The devastating 1945 Allied bombing campaign in Dresden

For 15 hours beginning on the night of Feb. 13, 1945, the historic city of Dresden, celebrated as the “German Florence” was battered by Allied warplanes.

Until that date, Germany’s seventh largest city with its 600,000 inhabitants — and roughly 700,000 refugees — had emerged from the Allied bombing campaign of World War II relatively unscathed.

The United States Army Air Force had…