<p>@campuscsi, post #34</p>
<p>Vonnegut became a POW in WWII. He experienced the monstrous firebombing of Dresden in the winter of 1945.</p>
<p>Vonnegut miraculously survived these tremendous allied bombing raids, which annihilated the majority of the German city. Slaughterhouse Five was the name that the prisoners gave the underground former-meat-locker that the Germans had converted into a POW prison. Its actual name was the same, except in German. This horrific experience, and its aftermath, was the inception of the fictitious (but loosely based on his experience) anti-war book that became titled Slaughterhouse Five.</p>