On April 8, 1945, several American bomber squadrons were informed that their German targets were temporarily unavailable due to cloud cover. As it was too late to turn back, the assembled ordnance was diverted to nearby Halberstadt. A mid-sized cathedral town of no particular industrial or strategic importance, Halberstadt was almost totally destroyed, and a then-thirteen-year-old Alexander Kluge watched his town burn to the ground. Incorporating photographs, diagrams, and drawings in this book, Kluge captures the overwhelming rapidity and totality of the destruction of his town from numerous perspectives. This report, fragmentary and unfinished, is one of Kluge’s most personal works.

Link to Onleihe

German original title