| On
February 13 and 14, 1945, three successive waves of British
and U.S. aircraft rained down thousands of tons of high explosive
and incendiary bombs on the largely undefended German city
of Dresden. Night and day, Dresden was engulfed in a vast
sea of flame, a firestorm that generated 1,500-degree temperatures
and hurricane-force winds. Thousands suffocated in underground
shelters where they had fled to escape the inferno above.
The fierce winds pulled thousands more into the center of
the firestorm, where they were incinerated. By the time the
fires burned themselves out, many days later, a great city
— known as “the Florence on the Elbe” —
lay in ruins, and tens of thousands, almost all of them civilians,
lay dead.
In Firestorm,
Marshall De Bruhl re-creates the drama and horror of the Dresden
bombing and offers the most cogent appraisal yet of the tactics,
weapons, strategy, and rationale for the controversial attack.
Using new research and contemporary reports, as well as eyewitness
stories of the devastation, De Bruhl directly addresses many
long-unresolved questions relating to the bombing: Why did
the strike occur when the Allies’ victory was seemingly
so imminent? Was choosing a city choked with German refugees
a punitive decision, intended to humiliate a nation? What,
if any, strategic importance did Dresden have? How much did
the desire to send a “message” — to Imperial
Japan or the advancing Soviet armies — factor into the
decision to firebomb the city?
Beyond De Bruhl’s
analysis of the moral implications and historical ramifications
of the attack, he examines how Nazi and Allied philosophies
of airpower evolved prior to Dresden, particularly the shift
toward “morale bombing” and the targeting of population
centers as a strategic objective. He also profiles the architects
and prime movers of strategic bombing and aerial warfare,
among them aviation pioneer Billy Mitchell, RAF air marshal
Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, and the American commander,
General Carl Spaatz.
The passage of
time has done nothing to quell the controversy stirred up
by the Dresden raid. It has spawned a plethora of books, documentaries,
articles, and works of fiction. Firestorm dispels the myths,
refutes the arguments, and offers a dispassionate and clear-eyed
look at the decisions made and the actions taken throughout
the bombing campaign against the cities of the Third Reich
— a campaign whose most devastating consequence was
the Dresden raid. It is an objective work of history that
dares to consider the calculus of war.
Marshall De Bruhl was for many years an executive
and editor with several major American publishing houses,
specializing in history and biography, most notably as editor
of, and contributor to, the Dictionary of American History
and the Dictionary of American Biography. He is also
the author of Sword of San Jacinto: A Life of Sam Houston,
and co-compiler of The International Thesaurus of Quotations.
He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
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