On the night of July 24, 1943, nearly 800 Allied aircraft unleashed a massive aerial bombardment of the city of Hamburg. Operation Gomorrah, as it was named, continued for ten days and resulted in a firestorm that swept the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians and leaving a million homeless.
The End: Hamburg 1943 is Hans Erich Nossack’s terse, remarkable memoir of the annihilation of the city, written only three months after the bombing. A searing firsthand account of one of the most notorious events of World War II, The End is also a meditation on war and hope, history and its devastation.
Read an excerpt.