Fire and Fury The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945

Two-thirds of Germans who died under the bombs did so in 1944 and 1945, and in the last year of the war cities with little military were obliterated. In Japan, American bombers destroyed all but three major Japanese cities, and the people in them, after March 1945. These raids occurred, in other words, when Allied victory was assured and when precision bombing techniques were far more advanced than they were earlier in the war.
Fire and Fury asks why.
Based on extensive archival sources, interviews with bombing survivors, airmen, and published first-hand accounts, the book looks at the bombing campaign from an avowedly human perspective - Allied, German and Japanese. It recreates the experience of living through the death of a city. It presents the complex personalities of the senior airmen, and explores why bombing campaigns that seem so excessive seventy-five years later seemed reasonable, to many, at the time. It explains why those campaigns became so murderous so late in the war. And it asks, with the full benefits of time's fullness, whether it was all worth it.
Perfect for fans of Max Hastings, James Holland and Antony Beevor.