World War II: The Fall of Nazi Germany - Alan Taylor - In Focus - The Atlantic part of a 20-part series of photos covering the war.
Image caption: “A view taken from Dresden’s town hall of the destroyed Old Town after the allied bombings between February 13 and 15, 1945. Some 3,600 aircraft dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the German city. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles of the city center, and killed more than 22,000. (Walter Hahn/AFP/Getty Images)”
I own a book (“Dresden, a photographic accusation”, in translation) of Walter Hahn and other’s photos of the remains of Dresden. It’s amazing and horrifying, as this photograph conveys. I saw this image used with a review of Frederick Taylor’s “Dresden: Tuesday, February 13th, 1945”, which I subsequently read. That book—and the firebombing of Dresden as a whole—kicked off a huge reading effort on my part of WWII in the territory behind the Iron Curtain, which is far more horrible and gruesome than the west battlefield narratives. I’m grateful to Walter Hahn and Richard Peter, no matter how bitter the reading.
