Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 - Hardcover

Taylor, Frederick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060006765 ISBN 13: 9780060006761

Publisher: Harper, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

From Publishers Weekly:

The allied bombing of Dresden created a massive fire that swept the city center, killing thousands of people and destroying its medieval heart. Debate began almost immediately: Was the destruction of this seemingly civilian city necessary militarily, or was it, some asked, equivalent to a war crime? Not just another in an endless parade of books on Dresden, Taylor's account may go a long way toward putting such questions to rest. It opens with the start, by British bombers, of the nighttime attack, and immediately turns to the past, meandering through several centuries of Dresden history, from its founding in the Middle Ages to the 20th century and the rise of the Nazis. Taylor, translator of The Goebbels Diaries, also covers the history of aerial bombardment and its international laws; gives glimpses of life under the Nazi regime; details the Allied bombing campaign against Germany; and, most excitingly, puts forth new information concerning Dresden's part in the German war effort, which turns out to be much greater than postwar information generally portrays. Five chapters of 30 describe the actual bombing of the city by the British and American air forces, and they do so effectively, weaving first-person accounts of the aircrews with those of the terrified German soldiers and civilians. The aftermath of the raid is concisely dealt with, in the process correcting common perception about the numbers actually killed (approximately 25,000, not up to 250,000, as often cited), and he offers a review of the postwar debate on the morality of the bombing. An afterword describes the author's experience at a recent ceremony for the dead of Dresden, and further corrects some longstanding misinformation that includes the alleged strafing of civilians by American aircraft. Taylor has used a variety of German, as well as Allied, sources to write an account not previously accomplished to this extent in English.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060006765
• ISBN 13: 9780060006761
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544