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Fire and the Darkness the Bombing of Dresden 1945 by Sinclair McKay w/dust acket
Fire and the Darkness the Bombing of Dresden 1945 by Sinclair McKay
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket
369 pages
Copyright 2020
CONTENTS
List of Illustrationsvii
Mapsxi
Preface: The City in Timexix
PART ONE: THE APPROACHING FURY
1. The Days Before 3
2. In the Forests of the Gauleiter16
3. The Dethroning of Reason29
4. Art and Degeneracy41
5. The Glass Man and the Physicists58
6. 'A Sort of Little London'7o
7. The Science of Doomsday81
8. The Correct Atmospheric Conditions95
9. Hosing Out108
10. The Devil Will Get No Rest118
PART TWO: SCHRECKENSNACHT
11. The Day of Darkness129
12. Five Minutes Before the Sirens148
13. Into the Abyss 153
14. Shadows and Light165
15. 10.03 p.m.171
16. The Burning Eyes182
17. Midnight200
18. The Second Wave207
19. From Among the Dead227
20. The Third Wave236
PART THREE: AFTERSHOCK
21. Dead Men and Dreamers247
22. The Radiant Tombs255
23. The Meanings of Terror266
24. The Music of the Dead278
25. Recoil289
26. 'The Stalinist Style'300
27. Beauty and Remembrance314
Acknowledgements321
Selected Bibliography323
Notes326
Index 351
List of Illustrations
Inset 1
1. 'Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe Below the Augustus Bridge', Bernardo Bellotto, c.1750.
2. The stable courtyard of Dresden's castle, c.193os.
3. The Semper Opera House.
4. Panorama overlooking the Altstadt in the 193os.
5. The Altmarkt.
6. Dresden's central railway station.
7. The pre-war Frauenkirche.
8. Dresden tourist poster.
9. Dresden porcelain.
10. Poster for Dresden's Hygiene Exhibition, 1911.
11. Hitler in front of the Zwinger Palace, 1934.
12. Richard Strauss.
13. Hitler at an exhibition of 'degenerate' art, 1933.
14. The Duke of Windsor visiting Dresden, 1937.
15. Members of the League of German Girls.
16. Martin Mutschmann at an exhibition of folk art.
17. Dr Albert Fromme.
18. Otto Dix.
19. Professor Victor Klemperer.
20. Otto Griebel.
Inset 2
21. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris at Bomber Command.
22. Miles Tripp and his bomber crew.
23. Kurt Vonnegut.
24. 'Cookie' bombs being dropped on Dresden.
25. The fiercely burning streets from above.
26. Bombers release their payloads.
27. The firestorm seen from a distance.
28. A bombed city street.
29. Emergency teams dealing with the corpses.
3o. The already pulverized city prior to the American raid of 14
February.
31. Richard Peter's famous photograph of the devastation.
32. Bodies awaiting identification.
33. A makeshift funeral pyre in the central market square.
34. The shattered area south of the Elbe.
35. Refugee children on the streets of the city.
36. Another of Dresden's fragmented streets.
37. Rail tracks, laid to help clear the streets of rubble.
38. 'Volunteers' clearing debris by hand.
Inset 3
39. The damaged Zwinger Palace.
4o. Hastily erected road signs in Russian.
41. A Soviet propaganda poster: 'Learning from the Soviet people'.
42. The ruins inspired both fear and poetry.
43. Sheep grazing near the ruined Frauenkirche.
44. 'Hill and Ploughed Field Near Dresden', Caspar David Friedrich, c.1824.
45. A detail from the Communist Culture Palace mural 'Way of the Red Flag'.
46. A tower block bearing the exhortation: 'Socialism wins'.
47. The 'Procession of Princes' mural in the castle stable courtyard.
48. Dresden's 196os large-scale housing constructions.
49. The Prager Strasse shopping area, remodelled after the war. 5o. Futuristic housing in Prager Strasse.
51. Vladimir Putin during his Dresden posting in the 1980s.
52. The choir of the Kreuzkirche with cantor Rudolf Mauersberger.
53. Elsa Frolich.
54. Erich Kastner.
55. Professor Heinrich Barkhausen.
56. The Altstadt as restored by the Soviets.
57. The rebuilt Frauenkirche.
58. The Frauenkirche interior.
Picture Credits
The majority of the photographs come from private collections. Others are from: 2-8, 12-14, 16, 21, 30, 32-5, 46, 47, 52, 54, Getty; 9, 15, 19, 27, 31, 41, 58, Alamy; II, 18, 36, 40, Mary Evans; 23, 56, Bridge-man; 42, 43, Terje Hartberg; 53, Deutsche Fotothek. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright but the publisher welcomes any information that clarifies the copyright ownership of any unattributed material displayed and will endeavour to include corrections in reprints.
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
ON FEBRUARY 13, 1945, at io:o3 p.m., British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of World War II: the bombing of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens, and whipping up a molten hurricane in which the citizens of Dresden were burned, baked, or suffocated to death.
Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left. Sinclair McKay's The Fire and the Darkness is a pulse-pounding work of history that looks at the life of the city in the days before the attack, tracks each moment of the bombing, and considers the long period of reconstruction and recovery. The Fire and the Darkness is powered by McKay's narrative of this unthinkable terror from the points of view of the ordinary civilians: Margot Hille, an apprentice brewery worker; Gisela Reichelt, a ten-year-old schoolgirl; boys conscripted into the Hitler Youth; choristers of the Kreuzkirche choir; artists, shop assistants, and classical musicians, as well as the Nazi officials stationed there.
What happened that night in Dresden was calculated annihilation in a war that was almost over. Sinclair McKay's brilliant work takes a complex, human view of this terrible night and its aftermath in a gripping book that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.
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