The Bombing of Dresden

February 13-15:

The Bombing of Dresden was a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) and as part of the Allied forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War. In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometres) of the city centre.
A 1953 United States Air Force report written by Joseph W. Angell defended the operation as the justified bombing of a military and industrial target, which was a major rail transportation and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the Nazi war effort. However, several researchers have discovered that not all of the communications infrastructure, such as the bridges, were in fact targeted, nor were the extensive industrial areas outside the city centre. It is argued that Dresden was a cultural landmark of little or no military significance, a "Florence on the Elbe" (Elbflorenz), as it was known, and the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and not proportionate to the commensurate military gains.

It not only destroyed the city and killed at least 25,000 Germans, it nearly finished off Kurt Vonnegut, too:

Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) was a satirical novel that used some elements from his experiences as a prisoner of war at Dresden during the bombing. His account relates that over 135,000 were killed during the firebombings. Vonnegut recalled "utter destruction" and "carnage unfathomable." The Germans put him and other POWs to work gathering bodies for mass burial. "But there were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Nazis sent in troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians' remains were burned to ashes."
In the special introduction to the 1976 Franklin Library edition of the novel, he wrote:

"The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in."

This experience was also used in several of his other books and is included in his posthumously published stories: Armageddon in Retrospect.

It definitely is one of the most hotly debated Allied decisions of the war.