1. ‘Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe Below the Augustus Bridge’, Bernardo Bellotto, c.1750.
2. The stable courtyard of Dresden’s castle, c.1930s.
4. Panorama overlooking the Altstadt in the 1930s.
6. Dresden’s central railway station.
10. Poster for Dresden’s Hygiene Exhibition, 1911.
11. Hitler in front of the Zwinger Palace, 1934.
13. Hitler at an exhibition of ‘degenerate’ art, 1933.
14. The Duke of Windsor visiting Dresden, 1937.
15. Members of the League of German Girls.
16. Martin Mutschmann at an exhibition of folk art.
21. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris at Bomber Command.
22. Miles Tripp and his bomber crew.
24. ‘Cookie’ bombs being dropped on Dresden.
25. The fiercely burning streets from above.
26. Bombers release their payloads.
27. The firestorm seen from a distance.
29. Emergency teams dealing with the corpses.
30. The already pulverized city prior to the American raid of 14 February.
31. Richard Peter’s famous photograph of the devastation.
32. Bodies awaiting identification.
33. A makeshift funeral pyre in the central market square.
34. The shattered area south of the Elbe.
35. Refugee children on the streets of the city.
36. Another of Dresden’s fragmented streets.
39. The damaged Zwinger Palace.
40. Hastily erected road signs in Russian.
41. A Soviet propaganda poster: ‘Learning from the Soviet people’.
42. The ruins inspired both fear and poetry.
43. Sheep grazing near the ruined Frauenkirche.
44. ‘Hill and Ploughed Field Near Dresden’, Caspar David Friedrich, c.1824.
45. A detail from the Communist Culture Palace mural ‘Way of the Red Flag’.
46. A tower block bearing the exhortation: ‘Socialism wins’.
47. The ‘Procession of Princes’ mural in the castle stable courtyard.
48. Dresden’s 1960s large-scale housing constructions.
49. The Prager Strasse shopping area, remodelled after the war.
50. Futuristic housing in Prager Strasse.
51. Vladimir Putin during his Dresden posting in the 1980s.
52. The choir of the Kreuzkirche with cantor Rudolf Mauersberger.
55. Professor Heinrich Barkhausen.
The majority of the photographs come from private collections. Others are from: 2–8, 12–14, 16, 21, 30, 32–5, 46, 47, 52, 54, Getty; 9, 15, 19, 27, 31, 41, 58, Alamy; 11, 18, 36, 40, Mary Evans; 23, 56, Bridgeman; 42, 43, Terje Hartberg; 53, Deutsche Fotothek. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright but the publisher welcomes any information that clarifies the copyright ownership of any unattributed material displayed and will endeavour to include corrections in reprints.