ABSTRACT
Most large German cities fared no better, especially those subjected to firebombing like Hamburg in 1943 and Dresden in 1945. Sixty-two thousand British civilians died in German bombing raids, many of them in London, which is obviously 62,000 too many; but that is also many fewer than the 600,000 German civilians who died in air raids, some of them, in 1945, to no military purpose at all. When Dresden was bombed, most able-bodied men were at the front. Left at home to burn to death instead were grandmothers, mothers, and infants. It was ‘largely because the Soviets complained that Britain and the US were not contributing their fair share’ that Dresden was bombed at all.2 When people are consumed by flames, they shrink; and their corpses take on the look of large puppets. Paris, obviously, was spared these devastating indignities.
