Dresden (or, My Vonnegut Pilgrimage)

Slaughterhouse 5 might be the greatest book I've ever read, inspired by the Allied forces' attack on Dresden at the end of the Second World War.


I wanted to see what the Dresden-ites thought about all this firestorm business.


Says the Dresden City Museum:

At least 25,000 people died in the feursturm of 13-14 February 1945... An outstanding example of European architecture was destroyed. Other cities... were similarly destroyed before the end of the war. The destruction of entire cities had been part of German war strategy since (air raids in) 1937. All the same, the propagandistic Nazi claim that Dresden had been singular, that Dresden had been an innocent city that had been destroyed for no military gain, influenced the historical evaluation of events even decades later.

Says Kurt:

A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of people are killed.

I went back there (to Dresden) with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes. Slaughterhouse 5 (1969)

(Yes, it's true - I got a little bit carried away).