A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year 'Powerful . . . there is rage
in his ink. McKay's book grips by its passion and originality. Some
25,000 people perished in the firestorm that raged through the
city. I have never seen it better described' Max Hastings, Sunday
Times In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the
'Florence of the Elbe'. Explosive bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs
fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people
were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the
bombing a last act of atavistic mass murder in a war already won?
From the history of the city to the attack itself, conveyed in a
minute-by-minute account from the first of the flares to the flames
reaching almost a mile high - the wind so searingly hot that the
lungs of those in its path were instantly scorched - through the
eerie period of reconstruction, bestselling author Sinclair McKay
creates a vast canvas and brings it alive with touching human
detail. Along the way we encounter, among many others across the
city, a Jewish woman who thought the English bombs had been sent
from heaven, novelist Kurt Vonnegut who wrote that the smouldering
landscape was like walking on the surface of the moon, and
15-year-old Winfried Bielss, who, having spent the evening ushering
refugees, wanted to get home to his stamp collection. He was not to
know that there was not enough time. Impeccably researched and
deeply moving, McKay uses never-before-seen sources to relate the
untold stories of civilians and vividly conveys the texture of
contemporary life. Dresden is invoked as a byword for the
illimitable cruelties of war, but with the distance of time, it is
now possible to approach this subject with a much clearer gaze, and
with a keener interest in the sorts of lives that ordinary people
lived and lost, or tried to rebuild. Writing with warmth and colour
about morality in war, the instinct for survival, the gravity of
mass destruction and the manipulation of memory, this is a master
historian at work. 'Churchill said that if bombing cities was
justified, it was always repugnant. Sinclair McKay has written a
shrewd, humane and balanced account of this most controversial
target of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign, the
ferocious consequence of the scourge of Nazism' Allan Mallinson,
author of Fight to the Finish 'Beautifully-crafted, elegiac,
compelling - Dresden delivers with a dark intensity and incisive
compassion rarely equalled. Authentic and authoritative, a
masterpiece of its genre' Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo
'Compelling . . . Sinclair McKay brings a dark subject vividly to
life' Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent 'This is a brilliantly
clear, and fair, account of one of the most notorious and
destructive raids in the history aerial warfare. From planning to
execution, the story is told by crucial participants - and the
victims who suffered so cruelly on the ground from the attack
itself and its aftermath' Robert Fox, author of We Were There
General
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