British bombers dropped 1,900 tons of white phosphorus incendiary bombs on Hamburg, the culmination of Churchill’s “moral bombing” strategy, aimed at weakening Germany’s historical and industrial prosperity by targeting the areas with the highest worker density and terrorizing the Germans. On July 27, thanks to warm and clear weather, a firestorm ensued, sucking in air from all directions, further fueling the flames: the Gomorrah effect, which caused 40,000 to 50,000 people to die of asphyxiation or liquefy. 250,000 homes were destroyed, as well as factories, docks, and military bases. Three hundred years earlier, in Hamburg itself, the German Henning Brand had isolated the element phosphorus…
