Europe

The blueprint for bombing Libya, then.

Ukrainian militias (that were then incorporated into the military, like the Azov battalion) were indiscriminately shelling civilian areas

Where can I read more about this?

Lmfao holy shit 😭😭😭😭

And then the un unnazied the world.

It’s been a lot of years since I read Vonnegut and it’s the imagery that sticks with me more than anything else. I did not remember that specific quote but it’s pretty cringe. For whatever can be said about the moral weight of the bombing of Dresden it was definitely not the biggest massacre in European history. I’ll always say I like Vonnegut and definitely important part of my pipeline but he’s got Iowa writers workshop brain worms like many of his contemporaries.

the author sneaks in a jab at the Soviets

Author is Polish, and the maybe unwritten but absolutely serious requirement to publish anything in Poland is to take a jab at the Soviets. You won't believe the completely random and unrelated manner it is sometimes done. Though that requirement is more about books than internet articles, but some people still feel the compulsion.

Not saying Vonnegut couldn't have done better historical research, but Slaughterhouse 5 was not intended as historical analysis and is much more a psychological novel about PTSD and the effects of war on the mind of someone who lived through the brutality taken from his personal experience of being a POW during the Dresden bombing. He picks up what amounts to an early pop-history American source and doesn't really critically analyze it - just takes at face value its account of the event that he mostly focuses on from his personal, micro-perspective. I don't know if later in life he was confronted with more accurate accounts of the Dresden bombing and whether he commented on the inaccuracy of his books, but you can understand the literary appeal to a surviver of the Dresden bombing being presented with an official history that confirms what he emotionally felt while in the middle of it. He even presents it that way in the first chapter - describing himself and his army buddy as basically ignorant to the macro history of the event until they crack open a book decades later that describes it that way. When the "author" of the referenced book appears in the story itself, he is presented as one of the most deplorable characters confronted in the book. Essentially a bloodthirsty maniac that is both unapologetic while being aware that his conclusions are unsupportable (feeling the need to get confirmation of his statements of belief from a person that he does not even acknowledge to be conscious or cognizant). All that is to say, if the only thing one takes from Slaughterhouse 5 was that it is "bad history" and somehow nazi-aplogia for exaggerating the extent of death in Dresden, or worse, if someone avoids the book altogether because of the accusation, they are really missing out.

Interesting, thanks for the mention!

I thought I was in trouble. Haha

Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden when the bombing happened, and recounts how he survived after he and others huddled in a slaughterhouse to survive, then coming out, witnessing the massive fires and seeing American planes strafing the survivors, including American POWs

o7 all good Comrade we all get worked up