Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945

August Schreitmüller's sculpture "Güte" ("Goodness") overlooks the destroyed city.

So how's that religion thing working out for you guys?

The best definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

"It had been decided that the raid would be a so-called double strike, in which a second wave of bombers would attack three hours after the first, just as the rescue teams were trying to put out the fires."^[37]

By early morning on 14 February, Ash Wednesday, the center of the city, including its Altstadt, was engulfed in a firestorm, with temperatures peaking at over 1500 °C (2700 °F.) ^[70]

"Joseph Goebbels, wanted to use it as a pretext for abandonment of the Geneva Conventions on the Western Front. In the end, the only political action the German government took was to exploit it for propaganda purposes." ^[90]

Even with this, and they didn't abandon the "quaint" Geneva Conventions.

Howard Cowan, an Associated Press war correspondent, filed a story saying that the Allies had resorted to terror bombing.

Churchill subsequently distanced himself from the bombing.^{[98][103][104]} On 28 March, 1945, Churchill, in a memo sent by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff, wrote:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land… The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.

The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.^[105][106]

Whoever wrote this Wikipedia entry deserves the highest praise. Would that I created work of this caliber.