World War II was more than three years old when Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and other Allied leaders met at Casablanca in January 1943, but the decisions made there would shape the rest of the war in Europe.
During the conference, Allied leaders settled on a policy of unconditional surrender and agreed on a strategic bombing plan to bring the Axis to its knees.
Read more: What it was like in the room when Nazi Germany finally surrendered to end World War II in Europe
For the US, bombing would focus on daytime raids against strategically valuable targets — factories, ports, military bases, and other infrastructure involved in the war effort. For the British, who had suffered during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the air war would target German cities with nighttime raids.
In the following months, numerous German cities would crumble beneath the onslaught, but perhaps the most heinous destruction was in Dresden, a historic city in southeast Germany.
Dresden had avoided the destruction wreaked on major urban centers like Berlin and Hamburg. But on February 13, 14, and 15, 1945, more than 1,200 British and US heavy bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city.
The intensity of the bombing devastated the city's historic center. The fire that raged during the bombing made superheated air rise with such force that it created a vacuum on the ground, ripping trees out of the ground, sucking people into the fires, and suffocating those spared the flames.
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Roughly 25,000 people were killed, many of them civilians and refugees, and more than 75,000 buildings were destroyed. The scale and ferocity of the bombing, so late in the war, has led many to believe the attack was a war crime.
Below, you can see some of the devastation wrought by Allied forces 74 years ago:
Dresden was a cultural and architectural gem in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The city is located on the river Elbe River, and the Dresden Frauenkirche, a Lutheran church, and the Katholische Hofkirche, the city's Roman Catholic Cathedral, can be seen below.
The interior of the city was just as stunning. Dresden, known as "the Florence of the Elbe" before the war because of its architecture and museums, had little involvement in the German war effort.
After nearly six years of brutal war, Nazi Germany was staggering in February 1945. Soviet armies had reached the Oder River, roughly 50 miles from Berlin. The US had recently won the Battle of the Bulge, defeating Hitler's last-ditch attempt to break out of the Ardennes forest. The Nazi Luftwaffe was a shell of itself, able to do little to contest Allied control of the air over Europe.
Source: History.com, Business Insider
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