‘The Fire and the Darkness,” Sinclair McKay’s new account of the destruction from the air of Dresden during the night of Feb. 13-14, 1945, is determined to do justice to the complex nature of this extraordinarily seductive German city—and most especially to the artistic and architectural glories that led to its being dubbed “Florence on the Elbe.”
Earlier in the war, Dresden’s position in east-central Germany, at the very extreme of practical bombing range, had served to protect it. By the conflict’s final months, however, not only had Dresden and its three-quarters of a million people become vulnerable to the Allied bomber fleets, now provided with vital long-range fighter escorts, but the ground war itself had come closer. Toward the end of January 1945, the Soviet Red Army, pushing forward on a front stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic, had advanced toward the Silesian capital, Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland), a mere 140 miles to the east.
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