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Just click the link in the show description to support now. Uh, you remember the tornado at the Wizard of Oz, well imagine that, but composed

of pure searing flame, but still dragging trees out by the roots, trees being

dragged up into its kind of more, lampposts being dragged up in the sky and people too, people being

literally being picked up off the ground and burned as they can world around in the sky above.

I mean it's just, just terrifying. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front

lines. Here am your host Matthew Galt. In the closing days of

World War II, the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force dropped

more than 3,900 tons of high explosives and fire bombs on the city of Dresden. It was not strictly only a military target, and the story of the bombing has captured the imagination of everyone who survived and those who studied the war

afterwards. It had long-ranging consequences that we're still talking about today.

One of the people who has studied this is Sinclair McKay.

McKay is a literary critic for the Telegraph and the Spectator in the UK,

and his latest book is The Fire and Darkness,

The Bombing of Dresden 1945.

Sir, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you very much for asking me.

All right, so we'd like to get some basic stuff out of the way at the top of the show usually.

So can you give me the broad outline of the fire bombing of Treston?

In my mind, I always call it the fire bombing, although it's not always called that.

But it is interesting point actually.

...