Download or read book Dresden and the Heavy Bombers written by Frank Musgrove and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a young man's entry into the war in 1941 and culminates in his flying on the bombing raid to Dresden in February 1945. This is not a gung-ho account of flying with Bomber Command but neither is it a breast-beating avowal of guilt. These memoirs take the form of a basic narrative of the author's RAF career and pay particular attention to fear, morale and, as the author explains, the myth of leadership. Several raids are described in detail and illustrate the variety of experience, problems and dangers involved in such hazardous warfare. So, nearly 60 years after his dramatic experiences, how does he view the bombing of factories and cities and the inevitable grave moral issues that have slowly and insidiously crept up on him ? The answer will surprise many younger and older readers.

Download or read book The Dresden Firebombing written by Tony Joel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-20 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The firebombing of Dresden marks the terrible apex of the European bombing war. In just over two days in February 1945, over 1,300 heavy bombers from the RAF and the USAAF dropped nearly 4,000 tonnes of explosives on Dresden's civilian centre.Since the end of World War II, both the death toll and the motivation for the attack have become fierce historical battlegrounds, as German feelings of victimhood complete with those of guilt and loss. The Dresden bombing was used by East Germany as a propaganda tool, and has been re-appropriated by the neo-Nazi far right. Meanwhile the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche- the city's sumptuous eighteenth-century church destroyed in the raid-became central to German identity, while in London, a statue of the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, has attracted protests. In this book, Tony Joel focuses on the historical battle to re-appropriate Dresden, and on how World War II continues to shape British and German identity today.

Download or read book Dresden written by Frederick Taylor and published by Harper. This book was released on 2004-02-03 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bombing began shortly after 10:00 P.M. on February 13, 1945. In the fifteen hours that followed, 1,100 American and British heavy bombers dropped more than 4,500 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices, leaving the ancient city of Dresden -- "the Florence of the Elbe" -- in flaming ruins and claiming the lives of thousands of its citizens. Twelve weeks later the German surrender was in hand, signaling the end of World War II. Yet today the bombing of Dresden is embedded in our collective consciousness not as the toppling blow to Nazi Germany but as one of history's cruelest wartime atrocities, a vicious and militarily unjustifiable act of vengeful retribution against a peaceful, beautiful, defenseless city somehow removed from the war-making machinery that had otherwise consumed all of Germany. What really happened at Dresden -- both the facts of the events themselves and the reasons behind the remarkable legacy of propaganda that has left us in the dark about those events for nearly sixty years -- is the subject of Frederick Taylor's ground breaking study. After careful research into British, American, and German archives (including recently discovered documents, now available after decades of communist censorship) and interviews with both bombers and survivors, Taylor -- a bilingual scholar, translator, and writer -- has created the most complete portrait ever assembled of the city, its people, and those involved in its fate. Many of his findings require a revelatory shift in how we understand these events. For instance, he demonstrates that the numbers of dead -- frequently cited in excess of 100,000 -- were greatly exaggerated, for propaganda purposes, by Josef Goebbels (Taylor estimates the actual death toll at between 25,000 and 40,000) charges that Allied pilots overhead shot down German civilians as they fled toward safety were patently false contrary to popular belief, Dresden was a city of considerable military importance, both as a transportation hub and a major producer of armaments and military provisions. Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 is the first truly informed and fair-minded history of the bombing that lives in infamy. Frederick Taylor's book, a responsible and long-overdue corrective to a sixty-year-long legacy of misinformation masquerading as fact, will be remembered for generations both as a work of enduring scholarship and as a moving, compassionate narrative of a human tragedy of historic significance.

Download or read book Firestorm written by Marshall De Bruhl and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: De Bruhl re-creates the drama and horror of the 1945 Dresden bombings and offers the most cogent, clear-eyed appraisal yet of the tactics, weapons, strategy, and rationale for the controversial attack.

Download or read book The Ethics Of Bombing Dresden written by Lt Col Raymond H. Wilcox and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study describes the events, doctrine, and technical developments of World War II (WWII) that led to the destruction by area bombing of the city of Dresden and the deaths of 135,000 of its citizens. Prior to our entry into WWII our bombing strategy was to employ large numbers of high altitude bombers with heavy defensive firepower, flying in formation, using precision daylight bombardment. This ethical bombing technique was observed early on in WWII, but at some point the ethic changed. Why? Was it a change in the ethics of the commander or country, or was it due to a technological push through the development of on-board radar? This analysis will show that although no specific order or directive specified the destruction of Dresden, those in charge had tacitly endorsed it. History shows us that because of this change, the face of war in Europe also changed. To this day, the firestorm of Dresden remains one of the deadliest and ethically most problematic raids of WWII.

Download or read book Firestorm written by Paul Addison and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, m

Download or read book Dresden written by Frederick Taylor and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-04-10 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to coincide with the bombing, this dramatic and controversial account completely re-examines the Allied attack on Dresden For decades it has been assumed that the Allied bombing of Dresden was militarily unjustifiable, an act of rage and retribution for Germany’s ceaseless bombing of London and other parts of England. Now, Frederick Taylor’s groundbreaking research offers a completely new examination of the facts, and reveals that Dresden was a highly-militarized city actively involved in the production of military armaments and communications concealed beneath the cultural elegance for which the city was famous. Incorporating first-hand accounts, contemporaneous press material and memoirs, and never-before-seen government records, Taylor documents unequivocally the very real military threat Dresden posed, and thus altering forever our view of that attack.

Download or read book The Bombers and the Bombed written by Richard Overy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An essential part of the literature of World War II.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post From acclaimed World War II historian Richard Overy comes this startling new history of the controversial Allied bombing war against Germany and German-occupied Europe. In the fullest account yet of the campaign and its consequences, Overy assesses not just the bombing strategies and pattern of operations, but also how the bombed communities coped with the devastation. This book presents a unique history of the bombing offensive from below as well as from above, and engages with moral questions that still resonate today.

Download or read book The Bombing of Dresden Reconsidered written by Melden E. Smith and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Firebombing of Dresden written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes survivors' accounts of the attacks *Discusses the various debates over the morality and necessity of targeting Dresden *Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "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. I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them." - Lothar Metzger, survivor In the middle of February 1945, the Allies were steadily advancing against the Germans from both east and west, with British and American forces having repulsed the German offensive during the Battle of the Bulge and the Soviet Union's Red Army pushing from the east. Indeed, the war would be over in just a little more than 2 months. Nonetheless, it was during this timeframe that the Allies conducted one of the most notorious attacks of the war: the targeting of Dresden. As a Royal Air Force memo put it before the attack, "Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance.... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do." In the span of about 48 hours, Dresden was targeted by over 1,200 Allied bombers, which dropped nearly 4,000 tons of explosives on the town. The firestorms caused by this pounding hollowed out 1,600 acres and killed at least tens of thousands in gruesome ways. Ironically, many of the victims in Dresden had fled from the eastern front as the Soviets advanced, understandably worried about what kind of punishment the Soviets would dole out to captured Germans in response to the atrocities committed in Russia during the war. As the RAF memo noted, Dresden was relatively unscathed before the attacks, and the bombing was justified by the Allies based on Dresden being the home of hundreds of factories and a crucial railway. However, the widespread devastation immediately compelled the Nazis to use the attack as propaganda, and it has been condemned in the nearly 70 years since, with arguments still debating whether Dresden should've been attacked in the manner it was, and whether it was a disproportionate bombing. While most historians agree that the German war machine was in retreat by the time of this bombing of Germany's seventh largest city, other facts about the purpose and efficacy of the attack are less than decided. The debate over Dresden, which began shortly after the bombing and continues to this day, focuses not only on the necessity of the attack but also on the legitimacy of targets, and even on the disputed number of deaths that resulted. Though there was (perhaps) surprisingly little written about the Dresden attack during or immediately after the war, Chris Harmon, a military strategist and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, describes the Dresden attack as the "bloody shirt" that was waved often by those who questioned the morality of allied actions in retrospect. The Firebombing of Dresden analyzes one of the most controversial attacks of World War II

Download or read book Dear Dresden written by Michael W. Barrett and published by . This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 722 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden, Germany. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed over 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city center. An estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people were killed.Critics of the bombing argue that Dresden was a cultural landmark of little or no military significance, and that the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and not proportionate to the commensurate military gains.Never forget.

Download or read book The Destruction of Dresden written by David John Cawdell Irving and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 135.000 dræbtes ved 7 døgns konventionel bombning af Dresden. Atombomben mod Hiroshima dræbte ca. 71.000.

Download or read book Operation Thunderclap The Bombing Of Dresden written by LTC Richard A. Conroy and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Precision bombing of military targets was a reality in World War II by the end of 1943. By February, 1945, the war in Europe was nearly over. Why, then at that Tate date, was the city of Dresden destroyed by allied firebombing? In addressing this quest ion, the Dresden case study examines the evolution of bombing practices on both sides during the war in Europe. Both British and American bombing policies are scrutinized. Objectives, both military and political served by the Dresden bombing, are explained. Public reaction to the bombings in the U.K. and the U.S. are discussed as well as the reaction of both Governments to those reactions. Finally, the study examines the doctrine of Just War, draws conclusions and provides commentary.

Download or read book Dresden written by Frederick Taylor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive story of the shocking and controversial Allied bombing of Dresden 'In narrative power and persuasion, he has paralleled in Dresden what Antony Beevor achieved in Stalingrad' Independent on Sunday 'Well-researched and unpretentious ... fascinating ... Taylor skilfully interweaves various personal accounts of the impact of the raids' Guardian At 9.51 p.m. on Tuesday 13 February 1945, Dresden's air-raid sirens sounded as they had done many times during the Second World War. But this time was different. By the next morning, more than 4,500 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices had been dropped on the unprotected city. At least 25,000 inhabitants died in the terrifying firestorm and thirteen square miles of the city's historic centre, including incalculable quantities of treasure and works of art, lay in ruins. In this portrait of the city, its people, and its still-controversial destruction, Frederick Taylor has drawn on archives and sources only accessible since the fall of the East German regime, and talked to Allied aircrew and survivors, from members of the German armed services and refugees fleeing the Russian advance to ordinary citizens of Dresden.

Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.

Download or read book The Fire and the Darkness written by Sinclair McKay and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping work of narrative nonfiction recounting the history of the Dresden Bombing, one of the most devastating attacks of World War II. On February 13th, 1945 at 10:03 PM, British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of WWII: the bombing of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens, and whipping up a molten hurricane in which the citizens of Dresden were burned, baked, or suffocated to death. Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left. Sinclair McKay’s The Fire and the Darkness is a pulse-pounding work of history that looks at the life of the city in the days before the attack, tracks each moment of the bombing, and considers the long period of reconstruction and recovery. The Fire and the Darkness is powered by McKay’s reconstruction of this unthinkable terror from the points of view of the ordinary civilians: Margot Hille, an apprentice brewery worker; Gisela Reichelt, a ten-year-old schoolgirl; boys conscripted into the Hitler Youth; choristers of the Kreuzkirche choir; artists, shop assistants, and classical musicians, as well as the Nazi officials stationed there. What happened that night in Dresden was calculated annihilation in a war that was almost over. Sinclair McKay’s brilliant work takes a complex, human, view of this terrible night and its aftermath in a gripping book that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.

Download or read book Dresden written by Victor Gregg and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-02-13 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Victor Gregg is the most remarkable spokesman for the war generation' Dan Snow In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut fictionalised his time as a prisoner of war in Dresden in 1945. Vonnegut was imprisoned in a cellar while the firestorm raged through the city, wiping out generations of innocent lives. Victor Gregg remained above ground throughout the firebombing. This is his true eyewitness account of that week in February 1945. Already a seasoned soldier with the Rifle Brigade, Gregg joined the 10th Parachute Regiment in 1944. He was captured at Arnhem where he volunteered to be sent to a work camp rather than become another faceless number in the huge POW camps. With two failed escape attempts under his belt, Gregg was eventually caught sabotaging a factory and sent to Dresden for execution. Before Gregg could be executed, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden in four air raids over two days in February 1945. The resulting firestorm destroyed six square miles of the city centre. 25,000 people, mostly civilians, were estimated to have been killed. Post-war discussion of whether or not the attacks were justified has led to the bombing becoming one of the moral questions of the Second World War. In Gregg's first-hand narrative, personal and punchy, he describes the trauma and carnage of the Dresden bombing. After the raid, he spent five days helping to recover a city of innocent civilians, thousands of whom had died in the fire storm, trapped underground in human ovens. As order was restored, his life was once more in danger and he escaped to the east, spending the last weeks of the war with the Russians.