The Fire and the Darkness

An “evocative and poignant” narrative history of the Dresden Bombing, one of the most devastating attacks of WWII (Foreign Affairs).

On February 13, 1945, British bombers began their merciless attack on the German city 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 scores of noncombatants were burned, baked, or suffocated to death. Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left.

Beginning with life in the city days before the attack, Sinclair McKay’s The Fire and the Darkness offers a pulse-pounding account of these events from the perspective of 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. McKay’s work takes a complex, human view of this terrible night and its excruciating aftermath.