Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
Democracy's Blameless LeadersFrom Dresden to Abu Ghraib, How Leaders Evade Accountability for Abuse, Atrocity, and Killing$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
Democracy's Blameless Leaders: From Dresden to Abu Ghraib, How Leaders Evade Accountability for Abuse, Atrocity, and Killing

Neil James Mitchell

Print publication date: 2012

Print ISBN-13: 9780814761441

Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: March 2016

DOI: 10.18574/nyu/9780814761441.001.0001

Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM NYU Press SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.nyu.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of NYU Press Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in NYSO for personal use.date: 21 June 2021

Dresden

Dresden

Chapter:
(p.67) 5 Dresden
Source:
Democracy's Blameless Leaders
Author(s):

Neil James Mitchell

Publisher:
NYU Press
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9780814761441.003.0005

This chapter examines the mass killing in Dresden. On the night of February 13, 1945, the incendiary and other bombs dropped from about eight hundred Lancaster and Halifax bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) created an inferno. The night bombing by RAF Bomber Command did most of the damage, according to the official history. In contrast to the massacre at Amritsar, the slaughter of civilians in Dresden and the destruction of urban and residential Germany was government policy. Dresden is a case where one of the most immovable of political leaders, namely Winston Churchill, encountered a potentially resistible force. He was immovable in May 1940, and, as he had demonstrated in the management of the Amritsar massacre, he understood the current moral issue.

Keywords:   Dresden, Royal Air Force, Halifax bombers, Winston Churchill, Amritsar

NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.