It was a truly gruesome and violent sight. .
Along with being present during the Battle of the Bulge, Vonnegut was there during the bombing of Dresden. He was sent there as prisoner of war, which the antagonist in the novel, Billy Pilgrim, was as well. During the actual bombing, Vonnegut was luckily underground inside an air-raid shelter, with the other American prisoners. He saw the beautiful city of Dresden before the attack, and the destruction after, "What he did not see from the inside of Slaughterhouse-Five was a full day and night of high-explosive demolition of streets, buildings, monuments, houses, and living human organisms, followed by the towering cyclone of flame, the all-consuming, all-destroying pillar of oxidation; nor did he feel the giant vacuum that tore people's breath out of their lungs, that sucked their very bodies into the vortex" (Phillip Beidler, "What Kurt Vonnegut Saw in World War II That Made Him Crazy"). Vonnegut described the after-math of Dresden as something that would make you want to stay inside forever. To be at such a place and see such death truly would make a person mad. The violence and hatred in this war scarred Vonnegut for the rest of his life, and he carried his memories and experiences with him throughout his years, and wrote about them in his literary masterpieces.
Connecting Vonnegut's personal experiences with that of the character, Billy and him were both prisoners of war and present during the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut used his encounter with war as a direct inspiration for Billy Pilgrim's. It must have been a tool for Vonnegut to accept the past and portray a subliminal message to the reader. Both Vonnegut and Billy saw so much death throughout their time in the war; and death is something that is very hard to deal with. Not only did they see people die, but most people died because they were killed by other people; other peoples hatred and inhumanity.
