The firebombing of Dresden begins

On the night of 13 February 1945, the first wave of British Lancaster bombers appeared over Dresden around 10 p.m., opening one of the most destructive — and disputed — air raids of the Second World War. In roughly fifteen minutes they dropped some 880 tons of bombs on the city center; a second RAF wave of about 550 bombers followed hours later, and the U.S. Eighth Air Force struck by day.

The incendiaries kindled countless small fires that merged into a firestorm, a self-feeding inferno of superheated wind that consumed the historic core. A widely accepted estimate puts the dead at around 25,000 to 35,000, though wartime propaganda inflated the figure wildly.

Dresden held little obvious military value, and its destruction became a lasting symbol in the debate over area bombing. Was a refugee-swollen cultural capital a legitimate target, or terror for its own sake? Eighty years on, the question has never been fully settled.