Historical Background


By February of 1945, Dresden was one of the few major German cities that had not been bombed in the Allied campaign to break German morale by targeting entire cities and towns. It had become a major refuge for civilians fleeing the advance of the Soviet Army across Eastern Europe. It was also the home of American POWs who, like Vonnegut, had been captured during the Battle of the Bulge. Although there were no obvious military targets in Dresden, allied commanders later suggested that the city was an important communications link between the German armies in eastern and western Europe. Critics of the raid maintain that the lack of military significance and the inflated population were reasons not to target Dresden. Some historians suggest that the fire-bombing of Dresden was ordered as revenge for the V-2 rocket attacks on London late in the war.
The raid was carried out over three days, with the Royal Air Force leading the first wave with incendiary bombs that created a firestorm in the city. Over the next two days, the American Air Force followed up with raids on the survivors. No accurate casualty reports exist because of the firestorm, but estimates range from a low of thirty-five thousand deaths (the figure offered by the Allies) to over one hundred thousand (the figure offered by the Germans). Regardless of the actual number of casualties, the firebombing of Dresden obviously ranks with the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities of World War II.
In 1969, the United States was reeling (vacillando) from the growing violence of the anti-war and civil rights movements. The country had witnessed the assassination of two leaders who were considered icons of peace and hope for a better society, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. It is not surprising that in this atmosphere, Vonnegut’s novel gained an almost cult-like following among the generation that rejected what it saw as the materialism and shallowness of American society. Billy Pilgrim’s apparent acceptance of fate–he responds to every mention of death with the phrase “so it goes”–actually illustrates Vonnegut’s opposition to blind acceptance of socially acceptable cruelty.