5FF reader Alex Bensky responded to my post earlier this week, writing:
Anyone who wants to know about the attacks (two by the RAF and one by the Eighth Air Force) should look at Frederick Taylor’s Dresden.
By World War II standards it was a legitimate target–war industries, especially optics, and was an important transportation center. That is why the Soviets asked us to bomb it although they didn’t mention that after the war, using an inflated casualty rate that first the Germans and then the Soviets embraced as propaganda, to show the alleged savagery of the western allies.
By the way, have you read “Slaughterhouse Five?” The historian whom Vonnegut relies upon for facts he did not see, and from whom he quotes extensively, is David Irving.
I will confess to you a failing I have. My sympathy for the German civilians caught in the raids is real but limited. It’s unchristian of me, I agree, but I come by that honestly. While the Dresdeners suffered, inarguably, not that many European Jews were suffering because there weren’t that many left by February, 1945.
