“All this happened, more or less” Kurt Vonnegut begins his classic work, Slaughterhouse Five.  Since the story involves the character Billy Pilgrim traveling through space and time this seems almost unimaginable.  For certain, Vonnegut felt the same during his time sheltering during the bombing raid in Schlachthof 5 (Slaugherhouse Five).  Vonnegut uses a science fiction and satire to spin absurdity to show the horrors of war. 

The fire bombing of Dresden was an Allied operation between February 13 -15th, 1945 in the final days of the war.  Dresden was a communication and railway crossroads with strategic significance and up to that point had been relatively unscathed by Allied bombing.  The bombing of “Germany’s Florence” with high explosive and incendiary bombs created a fire storm.  Nearly 700,000 refugees were sheltering at the time in the city, by German estimates, the firestorm killing both civilian and military targets indiscriminately.  

Vonnegut had recently been captured and was a POW during the Battle of the Bulge.  He and fellow prisoners survived the raid in a meat locker, then were forced to bury bodies in the aftermath.  No doubt the horrors he observed inspired him to write the story of Slaughter House Five and sowed the seed of the protagonist becoming “unstuck in time”.  It’s hard to even imagine the horrors of what he may have seen.  In a time just before the atomic age the power of air power was already incredibly devastating. 

1. https://www.afhistory.af.mil/FAQs/Fact-Sheets/Article/458943/1945-bombings-of-dresden/
2. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/kurt-vonnegut-slaughterhouse-five
3.   https://media.defense.gov/2013/May/23/2001329959/-1/-1/0/Dresden%20again.pdf