The city of Dresden was the primary victim of the “zone of limitation” agreement reached at Yalta—one of the few direct outcomes of the military consultations held there. In early 1945 Dresden was one of the few major German centers to have escaped systematic Allied bombing. On the night of February 13 – only two days after the end of the Yalta conference – the Royal Air Force Bomber Command executed the first night air raid on the city. “Florence on the Elbe”, as it was known, was reduced to rubble by Allied bombers in three major raids between February 13 and 15 – known by the Allies as Operation Thunderclap.
Altogether 1,300 British and American bombers dropped more than 3,000 tons of bombs including 1,100 tons of incendiaries on a city with one million civilians.