Author:Jeremy A Crang,Paul Addison
On the night of 13 and 14 February 1945 the RAF bombed the city of Dresden, causing devastating fires which obliterated the historic city centre and killed many thousands of people. Sixty years later these raids remain one of the most notorious, and also one of the most controversial, episodes in the history of the Second World War.
Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden 1945 assembles a cast of distinguished scholars, including Sebastian Cox, David Bloxham, Nicola Lambourne, Soenke Neitzel, Richard Overy and Hew Strachan, to review the origins, conduct, and consequences of the raids. Each contributor writes from his or her own perspective, offering the reader a panoramic reassessment of the evidence and the issues, including the question of whether or not the bombing of the city constitutes a war crime.
Firestorm cogently demonstrates the reasons why Dresden has come to symbolise the military and ethical questions involved in the waging of total war.
An authoritative, stimulating and compact guide to the often-disputed facts
—— Times Higher Education SupplementExtraordinary... deserve[s] to be read, not only by those interested in the history of the Second World War, but also by those who continue to be interested in the ethical questions of warfare
—— Daily TelegraphBetween these covers you will find a wholly unpretentious, terrifyingly honest breakdown of a war-exceptionally harrowing and impossible to put down
—— Mick Middles , Manchester Evening NewsPonting is both incisive and original in his account of what contemporaries called the "Russian War"
—— Michael Kerrigan , ScotsmanGutsy, humorous and a tiny bit snobby, she's a brilliant correspondent and chronicler of the times.
—— Sainsbury's MagazineA wonderful, insightful illustration of the activities, thoughts and feelings of a young woman during the turbulent time of war.
—— Family History MonthlyLively letters from Maureen, a Wren, to her RAF boyfriend kept their romance alive from 1941-45. Eric, who married her, was a lucky man.
—— Saga MagazineChildren are history's forgotten people; amidst the sound and fury of battle, as commanders decide the fate of empires, they are never seen. Yet as Nicholas Stargardt reveals in his heart-rending account of children's lives under the Nazis, to ignore them is to leave history half-written. This is an excellent book and it tells a terrible story... As Stargardt so eloquently reminds us, the tragedy is that children were part of the equation and suffered accordingly
—— Trevor Royle , Sunday Herald'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War
—— History Today