Final Thomas history lecture takes on Dresden bombing

Dr. Marvin Thomas, professor of history, will give his last annual multimedia lecture next week.

“Nox Infernalis,” a lecture about the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by the Allies a few months before the end of World War II in Europe, will take place at 7 p.m. April 9 in Rice Auditorium in Fisher Hall.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

The bombing was the topic of the American Kurt Vonnegut's iconic novel “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which is marking its 50th anniversary this year.

The three days of raids raining incendiary bombs by American and British Royal Air Forces so close to the end of the war have sparked years of debate over whether the raids were necessary or should have been labeled a war crime.

An estimated 25,000 people died in the bombings and subsequent firestorms, as well as thousands of dwellings and treasures of Baroque architecture in the previously nearly untouched city.

Thomas learned German while living in Germany in the 1960s. He has been teaching European history at Pitt-Bradford since 1969. In 1997, the Pitt-Bradford Alumni Association chose him as the recipient of its Teaching Excellence Award.

In 2016, he published “The Saxon Aspect of the Bavarian Alloidal Succession 1777-1779: The History of a Legal Dispute,” which deals with the decade before the French Revolution and the last days of absolute monarchical rule in Europe.

This is his 43rd year of presenting a spring multimedia lecture, which has been a popular event in Bradford. Thomas will retire later this month after 50 years of teaching at Pitt-Bradford.

For disability needs related to the lecture, contact the Pitt-Bradford Office of Disability Resources and Services at (814)362-7609 or clh71@pitt.edu.