieved the strategic objectives that underlay the attack and were of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians.... ever since the deliberate mass bombing of civilians in the second world war, and as a direct response to it, the international community has outlawed the practice. It is a baby. One person found this helpful. They fainted and then burnt to cinders. McKay expresses deep affection for this ‘‘unusually innovative and creative city’’, utter horror at its devastation and great admiration for its recovery.While clearly a fan, McKay is not blind to Dresden’s historical faults.

We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from. There was a huge uproar, since the Yalta agreement handed parts of Poland over to the Soviet Union. Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than In the raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted.On 13 February 1945, bad weather over Europe prevented any USAAF operations, and it was left to When Polish crews of the designated squadrons were preparing for the mission, the terms of the Yalta agreement were made known to them. The report concludes with: The specific forces and means employed in the Dresden bombings were in keeping with the forces and means employed by the Allies in other aerial attacks on comparable targets in Germany. A couple of chapters are devoted to the British and American bomber crews, for whom Dresden was ‘‘just another target’’, albeit one more distant and thus more dangerous than most.He highlights the fear the crewmen experienced due to their extraordinarily high casualty rate and gives a good sense of their individual roles and experiences in the air and between missions. Some readers may want more emphatic positions on key questions, such as whether the bombing constituted a war crime. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. Insane fear grips me and from then on I repeat one simple sentence to myself continuously: "I don't want to burn to death". The fifth point is that the firebombing achieved the intended effect of disabling the industry in Dresden.