Freelance author Lowe presents the 1943 Hamburg firestorm raids as a case study in WWII's defining characteristic: the tension between desire to destroy at random and will to restrain that desire.

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Monday March 26 2007 American and British planes bombed Hamburg in 1943. We referred to the RAF bombers as ...

"The End: Hamburg, 1943" by Hans Erich Nossack (1901-77), is a freshly translated memoir by a German novelist who wrote it three months after "Operation Gomorrah" incinerated his city. In Hamburg, ...