Irving and method of attack.

 The actual attack on Dresden was, according to Irving, specifically significant and different from other bombings. The bomb load was, “Unlike most of the air raids on German targets at this stage of the war, the force was carrying about seventy-five percent incendiaries.”¹ This is a phenomenal claim to make but with the restriction of wartime documents relating to Dresden. Another claim he makes is that:

“Mustangs concentrated on the river banks, where masses of bombed out people had gathered. Another section took on the targets in the Grosser Garten area. These strafing attacks were apparently designed to perfect the task outlined in the air commanders’ directives as ‘causing confusion in the civilian evacuation from the east.’”²

Irving is claiming that P-51 Mustangs deliberately attacked civilians after the raids. More importantly he implies that they were under direct orders from allied high command as they were following the “air commanders' directives” in carrying out the attack. Irving substantiates his claims with eye-witness testimonies such as, “The fighter aircraft came right down and a woman near us suddenly screamed out, shot in the stomach.”³ and of a Breslau refugee at the Leipziger Strasse rail bridge saying, “We could hear the aircraft diving low and then they began firing from all their guns. We

were fortunate, we were able to crawl into a doorway.”⁴ Irving does consider the fallibility of memory however and adds as a side note that “(U.S. Air Force historians have pointed out, ‘Nothing in the records can be found to substantiate such claims,’ and it is only fair to record this.)”⁵ Kurt Vonnegut in his surreal book Slaughterhouse 5 exaggerates the heartlessness of the bomber crews stating that, “...the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and had no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground."⁶ Vonnegut's book is heavily influenced by his own context as a prisoner of war during the raids and so refused to consider other perspectives, much alike Irving's conclusions on the context of the raid.

1Irving, op. Cit, p. 173

2Ibid., p. 237

3Irving, op. Cit, p. 237

4Ibid., p. 238

5Ibid., p. 237

6K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5, Vintage, 2000, p. 138 (originally published 1969, New York)