And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been [in Sodom and Gomorrah]. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

I read a lot of science fiction, and years ago became enamored with the short stories and novels of Kurt Vonnegut, especially Mother Night, Galapagos, and Slaughterhouse Five. I noticed that he always included in the short biography at the end of his books the statement that he ". . . witnessed the destruction of Dresden."

Vonnegut was an infantry scout during World War II and was captured on December 22, 1944 by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. Taken to the city of Dresden as a prisoner of war, his captors put him to work in a plant that made malt syrup for pregnant women.

The firebombing of Dresden, Germany on the night of February 13, 1945 which Vonnegut references, is one of the most controversial acts of the Allies during World War II. Dresden manufactured no munitions, was not an industrial or commercial center for the Nazis. There were no anti-aircraft emplacements to speak of.

The city was not even defended by the Luftwaffe at the time, as the German airplanes in t he vicinity were grounded due to lack of fuel. Yet, on this city renowned as a center of German architecture and culture, the Allies unleashed one of the most relentless and destructive air raids of the war.

During three waves of attacks, over 1,300 British and U.S. bombers dropped more than 3,300 tons of bombs on Dresden. Many of these bombs were incendiaries, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as magnesium, phosphorus and napalm. These incendiaries started a firestorm that sucked the oxygen from the air, causing temperatures to soar as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Strangely enough, the only likely military targets, some barracks in the city's north side and the rail yard (sometimes used to transport troops and materials to the Eastern Front) were left untouched.

Depending on whose version of the events you read, the raid killed anywhere from 35,000 to 135,000 civilians though some studies indicate the death toll may have been in excess of 250,000, more than were directly killed at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, more than were killed during the days of the Blitz in Britain. The influx of refugees that had fled into the city as the Red Army marched into Germany from the East in the months prior to the bombing had almost doubled the population and makes it difficult to derive a better estimate of civilian deaths.

What is certain is that there is little chance of escape from a firestorm, especially if there is a concentration of buildings and bombs to set off many huge fires rapidly. The air becomes super-heated and the rush of heated air upwards produces the characteristics and power of a tornado. Horribly, the winds are strong enough to pick people up and suck them into the flames.

From the eyewitness account of Margaret Freyer, a survivor of the catastrophe:

To my left I suddenly see a woman. I can see her to this day and shall never forget it. She carries a bundle in her arms. It is a baby. She runs, she falls, and the child flies in an arc into the fire. Suddenly, I saw people again, right in front of me. They scream and gesticulate with their hands, and then - to my utter horror and amazement - I see how one after the other they simply seem to let themselves drop to the ground. (Today I know that these unfortunate people were the victims of lack of oxygen). They fainted and then burnt to cinders.

From another eyewitness account published on the Memories Project website:

We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.

If Vonnegut had not been a prisoner, he might not have survived, but somewhat ironically he sheltered that night of the firestorm with other POWs in an underground meat locker. Vonnegut emerged from the locker to find that Dresden looked as he later described it in Slaughterhouse 5, "like the moon."

He found the historic city pockmarked by bomb craters; its populace utterly decimated. According to Vonnegut, the city had the desolate look of the surface of the moon, barren and wasted, void of anything redolent of human life. Vonnegut, along with other prisoners, was forced to dig through the rubble to find the bodies of Dresden's men, women and children and carry them off to mass funeral pyres.

Vonnegut struggled for years to write about this event that he experienced as a young man. He was only 22 years old when it happened. Finally he returned to Dresden 23 years later in 1968 with a fellow former POW and found himself finally able to come to terms with that experience which he used in his landmark novel,Slaughterhouse Five.

Yet, this is not an assessment of the literary importance of Kurt Vonnegut though he is a fine novelist and original thinker in my estimation. Rather, it is a brief examination of the nature of war that leads to such excesses as the bombing of Dresden. . .what we now so pretentiously label collateral damage.

Of course, it can be argued that the destruction of Dresden is not collateral damage as the civilian population was bombed deliberately. In researching the history of this incident, one learns that the Allied High Command thought there were several strategic reasons to bomb the city.

Apparently, the leaders of the Allies, especially Churchill, feared the growing power of Soviet Union, who was invading Germany from the East, and thought that Stalin would be duly impressed with the firepower that United Kingdom, the United States and the other Allies could unleash. Thus, the Allies sacrificed the people of Dresden to throw a warning at Stalin and the feared menace of international Communism.

From an Internal Royal Air Force Memo from 1945 concerning Dresden:

The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.

I personally do not believe that the end justifies the means, and I do not believe in killing several tens of thousands of innocent people whatever the motive, even if they were citizens of a regime that engaged in the worst of war crimes, inhuman experimentation and mercilessly bombed London and other European cities.

I do not believe in the Old Testament's "eye for an eye" mode of human interaction, realizing that such behavior just makes everyone blind and more angry. That said, I do believe that if actually attacked, one must defend oneself.

However, my beliefs about the futility of war are not the point here. My point is that regardless of your view of war, whether you see a proper motive behind the firebombing of Dresden or not, whether you view any war (including the Gulf War II) as necessary or not, we must not forget just how horrible the reality of war really is. War usually represents a failure of nations to deal realistically (and firmly sometimes) with their conflicting interests and problems.

War is not just another violent video game as the images of bombers and missiles and explosions seen during television coverage of recent wars would seem to indicate. Screaming mothers and burning children sucked into the maw of a raging inferno, bombs falling on desperately fleeing civilians, metaphors of the enormity that was Dresden, that is the real war.

Like Vonnegut's insightful interpretation of the behavior of Lot's wife during another time of destruction, perhaps to be human is to look back and remember the destruction and loss of wars past. I like to think that Lot's Wife looked back in empathy as guided by the two angels, she and her husband and two daughters climbed into the mountains, with a heart heavy with concern for the people burning and dying in the desert below.

Perhaps, that Pillar of Salt that she became is really a monument to human compassion.

Author's Notes: Vonnegut has written such powerful often serio-comic novels as Mother Night, God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater, Galapagos, Timequake, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five, and many other noteworthy books. You may read more about the author—who is also quite an important visual artist—at The Official Website for Kurt Vonnegut.

If you found this article of interest, you may also want to read Traute Klein's fine, related articles that draw upon her experiences as a child in Germany during World War II: Email from Belgrade, Memories of 1945 and Kosovo Refugees, Memories of 1945. Traute is the long-time Contributing Editor for Natural Health and other Suite101 topics (Healing Hug, Kids Garden, Organic Gardening and Young at Art). I think we should pay attention when this fine writer and scholar tells us about the horrors of war from her own personal experiences.
Dresden, Germany celebrates its 800th year in June, 2006. More information about he beautiful city on the Elbe is available at the Dresden website.

I wish to acknowledge the resources of Education on the Internet and Teaching History and The Memory Project in researching this article. The exceptional Memory Project site has many eyewitness accounts of personal experiences during World War II.

Copyright 2003, Thomas James Martin, all rights reserved.