Monstrous excess in Dresden destruction.

(From Canberra Times)

W HY SHOULD we be reminded of three bombing raids, conducted almost 60 years ago, which dropped 2600 tonnes of high explosives and incendiary devices to destroy an area of 3.4 sq km? The simple, short answer is that the British and American attacks on the eastern German city of Dresden at the end of World War II have become synonymous with the most monstrous excesses of terror bombing. Unlike Hiroshima, nobody could credibly argue that levelling Dresden saved lives or shortened the war. Unlike the assaults on Coventry, on one side, or Hamburg, on the other, nobody would claim that destroying Dresden critically affected strategic planning or …