![]() The second was Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Irving, whose “scholarship” has been thoroughly discredited, hoisted Dresden above other contenders by claiming a death toll of 135,000-the number fabricated by Josef Goebbels’ propaganda machine and echoed by East German Communists. The first was David Irving’s The Destruction of Dresden, published in 1963. The fervor of the debate was spurred largely by two books. The resulting firestorm killed tens of thousands of residents and refugees-and became the archetypal example of horrific aerial slaughter of noncombatants during the postwar debates over strategic bombing. On February 13 and 14, 1945, British Bomber Command and the American Eighth Air Force dumped 3,431 tons of high explosives and incendiaries on Dresden. WWII Book Review: Firestorm- Allied Airpower | Historynet Closeįirestorm: Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresdenīy Marshall De Bruhl, Random House, 2006, $18.45
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