A review by tittypete
The Fire and the Darkness: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945 by Sinclair McKay

4.0

A rumination on a late punch to the back of the head after the bell. The nazis were pretty much dunzo but the allies decided to just vaporize one of their nicer cities to really bring them down. Seems like there are two tracks of thought for this event: One, it's bad to incinerate a bunch of civilians with no strategic value in the war or two, fuck 'em - even people who put up with the nazis should get got. There were some pretty wild descriptions of what it was like to be in a bomber crew. Dudes went crazy with the stress if they survived. And there were some crazy descriptions of what it was like to be in neighborhoods during three successive bombing raids. People were bursting into flames, stuff that didn't normally melt melted, the animals in the zoo got roasted alive. Evidently Dresden was a pretty nice town before it was reduced to ashes. They made ceramics and cameras and there was art stuff. But they also were really into the Nuremburg laws and making life shitty for their local jewry. I end up trying to put it into a modern perspective: should the people of Palm Beach be burned alive for hosting Trump's compound? Dunno. Would it be that big of a loss? Shruggaroo.