Kurt Vonnegut describes the bid arriving successful Dresden astatine 5 o’clock that afternoon: “The boxcar doors were opened, and the doorways framed the loveliest metropolis that astir of the Americans had ever seen. The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd. It looked similar a Sunday schoolhouse representation of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim.” Dresden was, indeed, a beauteous city, a taste and creator halfway often called a jewel box. And it is existent arsenic good that Dresden remained remarkably intact compared to different ample German cities. The theatre and opera location were open. All eighteen of the city’s cinemas were showing films that winter. Restaurants and shops were busy. Yet, the conception that Dresden was an unfastened city, disconnected limits to bombing, or, arsenic Vonnegut writes successful the novel, that “it had not suffered truthful overmuch arsenic a cracked windowpane” was not accurate.
The conception of Dresden arsenic an “innocent” city, devoted strictly to civilization and the arts…is a myth.
Everyday Dresdeners were not protected from the warfare oregon escaped from its effects. They had witnessed and often eagerly participated successful the fierce anti-Semitism that infected the remainder of the country; 90 percent of the Jewish-Polish colonisation of Dresden were arrested successful October of 1938 and dumped implicit the borderline into Poland. Since that time, astir each of the city’s remaining Jews had been sent to enactment oregon extermination camps, and orders had conscionable arrived for Jews that were joined to “Aryans” oregon who had Aryan parents to study for transit. War refugees, who had been crowding into the metropolis for years, did not fto Dresdeners hide the dire circumstances elsewhere successful Germany. Initially arriving from the west, from cities similar Hamburg and Berlin that had already been bombed by the Allies, adjacent much refugees poured successful from the eastbound successful precocious 1944 and aboriginal 1945.
They came from the neighboring state of Silesia and from Poland, up of the advancing Soviet Army. From the caller arrivals, Dresdeners heard the harrowing tales of wide rapes, murders, and atrocities perpetrated by Russian soldiers anxious for revenge. With nary much country for the burgeoning influx, astatine slightest six 1000 of the city’s refugees were housed astatine the cardinal railway station, which would beryllium devastated successful the Allied firebombing. The metropolis was besides brimming with overseas workers surviving successful camps successful and astir Dresden, who had been brought successful to enactment connected the railways since truthful galore German men were disconnected fighting. In October 1944, the draught property successful Germany was lowered to sixteen and raised to fifty, taking adjacent much men, sometimes fathers and sons together, distant from their families.
Nor had the crowded metropolis escaped bombing altogether. In the months starring up to the February attack, Dresden had already been damaged by scattered, small-scale American daylight raids. In October 1944, a tiny radical of American “Hell’s Angels” dropped bombs connected railway marshaling yards successful the city, with a fewer going astray and landing connected schools and neighborhoods. The raid killed 270 people. Another tiny raid connected January 16, 1945, by 144 American B-24 Liberator aircraft, which could alert further and faster than B-17s, damaged a four-mile country and killed 376 Dresdeners. This past bombing, successful fact, created enactment for immoderate of the precocious arrived American POWS of the 106th Division. While Vonnegut toiled successful a malt syrup factory, respective different prisoners were assigned to labour details clearing retired the rubble near down from the bombings.
The conception of Dresden arsenic an “innocent” city, devoted strictly to civilization and the arts, whose factories manufactured mostly porcelain figurines and dinnerware on with different luxury goods, specified arsenic cigarettes, cameras, sewing machines, and bicycles, is simply a story arsenic well. Almost each of these factories had been converted to enactment the warfare effort. Cigarette-making machines were adapted to nutrient bullets. Companies that made camera lenses focused connected creating better, much close weaponry sights. Radio, bicycle, and sewing instrumentality makers produced precision instrumentality tools cardinal to warfare technology. Even a celebrated artist’s colony and schoolhouse successful the bluish portion of the metropolis had ceased making furnishings and crafts, alternatively gathering woody process assemblies for planes arsenic metallic became scarce. The colony’s well-known Festival Hall had go an SS barracks. By 1944, Dresden contained astatine slightest 1 100 and twenty-seven factories that manufactured warfare material, and astir Dresdeners were employed successful warfare enactment oregon armaments factories.
The American prisoners exiting the boxcars connected January 12 did not spot this hidden portion of Dresden. Like Billy Pilgrim successful the novel, they glimpsed what seemed similar heaven—a charming, picturesque city, filled with parks, monuments, and cobblestone streets that seemed remarkably escaped from the atrocious symptom and suffering they had witnessed during the Bulge, their freezing forced march to Gerolstein, and their harrowing ordeal connected the cramped boxcars taking them to Stalag IV-B. Prisoner Floyd Harding remembers his archetypal content of the metropolis arsenic “a beauteous place,” with magnificent buildings and churches. While the remainder of Germany was “so destroyed and trampled, Dresden was similar it was not successful the war.” Gordon Zicker, a chap prisoner, agrees, recalling that “Dresden was a nice, beauteous metropolis with civilians walking astir and people nary war.”
The illusion of a beautiful, war-free Dresden, however, would soon burst for these men, going arsenic level arsenic the champagne bubbles aft the wedding of Billy Pilgrim’s daughter. The prisoners were marched to their caller home, a fenced-in and razor-wired compound connected the confederate slope of the Elbe River, which had formerly served arsenic a slaughterhouse. After entering the compound’s main gate, guarded by a bronze statue of a steer, the men were led to their caller surviving quarters. They would beryllium housed successful a large, rectangular, concrete-block gathering that had primitively been a holding pen and slaughter country for livestock. Two-thirds of the gathering had been converted into sleeping barracks, with double-decker bunks crowded 1 against the other. The remaining 3rd of the gathering contained a refectory and room area. When they were archetypal selected for the Dresden detail, chap prisoners had joked astir however fortunate these 150 men were—assigned to enactment successful a beauteous metropolis harmless from the war. But they soon discovered however overmuch much grueling beingness was successful the Dresden slaughterhouse than successful Stalag IV-B. Subsisting connected starvation rations, the men worked twelve-hour days lone to instrumentality to freezing acold barracks astatine night. They would aftermath earlier dawn the adjacent time to commencement the full process implicit again, each the portion trying to debar the attraction of the much sadistic guards.
Gifford Doxsee was 1 of the 15 prisoners, on with Vonnegut, who were assigned to enactment astatine the König malt factory. The bulk of the mill had been converted during the precocious warfare years to manufacture the ersatz coffee, made of roasted grain, sweetener beet shavings, and chicory, which was drunk by the American POWs and mean Dresdeners arsenic well. Doxsee’s occupation consisted mostly of carnal labor—unloading boxcars of atom and different materials, hauling them astir the factory, and moving the bagging instrumentality connected the building’s apical floor. A bid of pipes sucked up the atom from the crushed level, wherever it was loaded into burlap sacks for storage. While ersatz java was the factory’s main business, it inactive produced a tiny magnitude of the saccharine malt syrup that was its main merchandise earlier the war. Doxsee recalls that German civilian women did astir of the enactment successful making and packaging the syrup.
Sometimes these women would kindly crook their backs truthful that the American prisoners, each of whom had hidden spoons, could dip into the still-cooking syrup. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut writes that, connected his 2nd time successful the factory, Billy Pilgrim spoons up immoderate of the blistery liquid, twisting it into a “gooey lollipop” that helium thrusts into his mouth. After a moment, “every compartment successful Billy’s assemblage shook him with ravenous gratitude and applause.” But spooning up the syrup was considered a superior crime. Doxsee remembers getting caught 1 time by the Nazi foreman arsenic helium was putting a spoon back. Pale with fear, helium escaped with lone a venomous tongue-lashing alternatively than the carnal beating helium expected.
Terror wasn’t the lone limb the Nazis utilized against the American prisoners. Sometimes, they utilized propagandistic persuasion arsenic well.
Terror wasn’t the lone limb the Nazis utilized against the American prisoners. Sometimes, they utilized propagandistic persuasion arsenic well. In the novel, Vonnegut describes an “interesting visitor” that the American prisoners person 2 days earlier the firebombing. Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American-born Nazi propagandist, comes to impulse the men to articulation a caller German service portion of his ain devising, “The Free American Corps,” which would combat connected the Russian front. Campbell promises the famished men that they volition beryllium fed steak dinners, mashed potatoes, and mince pies if they volunteer, and that, aft the German victory, they’ll beryllium repatriated done Switzerland. At slightest 8 veterans of the slaughterhouse campy callback that a akin fig really did sojourn them successful the barracks, offering them “the beingness of Riley” if they would articulation the German Army. Half of these men specifically sanction the visitant “Campbell.”
While these erstwhile prisoners mightiness beryllium mixing up the shadowy fig from the camps with the quality from Vonnegut’s novel, it’s besides imaginable that Campbell mightiness person been the man’s existent name, which Vonnegut borrowed. Some of the ex-POWs callback this idiosyncratic arsenic a German officer, immoderate retrieve him arsenic an American, and others importune that helium was British and pretended to beryllium from the Red Cross. Despite the haze of events recalled successful representation agelong afterward, there’s nary uncertainty that the visitant was real. He near down a missive addressed to “Soldiers of the United States of America,” which was preserved by erstwhile captive Tom Jones. It seems astir likely, based connected spellings successful the missive and captive memory, that the antheral was British. The missive advises the Americans that their existent force is not the Germans astatine all, but alternatively the “cruel Asiatic hords [sic]” of Soviet Bolsheviks that “slaughter and torment women and children.” It concludes by urging the Americans to articulation German soldiers successful defending Western civilization against the “barbaric asiatic East.” This fig of the Nazi recruiter trying to crook the Americans against the Russians would go important for Vonnegut’s analyzable position connected the war.
Readers of Slaughterhouse-Five unfamiliar with Vonnegut’s different books mightiness not recognize that Howard W. Campbell Jr. archetypal appeared arsenic the main quality of Vonnegut’s earlier caller Mother Night, published successful 1962. Like Slaughterhouse–Five, Mother Night explores the shadowy enactment separating bully and evil during wartime. The caller is presented arsenic the situation “confessions” of Campbell, an American-born playwright turned Nazi vigor announcer during the war. Although Campbell insists that helium was truly a treble cause sending coded messages to the Allies during his vigor broadcasts, helium tin supply nary grounds to enactment this assertion and is presently being held successful an Israeli prison, awaiting proceedings for warfare crimes. The novel, with its celebrated moral—“We are what we unreal to be, truthful we indispensable beryllium cautious astir what we unreal to be”—explicitly stated successful Vonnegut’s caller instauration to the 1966 edition, raises questions astir constructed identity, the limits of nationalism, and whether the ends warrant the means arsenic it probes whether Campbell did much harm arsenic an anti-Semitic Nazi propagandist than bully arsenic an Allied treble agent.
____________________________
From Vonnegut’s War: The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five by Susan Farrell. Copyright © 2026. Available from Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.
English (US) ·