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.
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