Apocalypse 1945: The Destruction of Dresden (eBook)
⏱️ ~8 hours·📖 320 pages
Apocalypse 1945: The Destruction of Dresden was first published on April 30, 1963. Using official papers, private records, and the accounts of eye-witnesses on both sides, David Irving gives a harrowing account of the two saturation bombing raids executed by RAF Bomber Command on Germany's most beautiful city at the end of the war, a horrific firestorm raid which left over 100,000 innocent civilians dead or missing-jacketed
Apocalypse 1945: The Destruction of Dresden is first published on April 30, 1963. At 10 p.m. on February 13-14, 1945, the Master Bomber broadcast the cryptic order: ‘Controller to Plate-Rack Force: Come in and bomb glow of red T.I.s as planned.’ The ill-famed R.A.F. attack on Dresden had begun. The target city was among Germany’s largest but had little military or industrial value. It was a centre for evacuating wounded servicemen, and schools, restaurants, and public buildings had been converted into hospitals.
The authorities expected that this, a city often compared with Florence for its graceful Baroque style, would be spared. By 1945, the legend was deeply entrenched that Dresden would never be bombed. It was not to be.
In February 1945, with the war’s political and military directors meeting at Yalta in Crimea, Mr Winston Churchill urgently needed some display of his offensive strength and willingness to assist the Russians in their drive westwards. Just seven miles behind the eastern Front, Dresden became the victim of Mr. Churchill’s desire for a spectacular ‘shattering blow’. As things turned out, this, the most crushing air raid of the war, was not delivered until the Yalta conference ended.
Apocalypse 1945: the destruction of dresden
The city was undefended - even the Luftwaffe’s local night fighter force was grounded. There were no proper air raid shelters. Dresden was housing hundreds of thousands of refugees from Silesia, East Prussia, and western Germany, in addition to its population of 630,000. Up to a hundred thousand people, perhaps more, were killed in two or three hours, burned alive that night. Yet until the first edition of this book appeared in 1963, the raid scarcely figured in the Allied war histories. A veil had been drawn across this tragedy.
Stung by foreign revulsion at this new St Valentine’s Day massacre, the British prime minister - who had ordered it - penned an angry minute to his Chief of Staff, even before the war ended, rasping that ‘the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of allied bombing’. It is from this remarkably forgetful minute that the sub-title is taken. For this edition, the full story, omitting nothing, of the historical background to this cruel blow and of its unexpected political consequences, is told.
320 pages - Hardback
About the Author
David Irving
David Irving is a renowned British historian and author of over 30 books. Known for his meticulous primary source research, he has spent decades in archives across the globe, unearthing diaries, documents, and first-hand accounts that have reshaped our understanding of the Second World War and its key figures.
The War Path: Hitler's Germany 1933-1939 is a magnificent Focal Point reprint of a David Irving classic From February 3, 1933, when he told his generals in secret of his ultimate ambition to invade and conquer the East, to September 3, 1939, when he left the Berlin Chancellery for the Polish front, Adolf Hitler had one obsessive goal - to wage war and achieve German revenge and hegemony. David Irving's interviews with Hitler's staff and using original and unpublished firsthand material led him to search for documents and correspondence across Europe.
Churchill's War, Volume I: The Struggle for Power is David Irving's standard work on the early years of Winston Churchill and his war, based, like his work on Hitler, on and interviews and documents exclusively available to him, and thirty years of research in British and international archives. This first volume chronicles an almost unbroken series of disasters in his life, from Gallipoli and the Chanak crisis to the defeat of France and the military fiasco in Greece. Jacketed casebound, a limited edition of a de luxe boxed copy, will be available to those who order early.
Thirty-eight British and American cargo ships sailed in June 1942 for North Russia. On July 4, the British Admiralty ordered the escorts to turn back and escape, leaving each ship to fend for itself. Most were sunk. (David Irving's harrowing 1967 account of the drama resulted in a major libel action in 1970.) Large softcover.
David Irving's much-sought biography of Erhard Milch, Hermann Göring's deputy, the field marshal who founded Lufthansa and then created the Luftwaffe. Reprinted in 2018.
