John Keegan is England’s foremost military historian and, for many years, was the Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. His book — The Second World War — is arguably the best single volume book on World War II and his book The Face of Battle is essential reading for anyone seeking an understanding of the history of warfare. His latest book — The Iraq War — was published in 2004, and here are prior posts on Mr. Keegan’s views on the Iraq War. In short, when John Keegan writes about war, it is wise to take note.
Over this past weekend, over 100,000 Germans celebrated the reopening of Dresden, Germany’s beautiful Baroque church — the Frauenkirche — which had laid in ruins for almost 60 years as a bleak reminder of the Allied fire-bombing raids of February 1945 that killed 25,000 people and incinerated Dresden’s old city. The Dresden firebombing remained largely unnoticed outside of military circles until the early 1970’s when it formed the basis of Kurt Vonnegut’s haunting novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which in turn formed the basis of the 1972 George Roy Hill movie of the same name.
In this Daily Telegraph op-ed, Mr. Keegan uses the occasion of the Frauenkirche celebration to review the Dresden firebombing and to observe how Allied terror bombing during World War II raises difficult issues in these times of widespread civilian terror bombing against Americans and citizens of Allied countries. As with all of Mr. Keegan’s writings, the entire piece is well worth reading, and his conclusion gives you a taste of his special perspective:

In the last, remembering Dresden forces one to recognise that there is nothing nice or admirable about any war, and that victory, even a victory as desirable as that over Nazi Germany, is purchased at the cost of terrible human suffering, the suffering of the completely innocent as well as of their elders and their parents in arms. It is right to remember Dresden, but chiefly as a warning against repetition of the mass warfare that tortured Europe in the 20th century.