During World War II, the city of Dresden was not considered a prime military target. A city known for its beauty and fairy tale architecture, it was a center for refugees. It was also the home of an American POW, Kurt Vonnegut.
75 years ago today, Vonnegut survived the fire bombing of Dresden. At least 25,000 others did not. Vonnegut's catharsis, his way of dealing with an event for which there was no answer, was to write Slaughter House Five, arguably his most remembered novel.
This one is from 1952, seven years after the bombing.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy.- Super Hans
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.- H. L. Mencken
