After suffering heavy losses of aircraft during attacks on German factories, Winston Churchill orders cities to be targeted in order to smash German morale and reduce the number of workers available for the Nazi war machine. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians are killed as incendiary bombs turn the center of cities like Hamburg and Dresden into tornados of fire. Sixty years later, a new debate is underway over the reasons for this lethal bombing campaign. Were these relentless aerial attacks on German cities, which killed so many and destroyed so much, a necessary tactic in the war against Hitler? Or was it an act of revenge by the British and Americans? Using rare film footage (much of it in color) and stirring interviews with historians, former bomber pilots and survivors of the destruction, this extraordinary film brings to light the devastating allied air campaign against Nazi Germany.
Cinematography
Rare color footage transforms familiar WWII into visceral immediacy.
Editing
Pilots' testimony versus survivor accounts — devastating juxtaposition.
Direction
Kloft refuses easy answers; lets horror speak for itself.
Director
Michael Kloft
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Much of the color footage was captured by Hitler's own propaganda cinematographers, later seized by Allied forces.
The Dresden debate exploded in 2005 when a German novel reimagined the bombing as Allied war crime; this film predates that firestorm.
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