Dresden

This is part of the bomb sites series by elin o'Hara slavick. Also available in book form: Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography.

Firebombing of Dresden, Germany, February 13and 14, 1945, (aerial view looking east of Neustadt and Altstadt, 1932). "Allied forces bombed Dresden regularly between 1939 and 1945. In January, 1943 the Allies met at Casablanca and agreed on large-scale air attacks to achieve the destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened. And so, the saturation bombing of German cities began. The climax of this terror bombing was the bombing of Dresden in which tremendous heat generated by the bombs created a vacuum into which fire leaped swiftly in a great firestorm through the city. More than 100,000 died in Dresden. 11,916 buildings were wrecked and flames could be seen 100 kilometers (60 miles) away. 7,100 tons of bombs were dropped." Howard Zinn, pg. 43, A Peoples History of the United States