Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick Lee
I went to Dresden for the first time in 1989 just before the Wall came down. At that time, a lot of the inner city was still fenced off and unrebuilt. The devastation was amazing even 44 yrs. later. I was last there about four years ago and the Frauenkirche was just about done being rebuilt. It truly was the best preserved baroque city in Europe before Feb. 1945. Still, destroying Dresden had little military value. It was full of refugees from the eastern territories at the time we and the Brits bombed it. It was a revenge kinda thing.
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Dresden is proof that war is as much about psychological victory as physical devastation. I've never been there but I've read just about everything Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ever wrote. He was haunted by the bombing his entire adult life (he was in a bunker under Dresden at the time of the bombing - he was an Allied POW). Just reading his accounts of it used to turn my stomach and make me break out in a cold sweat.