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Book

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  • CENTRAL: Second Floor
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The fire and the darkness : the bombing of Dresden, 1945

Call Number

  • 940.54213 M4787 (CEN)

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Edition

First U.S. edition.

Publication Information

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2020.

Physical Description

xxv, 369, 24 pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Summary

"A work of narrative nonfiction recounting the history of the Dresden Bombing, one of the most devastating attacks of World War II. On February 13th, 1945 at 10:03 PM, British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of WWII: the bombing 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 the citizens of Dresden were burned, baked, or suffocated to death. Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left. Sinclair McKay's The Fire and the Darkness is a pulse-pounding work of history that looks at the life of the city in the days before the attack, tracks each moment of the bombing, and considers the long period of reconstruction and recovery. The Fire and the Darkness is powered by McKay's reconstruction of this unthinkable terror from the points of view of the 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."--

Contents

  • Part one: the approaching fury. The days before
  • In the forests of the Gauleiter
  • The dethroning of reason
  • Art and degeneracy
  • The glass man and the physicists
  • 'A sort of little London'
  • The science of doomsday
  • The correct atmospheric conditions
  • Hosing out
  • The devil will get no rest
  • Part two: Schreckensnacht. The day of darkness
  • Five minutes before the sirens
  • Into the abyss
  • Shadows and light
  • 10.03 p.m.
  • The burning eyes
  • Midnight
  • The second wave
  • From among the dead
  • The third wave
  • Part three: aftershock. Dead men and dreamers
  • The radiant tombs
  • The meanings of terror
  • The music of the dead
  • Recoil
  • 'The Stalinist style'
  • Beauty and remembrance.

Subjects

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