Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945

Frederick Taylor

Apr 2009 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

After Vonneguts crusade, in Slaughter House Five, it became very hard to look as some of the cold hard facts of bombing Germany. Hitler had called for all citizens to take up arms, making them military targets. Vonngut and his fellow prisoners were imprisoned at gunpoint by members of a town that could have let them go. Further, this city has been portrayed as a civilian target, which Taylor provide excellent insight and evidence, strongly supporting the military nature of this city. Finally, this and one <maybe two?> other cities were part of Stalin's demands at Yalta<?>. He needed to stop the flow of re-inforcemnts and material to the eastern front. Dresden's railhub was where much of these supplies came together on their trip to the eastern front. To see the pictures of Dresden make this and several other firebombings terrible tragedies, but it was for the German's to avoid these catastrophies, not the beligerents on the opposing side. I admit a distinct bias in my view of the Nazi Reich. My ancestors were Polish. Warsaw was the first city <civilians> attacked in WW II. The Poles were forced into slave labor to build the death camps on their own soil. Then, they were the first victims used to try the new methods of slaughter. Over two million non-Jewish Poles civilian were slaughters or worked to death and the Jewish population was reduced from around 4 million to a couple hundred thousand. You won't find too many Poles that feel sympathy for the25-30,000 people in kiilled in the 2 days of firebombing, The only regreat I harbor is for the architeture and the labor that went into its creation. Those were the true losses in Dresden and Hitler and the Nazis can not be damned enough for that.

About the author

Frederick Taylor studied history and modern languages at Oxford University and Sussex University. A Volkswagen Studentship award enabled him to research and travel widely in both parts of divided Germany at the height of the Cold War. Taylor is the author of Dresden and has edited and translated a number of works from German, including The Goebbels Diaries, 1939-1941. He is married with three children and lives in Cornwall, England.