Reading #Slaughterhouse5 on the beach in #Copenhagen, where we've taken refuge from the #heat is a bit of a mindbender, must be said...
Perhaps #Europe needs these kind of reminders though, our lives are maybe too comfortable?
#Drought #ClimateDiary #Ukraine
#SummerReading #SummerReadingChallenge
Attached: 1 image Well. That's my summer reading sorted. How's everyone else doing? #SummerReading #Bookstodon #Shelfie #summerReadingChallenge
I fell down a bit of a #wikipedia rabbit hole reading up on #Dresden after finishing #Slaughterhouse5 yesterday. I'd always assumed the #Firestorm was almost accidental, but they knew *exactly* what they were doing.
And they'd already practiced on #Hamburg.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
I consider myself well-informed and I know Hamburg well and now I wonder how I'd missed the ~37,000 people killed by allied bombers in 1943?
Many of the bodies were never identified.
In some cellars they could only work out how many had died by the quantity of ash on the floor.
Europe is a graveyard
@Ruth_Mottram the bombing campaign is still very much present in many if not most cities of Germany.
There is a graveyard with bombing victims age 3 to 90 directly behind our back yard (and one with slave workers and POWs executed in April 1945 nearby).
Also every project that involves excavation of some sort needs probing for duds.
It is very common for whole quarters to be evacuated for bomb defusal.
Ruth Mottram
Tobias Merkendorf