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Bombing of Dresden in World War II
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The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945, 12 weeks before the surrender of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. The raids saw 1,300 heavy bombers drop over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four raids, destroying of the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, and causing a firestorm that consumed the city centre.
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The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945, 12 weeks before the surrender of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. The raids saw 1,300 heavy bombers drop over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four raids, destroying of the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, and causing a firestorm that consumed the city centre. Estimates of civilian casualties vary greatly, but recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000.
A 1953 United States Air Force report written by Joseph W. Angell defended the operation as the justified bombing of a military and industrial target, which was a major rail transportation and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort. Against this, several researchers have argued that not all of the communications infrastructure, such as the bridges, were in fact targeted, nor were the extensive industrial areas outside the city centre. It has been argued that Dresden was a cultural landmark of little or no military significance, a "Florence on the Elbe," as it was known, and the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and not proportional for the commensurate military gains. As late as the 1958 edition, Encyclopedia Brittanica made no reference to the bombing in its entry for Dresden.
In the first few decades after the war, some death toll estimates were as high as 250,000. However, figures in the regions of hundreds of thousands are considered disproportionate. Today's historians estimate a death toll of between 24,000 and 40,000, with an independent investigation commissioned by the city itself stated that around 18,000 victims had been identified and that the estimated total number of fatalities was around 25,000. Post-war discussion of the bombing includes debate by commentators and historians as to whether or not the bombing was justified, and whether or not its outcome constituted a war crime. Nonetheless, the raids continue to be included among the worst examples of civilian suffering caused by strategic bombing, and have become one of the moral causes célèbres of the Second World War.
Background
The end of 1944 found the German army retreating on both fronts, but not yet defeated. In the east, the Soviets were pushing the Germans westward. On 8 February 1945, they crossed the Oder River, with positions just 70 km from Berlin. As the eastern and western fronts were getting closer, the Western Allies started to consider how they might aid the Soviets with the use of the strategic bomber force. The plan was to bomb Berlin and several other eastern cities in conjunction with the Soviet advance, in order to cause confusion among German troops and refugees evacuating from the east and to hamper their reinforcement from the west.
A special British Joint Intelligence Subcommittee report titled German Strategy and Capacity to Resist, prepared for Winston Churchill's eyes only, predicted that Germany might collapse as early as mid-April if the Soviets overran them at their eastern defences. Alternatively, the report warned that the Germans might hold out until November if they could prevent the Soviets from taking Silesia. Hence any assistance provided to the Soviets on the Eastern Front could shorten the war.
Plans for a large and intense offensive targeting Berlin and the other eastern cities had been discussed under the code name Operation Thunderclap in mid-1944, but it had been shelved on 16 August. These were now re-examined, and the decision made to draw up a more limited operation.
On 22 January, the RAF director of bomber operations, Air Commodore Sydney Bufton, sent a memo to the Deputy Chief of Air Staff, Sir Norman Bottomley, suggesting that what appeared to be a coordinated air attack by the RAF to aid the current Soviet offensive would have a detrimental effect on German morale. On 25 January, the Joint Intelligence Committee expressed support for the idea, as it tied in with the ULTRA-based intelligence that dozens of German divisions which had been deployed in the west were being moved to reinforce the Eastern Front and that the interdiction of these troop movements should be given a high priority. Arthur Harris, AOC Bomber Command (nicknamed "Bomber" Harris in the British press, and known as an ardent supporter of area bombing) was asked for his opinion, and proposed a simultaneous attack on Chemnitz, Leipzig and Dresden. That evening Churchill asked the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, what plans had been drawn up to carry out these proposals. He passed on the request to Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, who answered that "We should use available effort in one big attack on Berlin and attacks on Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz, or any other cities where a severe blitz will not only cause confusion in the evacuation from the East, but will also hamper the movement of troops from the West". However, he mentioned that aircraft diverted to such raids should not be taken away from the current primary tasks of destroying oil production facilities, jet aircraft factories, and submarine yards.
Churchill was not satisfied with this answer and, on 26 January, pressed Sinclair for a plan of operations: "I asked [last night] whether Berlin, and no doubt other large cities in east Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. ... Pray report to me tomorrow what is going to be done."
In response to Churchill's enquiry Sinclair approached Bottomley, who asked Harris, to undertake attacks on Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz, as soon as moon and weather conditions allowed, "with the particular object of exploiting the confused conditions which are likely to exist in the above mentioned cities during the successful Russian advance." This activity allowed Sinclair to inform Churchill on 27 January of Air Staff ageement, "subject to the overriding claims" on other targets under Pointblank, strikes against communications in these cities to disrupt evacuation east and troop movement west would be made.
On 31 January, Bottomley sent a message to Portal saying a heavy attack on Dresden and other cities "will cause great confusion in civilian evacuation from the east and hamper movement of reinforcements from other fronts". British historian Fredrick Taylor mentions a further memo sent to the Chiefs of Staff Committee by Sir Douglas Evill on 1 February, in which Evill states interfering with mass civilian movements was a major, even key, factor in the decision to bomb the city center. Attacks there, where main rail junctions, telephone systems, city administration, and utilities were located, would result in chaos. Britain had learned this after the Coventry Blitz, when loss of this crucial infrastructure had longer-lasting effects than attacks on war plants.
During the Yalta Conference on 4 February, the Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, General Aleksei Antonov, raised the issue of hampering the reinforcement of German troops from the western front by paralysing the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig with aerial bombardment. In response, Portal, who was in Yalta, asked Bottomley to send him a list of objectives to be discussed with the Soviets. Bottomley's list included oil plants, tank and aircraft factories, and the cities of Berlin and Dresden. A British interpreter later claimed that Antonov and Stalin asked for the bombing of Dresden, but there is no mention of these requests in the official record of the conference and the claim may be Cold War propaganda.
Military and industrial profile
Dresden was the seventh largest German city, and according to the RAF at the time, the largest unbombed built-up area left. Taylor writes that an official 1942 guide to the city described it as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops that were supplying the army with material.
However, according to historian Sonke Neitzel; "The industrial plants of Dresden played no significant role in German war industry at this stage of the war".
The US Air Force Historical Division wrote a report in response to the international concern about the bombing, which was classified until December 1978. This said that there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers in the city supporting the German war effort at the time of the raid. According to the report, there were aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabrik Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); an optical goods factory (Zeiss Ikon AG); as well as factories producing electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel AG); gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke); and electric gauges (Gebruder Bassler). It also said there were barracks, and hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot.
The USAF report also states that two of Dresden's traffic routes were of military importance: north-south from Germany to Czechoslovakia, and east-west along the central European uplands. The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig. Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians."
An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack said:
In the raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted. According to Donald Miller "the economic disruption would have been far greater had Bomber Command targeted the suburban areas where most of Dresden's manufacturing might was concentrated"
The attacks
In the air
The night of 13/14 February
The Dresden attack was to have begun with a USAAF Eighth Air Force bombing raid on 13 February 1945. The Eighth Air Force had already bombed the railway yards near the centre of the city twice in daytime raids: once on 7 October 1944 with 70 tons of high-explosive bombs killing more than 400, then again with 133 bombers on 16 January 1945, dropping 279 tons of high-explosives and 41 tons of incendiaries.
On 13 February 1945, bad weather over Europe prevented any USAAF operations, and it was left to RAF Bomber Command to carry out the first raid. It had been decided that the raid would be a double strike, in which a second wave of bombers would attack three hours after the first, just as the rescue teams were trying to put out the fires. Other raids were carried out that night to confuse German air defences. Three hundred and sixty heavy bombers (Lancasters and Halifaxes) bombed a synthetic oil plant in Böhlen, from Dresden, while de Havilland Mosquito medium bomber attacked Magdeburg, Bonn, Misburg near Hannover, and Nuremberg.
The first of the British aircraft took off at around 17:20 hours CET for the journey. This was a group of Lancasters from Bomber Command's 83 Squadron, No. 5 Group, acting as the Pathfinders or flare force, whose job it was to find Dresden and drop magnesium parachute flares to light up the area for the bombers. The next set of aircraft to leave England were the twin-engined Mosquito marker planes who would identify the target areas and drop 1,000-pound target indicators (TIs), known to the Germans as "Christmas trees," which gave off a red glow for the bombers to aim at. The attack was to be centered on the sports stadium, next to the city's medieval Altstadt (old town), with its congested, and highly combustible, timbered buildings.
The main bomber force, called "Plate Rack", took off shortly after the Pathfinders. This was a group of 254 Lancasters carrying 500 tons of high explosives and 375 tons of incendiaries, or fire bombs. There were 200,000 incendiaries in all, with the high-explosive bombs ranging in weight from 500 pounds to 4,000 pounds — the so-called two-ton "cookies," also known as "blockbusters," because they had the power to destroy a city block. The high explosives were intended to rupture water mains, and blow off roofs, doors, and windows, creating an air flow that would feed the fires caused by the incendiaries that followed.
The Lancasters crossed into French airspace near the Somme, then into Germany just north of Cologne. At 22:00 hours, the force heading for Böhlen split away from Plate Rack, which turned south east toward the Elbe. By this time, 10 of the Lancasters were out of service, leaving 244 to continue to Dresden.
The sirens started sounding in Dresden at 21:51 (CET) Wing Commander Maurice Smith, flying in a Mosquito, gave the order to the Lancasters: "Controller to Plate Rack Force: Come in and bomb glow of red target indicators as planned. Bomb the glow of red TIs as planned.". The first bombs were released at 22:14, the Lancasters flying in low at , with all but one Lancaster's bombs released within two minutes, and the last one releasing at 22:22. The fan-shaped area that was bombed was one-and-a-quarter miles long, and at its extreme about one-and-three-quarter miles wide.
The second attack, three hours later, was by Lancaster aircraft of 1, 3, 6 and 8 (Pathfinder Force) Groups, 8 Group being the Pathfinders. By now, the thousands of fires from the burning city could be seen more than away on the ground, and away in the air, with smoke rising to . The Pathfinders therefore decided to expand the target, dropping flares on either side of the firestorm, including the Hauptbahnhof, the main train station, and the Großer Garten, a large park, both of which had escaped damage during the first raid. The German sirens sounded again at 01:05, but as there was practically no electricity, these were small hand-held sirens that were heard within only a block. Between 01:21 and 01:45, 529 Lancasters dropped more than 1,800 tons of bombs.
14-15 February
On the morning of 14 February, 431 bombers of the 1st Bombardment Division of the United States VIII Bomber Command were scheduled to bomb Dresden at around midday, and the 3rd Bombardment Division were to follow the 1st and bomb Chemnitz, while the 2nd Bombardment Division would bomb a synthetic oil plant in Magdeburg. The bomber groups would be protected by the 784 P-51 Mustangs of VIII Fighter Command which meant that there would be almost 2,100 aircraft of the United States Eighth Air Force over Saxony during 14 February.
There is some confusion in the primary sources over what was the target in Dresden, whether it was the marshalling yards near the centre or centre of the built up area. The report by the 1st Bombardment Division's commander to his commander states that the targeting sequence was to be the centre of the built up area in Dresden if the weather was clear. If clouds obscured Dresden and if it was clear over Chemnitz, then Chemnitz was to be the target. If both were obscured then the centre of Dresden would be bombed using H2X radar. The mix of bombs to be used on the Dresden raid was about 40% incendiaries, much closer to the RAF city busting mix than that usually used by the USAAF in precision bombardments. This was quite a common mix when the USAAF anticipated cloudy conditions over the target.
316 B-17 Flying Fortresses bombed Dresden, dropping 771 tons of bombs The rest misidentified their targets. Sixty bombed Prague, dropping 153 tons of bombs on the Czech city while others bombed Brux and Pilsen. The 379th bombardment group started to bomb Dresden at 12:17 aiming at marshalling yards in the Friedrichstadt district west of the city centre as the area was not obscured by smoke and cloud. The 303rd group arrived over Dresden 2 minutes after the 379th found that the their view was obscured by clouds so they bombed Dresden using H2X radar to target this location. The groups that followed the 303rd, (92nd, 306th, 379th, 384th and 457th) also found Dresden obscured by clouds and they too used H2X to locate the target. H2X aiming caused the groups to bomb inaccurately with a wide dispersal over the Dresden area. The last group to bomb Dresden was the 306th and they had finished by 12:30.
According to an RAF webpage on the history of RAF Bomber Command, "[p]art of the American Mustang-fighter escort was ordered to strafe traffic on the roads around Dresden to increase the chaos and disruption to the important transportation network in the region." Historian Gotz Berganger asserted in Dresden Im Luftkrieg (1977) that tales of civilians being strafed by the Mustangs were untrue. However, British historian Alexander McKee in Dresden 1945 (1982) quotes eyewitnesses (Gerhard Kuhnemund, Annemarie Waehmann etc.) who state that strafing did occur. Taylor in Dresden, (2004) basing most of his analysis on the work of Berganger and Helmut Schnatz, concludes that no strafing took place, although some stray bullets from an aerial dog fight may have hit the ground and been mistaken for strafing by those in the vicinity.
On 15 February, the 1st Bombardment Division's primary target — the Böhlen synthetic oil plant near Leipzig — was obscured by cloud so the Division's groups diverted to their secondary target which was the city of Dresden. As Dresden was also obscured by clouds the groups targeted the city using H2X. The first group to arrive over the target was the 401th, but they missed the centre and bombed southeastern suburbs with bombs landing on the near by towns of Meissen and Pirna. The other groups all bombed between 12:00 and 12:10. They failed to hit the marshalling yards in the Friedrichstadt district and, as on the previous raid, their ordinance was scattered over a wide area.
On the ground
The sirens had started sounding in Dresden at 21:51 (CET) Frederick Taylor writes that the Germans could see that a large enemy bomber formation — or what they called "ein dicker Hund" (a fat dog) — was approaching somewhere in the east. At 21:39, the Reich Air Defense Leadership issued an enemy aircraft warning for Dresden, though at that point it was thought Leipzig might be the target. At 21:59, the Local Air Raid Leadership confirmed that the bombers were in the area of Dresden-Pirna. Taylor writes the city was largely undefended; a night fighter force of ten Messerschmitts at Klotzsche airfield was scrambled, but it took them half an hour to get into an attack position. At 22:03, the Local Air Raid Leadership issued the first definitive warning: "Achtung! Achtung! Achtung! The lead aircraft of the major enemy bomber forces have changed course and are now approaching the city area."
By early morning on 14 February, Ash Wednesday, the center of the city, including its Altstadt, was engulfed in a firestorm, with temperatures peaking at over 1500 °C (2700 °F).
There were very few public air raid shelters — the largest, underneath the main train station, was housing 6,000 refugees. As a result, most people took shelter in their cellars, but one of the air raid precautions the city had taken was to remove the thick cellar walls between rows of buildings, and replace them with thin partitions that could be knocked through in an emergency. The idea was that, as one building collapsed or filled with smoke, those using the basement as a shelter could knock the walls down and run into adjoining buildings. With the city on fire everywhere, those fleeing from one burning cellar simply ran into another, with the result that thousands of bodies were found piled up in houses at the end of city blocks.
A Dresden police report written shortly after the attacks reported that the old town and the inner eastern suburbs had been engulfed in a single fire that had destroyed almost 12,000 dwellings. The same report said that the raids had destroyed 24 banks, 26 insurance buildings, 31 stores and retail houses, 640 shops, 64 warehouses, 2 market halls, 31 large hotels, 26 public houses, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theatres, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 6 chapels; 5 other cultural buildings, 19 hospitals including auxiliary, overflow hospitals, and private clinics, 39 schools, 5 consulates, the zoo, the waterworks, the railways, 19 postal facilities, 4 tram facilities, and 19 ships and barges. The Wehrmacht's main command post in the Taschenberg Palais, 19 military hospitals and a number of less significant military facilities were also destroyed. Almost 200 factories were damaged, 136 seriously damaged (including several of the Zeiss Ikon precision optical engineering works), 28 with medium to serious damage, and 35 with light damage.
An RAF assessment showed that 23 percent of the industrial buildings, and 56 percent of the non-industrial buildings, not counting residential buildings, had been seriously damaged. Around 78,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged, but readily repairable.
During his post-war interrogation, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich, indicated that Dresden's industrial recovery from the bombings was rapid.
Casualties
The tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was lower than in many other areas, but it was ideal weather conditions for the old wooden-framed buildings in the city centre to ignite into a firestorm. Another contributing factor to the large loss of life in Dresden was the lack of preparation for the effects of air-raids by Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann. For example there were "breakthroughs" linking the cellars of contiguous buildings but with no escape tunnels at the end of the linked cellars, so people tried to escape the flames only to be trapped in the last cellar with no possibility of escape as all above them was burning. For these reasons, the loss of life in Dresden was considerably higher than in many other bombing raids. For example, when Braunschweig was bombed on the nights of 14 and 15 October, 1944, hochbunkers and well trained fire fighters saved 23,000 people from death in a firestorm.
Exact figures are difficult to ascertain. Estimates are complicated by the fact that the city and surrounding suburbs, which had a population of 642,000 in 1939, was crowded at the time of the bombing with up to 200,000 refugees, and thousands of wounded soldiers. Earlier reputable estimates of casualties varied from 25,000 to more than 60,000, but historians now view around 25,000–35,000 as the likely range with Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert pointing toward the lower end of it. It would appear from such estimates that the casualties suffered in the Dresden bombings were similar to those suffered in other German cities subject to firebombing during area bombardment.
According to official German report Tagesbefehl (Order of the Day) no. 47 ("TB47") issued on 22 March the number of dead recovered by that date was 20,204, including 6,865 who were cremated on the Altmarkt, and the total number of deaths was expected to be about 25,000 Another report on 3 April put the number of corpses recovered at 22,096. The municipal cemetery office recorded 21,271 victims of the raids were buried in the city cemeteries, of which 17,295 were placed in the Heidefriedhof cemetery (a total that included the ashes of those cremated at the Altmarkt). Due to the number of dead and lack of labour for collection of bodies for burial and cremation, those found in shelters were cremated where they lay by flamethrowers. These numbers were probably supplemented by a number of additional private burials in other places. A further 1,858 bodies of victims were found during the rebuilding of Dresden between the end of the war and 1966. Since 1989 despite the extensive excavation for new buildings no war-related bodies have been found. The number of people registered with the authorities as missing was 35,000; around 10,000 of those were later found to be alive.
Wartime political responses
German
Development of a German political response to the raid took several turns. Initially, some of the leadership, especially Robert Ley and Joseph Goebbels, wanted to use it as a pretext for abandonment of the Geneva Conventions on the Western Front. In the end, the only political action the German government took was to exploit it for propaganda purposes. Goebbels is reported to have wept with rage for twenty minutes after he heard the news of the catastophe, before launching into a bitter attack on Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe: "If I had the power I would drag this cowardly good-for-nothing, this Reich marshal, before a court...How much guilt does this parasite not bear for all this, which we owe to his indolence and love of his own comforts...".
On 16 February, the Propaganda Ministry issued a press release that stated that Dresden had no war industries; it was a city of culture.
On 25 February, a new leaflet with photographs of two burned children was released under the title "Dresden — Massacre of Refugees," stating that 200,000 had died. Since no official estimate had been developed, the numbers were speculative, but newspapers such as the Stockholm Svenska Morgonbladet used phrases such as "privately from Berlin," to explain where they had obtained the figures. Frederick Taylor states that "there is good reason to believe that later in March copies of — or extracts from — [an official police report] were leaked to the neutral press by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry ... doctored with an extra zero to make [the total dead from the raid] 202,040." On 4 March, Das Reich, a weekly newspaper founded by Goebbels, published a lengthy article emphasizing the suffering and destruction of a cultural icon, without mentioning any damage the attacks had caused to the German war effort.
Taylor writes that this propaganda was effective, as it not only influenced attitudes in neutral countries at the time, but also reached the British House of Commons when Richard Stokes, a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) opposed to area bombing, quoted information from the German Press Agency (controlled by the Propaganda Ministry). It was Stokes' questions in the House of Commons that were in large part responsible for the shift in the UK against this type of raid. Taylor suggests that, although the destruction of Dresden would have affected people's support for the Allies regardless of German propaganda, at least some of the outrage did depend on Goebbels' massaging of the casualty figures. However this may be, Stokes was a long term opponent of area-bombing of German cities from well before the Dresden bombings. According to Max Hastings "from 1942 to 1945 he was a constant thorn in the Government's flesh as to the matter of the area bombing of cities".
British
The destruction of the city provoked unease in intellectual circles in Britain. According to Max Hastings, by February 1945, attacks upon German cities had become largely irrelevant to the outcome of the war and the name of Dresden resonated with cultured people all over Europe — "the home of so much charm and beauty, a refuge for Trollope’s heroines, a landmark of the Grand Tour." He writes that the bombing was the first time the public in Allied countries seriously questioned the military actions used to defeat the Nazis.
The unease was made worse by an Associated Press story that the Allies had resorted to terror bombing. At a press briefing held by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force two days after the raids, British Air Commodore Colin McKay Grierson told journalists:
One of the journalists asked whether the principal aim of bombing of Dresden would be to cause confusion among the refugees or to blast communications carrying military supplies. Grierson answered that the primary aim was communications to prevent them moving military supplies, and to stop movement in all directions if possible. He then added in an offhand remark that the raid also helped destroying "what is left of German morale." Howard Cowan, an Associated Press war correspondent, subsequently filed a story saying that the Allies had resorted to terror bombing. There were follow-up newspaper editorials on the issue and a long time opponent of strategic bombing, Richard Stokes MP, asked questions in the House of Commons on 6 March.
Churchill subsequently distanced himself from the bombing. On 28 March, in a memo sent by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff, he wrote:
Having been given a paraphrased version of Churchill's memo by Bottomley, on 29 March, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris wrote to the Air Ministry:
The phrase "worth the bones of one British grenadier" was an echo of a famous sentence used by Otto von Bismarck: "The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." Under pressure from the Chiefs of Staff and in response to the views expressed by Portal and Harris among others, Churchill withdrew his memo and issued a new one. This was completed on 1 April, 1945:
Timeline for all the raids
align="bottom" style="caption-side:bottom; text-align:left; font-weight:normal;"|Table of the air raids on Dresden by the Allies during World War II.| Date | Target area | Force | Aircraft | High explosive
bombs on target
(tons) | Incendiary
bombs on target
(tons) | Total | | 7 October 1944 | Marshalling Yards | 8th AF | 30 | 72.5 | — | 72.5 | | 16 January 1945 | Marshalling Yards | 8th AF | 133 | 279.8 | 41.6 | 321.4 | | 14 February 1945 | City Area | RAF BC | 772 | 1477.7 | 1181.6 | 2659.3 | | 14 February 1945 | Marshalling Yards | 8th AF | 316 | 487.7 | 294.3 | 782 | | 15 February 1945 | Marshalling Yards | 8th AF | 211 | 465.6 | — | 465.6 | | 2 March 1945 | Marshalling Yards | 8th AF | 406 | 940.3 | 140.5 | 1080.8 | | 17 April 1945 | Marshalling Yards | 8th AF | 572 | 1526.4 | 164.5 | 1690.9 | | 17 April 1945 | Industrial Area | 8th AF | 8 | 28.0 | — | 28 |
Post-war reconstruction and reconciliation
After the war, and again after German reunification, great efforts were made to rebuild some of Dresden's former landmarks, such as the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper (the Saxony state opera house), and the Zwinger Palace (the later two were rebuilt before reunification).
Despite its location in the Soviet occupation zone as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, in 1956 Dresden entered a twin-town relationship with Coventry. As a center of military and munitions production, Coventry suffered some of the worst attacks on any English city at the hands of the Luftwaffe during the Coventry Blitzes of 1940 and 1941, which killed over 1,200 civilians and destroyed its cathedral.
The Dresden synagogue, which was burned during Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, was rebuilt in 2001 and opened for worship on 9 November. The original synagogue's Star of David was installed above the entrance of the new building - Alfred Neugebauer, a local firefighter, saved it from the fire and hid it in his home until the end of the war. Dresden's Jewish population declined to near-nothingness from 4675 in 1933, to 1265 in 1941 (the eve of the implementation of the Nazi's extermination programme), to a handful after almost all of those who had remained were forcibly sent to Riga, Auschwitz and Theresienstadt between 1941 and 1945. On the morning of 13 February 1945, the Jews remaining in Dresden were ordered to report for deportation on 16 February. But as one of them, Victor Klemperer, recorded in his diaries: "...on the evening of this 13 February the catastrophe overtook Dresden: the bombs fell, the houses collapsed, the phosphorus flowed, the burning beams crashed on to the heads of Aryans and non-Aryans alike and Jew and Christian met death in the same firestorm; whoever of the [Jews] was spared by this night was delivered, for in the general chaos he could escape the Gestapo." But in recent years the Jewish population has swelled in Dresden, as it has elsewhere in Germany. Paul Spiegel, the head of Germany's Jewish Community, called the new synagogue a concrete expression of the Jewish community's desire to stay.
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of prominent Dresdeners formed an international appeal known as the "Call from Dresden" to request help in rebuilding the Lutheran Frauenkirche, the destruction of which had over the years become a symbol of the bombing. The baroque Church of Our Lady (completed in 1743) had initially appeared to survive the raids, but collapsed a few days later, and the ruins were left in place by later Communist governments as a symbol of British aggression.
A British charity, the Dresden Trust, was formed in 1993 to raise funds in the UK in response to the call for help, raising £600,000 from 2,000 people and 100 companies and trusts in Britain. One of the gifts they made to the project was an eight-metre high orb and cross made in London by goldsmiths Gant MacDonald, using medieval nails recovered from the ruins of the roof of Coventry Cathedral, and crafted in part by Alan Smith, the son of a pilot who took part in the raid.
During her visit to Germany in November 2004, Queen Elizabeth II hosted a concert in Berlin to raise money for the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche. The visit was accompanied by speculation in the British and German press, fuelled mostly by the tabloids, over a possible apology for the attacks, but none was forthcoming.
The new Frauenkirche — reconstructed over seven years by architects using 3D computer technology to analyse old photographs and every piece of rubble that had been kept — was formally consecrated on 30 October 2005, in a service attended by some 1,800 guests, including Germany's president, Horst Köhler; previous and current chancellors, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel; and the Duke of Kent.
Post-war debate
British historian Frederick Taylor wrote of the attacks: "The destruction of Dresden has an epically tragic quality to it. It was a wonderfully beautiful city and a symbol of baroque humanism and all that was best in Germany. It also contained all of the worst from Germany during the Nazi period. In that sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th century warfare and a symbol of destruction."
A number of factors have made the bombing a unique point of contention and debate. These include the beauty of the city, and its importance as a cultural icon; the deliberate creation of a firestorm; the number of victims killed; the extent to which it was a necessary military target; and the fact that it was attacked toward the end of the war, raising the question of whether the bombing was needed to hasten the end.
Legal considerations
The Hague Conventions, addressing the codes of wartime conduct on land and at sea, were adopted before the rise of air power. Despite repeated diplomatic attempts to update international humanitarian law to include aerial warfare, it was not updated before the outbreak of World War II. The absence of positive international humanitarian law does not mean that the laws of war did not cover aerial warfare, but there was no general agreement of how to interpret those laws. For details on the obligations of the belligerents of World War II engaged in aerial bombardment see aerial area bombardment and international law in 1945.
That the bombing was necessary or justified
Marshall inquiry
An inquiry conducted at the behest of U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, stated the raid was justified by the available intelligence. The inquiry declared the elimination of the German ability to reinforce a counter-attack against Marshal Konev's extended line or, alternatively, to retreat and regroup using Dresden as a base of operations, were important military objectives. As Dresden had been largely untouched during the war due to its location, it was one of the few remaining functional rail and communications centres. A secondary objective was to disrupt the industrial use of Dresden for munitions manufacture, which American intelligence believed to be the case. The shock to military planners and to the Allied civilian populations of the Nazi counter attack known as the Battle of the Bulge had ended speculation that the war was almost over, and may have contributed to the decision to continue with the aerial bombardment of German cities.
The inquiry concluded that by the presence of active German military units nearby, and the presence of fighters and anti-aircraft within an effective range, Dresden qualified as "defended". By this stage in the war both the British and the Germans had integrated air defences at the national level. The German national air-defence system could be used to argue — as the tribunal did — that no German city was "undefended".
Marshall's tribunal declared that no extraordinary decision was made to single out Dresden (e.g. to take advantage of the large number of refugees, or purposely terrorize the German populace). It was argued that the intent of area bombing was to disrupt communications and destroy industrial production. The American inquiry established that the Soviets, pursuant to allied agreements for the United States and the United Kingdom to provide air support for the Soviet offensive toward Berlin, had requested area bombing of Dresden in order to prevent a counter attack through Dresden, or the use of Dresden as a regrouping point after a strategic retreat.
U.S. Air Force Historical Division report
align="bottom" style="caption-side:bottom; text-align:left; font-weight:normal;"|A U.S. Air Force table showing the amount of bombs dropped by the Allies on Germany's seven largest cities during the war. | City | Population in 1939 | American tonnage | British tonnage | Total tonnage |
|---|
| Berlin | 4,339,000 | 22,090.3 | 45,517 | 67,607.3 | | Hamburg | 1,129,000 | 17,104.6 | 22,583 | 39,687.6 | | Munich | 841,000 | 11,471.4 | 7,858 | 27,110.9 | | Cologne | 772,000 | 10,211.2 | 34,712 | 44,923.2 | | Leipzig | 707,000 | 5,410.4 | 6,206 | 11,616.4 | | Essen | 667,000 | 1,518.0 | 36,420 | 37,938.0 | | Dresden | 642,000 | 4,441.2 | 2,659.3 | 7,100.5 |
A report by the U.S. Air Force Historical Division (USAFHD) analyzed the circumstances of the raid and concluded that it was militarily necessary and justified, based on the following points:
- The raid had legitimate military ends, brought about by exigent military circumstances.
- Military units and anti-aircraft defenses were sufficiently close that it was not valid to consider the city "undefended."
- The raid did not use extraordinary means but was comparable to other raids used against comparable targets.
- The raid was carried out through the normal chain of command, pursuant to directives and agreements then in force.
- The raid achieved the military objective, without excessive loss of civilian life.
The first point regarding the legitimacy of the raid depends on two claims: first, that the railyards subjected to American precision bombing were an important logistical target, and that the city was also an important industrial centre. Even after the main firebombing, there were two further raids on the Dresden railway yards by the USAAF. The first was on 2 March 1945, by 406 B-17s, which dropped 940 tons of high-explosive bombs and 141 tons of incendiaries. The second was on 17 April, when 580 B-17s dropped 1,554 tons of high-explosive bombs and 165 tons of incendiaries.
As far as Dresden being a militarily significant industrial centre, an official 1942 guide described the German city as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops which supplied the army with material. Dresden was the seventh largest German city and by far the largest unbombed built-up area left and thus was contributing to the defense of Germany itself.
According to the USAFHD, there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the German war effort in Dresden at the time of the raid. These factories manufactured fuses and bombsights (at Zeiss Ikon A.G.), aircraft components, anti-aircraft guns, field guns, and small arms, poison gas, gears and differentials, electrical and X-ray apparatus, electric gauges, gas masks, Junkers aircraft engines, and Messerschmitt fighter cockpit parts.
The second of the five points addresses the prohibition in the Hague Conventions, of "attack or bombardment" of "undefended" towns. The USAFHD report states that Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses, antiaircraft guns, and searchlights, under the Combined Dresden (Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration Commands.
The third and fourth points say that the size of the Dresden raid — in terms of numbers, types of bombs and the means of delivery — were commensurate with the military objective and similar to other Allied bombings. On 23 February 1945, the Allies bombed Pforzheim and caused an estimated 20,000 civilian fatalities; a raid on Tokyo on 9-10 March caused civilian casualties over 100,000. The tonnage and types of bombs listed in the service records of the Dresden raid were comparable to (or less than) throw weights of bombs dropped in other air attacks carried out in 1945. In the case of Dresden, as in many other similar attacks, the hour break in between the RAF raids was a deliberate ploy to attack the fire fighters and rescue crews.
In late July 1943, the city of Hamburg was bombed in Operation Gomorrah by combined RAF and USAAF strategic bomber forces. Four major raids were carried out in the span of 10 days, of which the most notable, on 27-28 July, created a devastating firestorm effect similar to Dresden's, killing at least 45,000 people. Two thirds of the remaining population reportedly fled the city after the raids.
The fifth point is that the firebombing achieved the intended effect of disabling the industry in Dresden. It was estimated that at least 23% of the city's industrial buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. The damage to other infrastructure and communications was immense, which would have severely limited the potential use of Dresden to stop the Soviet advance. The report concludes with:
That the bombing was not necessary or justified
Military reasons
The historian Alexander McKee has cast doubt on the meaningfulness of the list of targets mentioned in 1953 USAAF report and point out that the military barracks listed as a target, was a long way out of town and was not in fact targeted during the raid. The 'hutted camps' mentioned in the report as military targets were also not military but were provided for refugees. It is also pointed out that the important Autobahn bridge to the west of the city was not targeted or attacked and that no railway stations were on the British target maps, nor were the bridges, such as the railway bridge spanning the Elbe River. Commenting on this Alexander McKee stated that: "The standard whitewash gambit, both British and American, is to mention that Dresden contained targets X, Y and Z, and to let the innocent reader assume that these targets were attacked, whereas in fact the bombing plan totally omitted them and thus, except for one or two mere accidents, they escaped" McKee further asserts, "The bomber commanders were not really interested in any purely military or economic targets, which was just as well, for they knew very little about Dresden; the RAF even lacked proper maps of the city. What they were looking for was a big built up area which they could burn, and that Dresden possessed in full measure"
According to historian Sonke Neitzel, "it is difficult to find any evidence in German documents that the destruction of Dresden had any consequences worth mentioning on the Eastern Front. The industrial plants of Dresden played no significant role in Germany industry at this stage in the war" Wing Commander H.R. Allen said, "The final phase of Bomber Command's operations was far and away the worst. Traditional British chivalry and the use of minimum force in war was to become a mockery and the outrages perpetrated by the bombers will be remembered a thousand years hence"
Allegations that it was a moral tragedy, but not a war crime
Frederick Taylor told Der Spiegel, "I personally find the attack on Dresden horrific. It was overdone, it was excessive and is to be regretted enormously", but "a war crime is a very specific thing which international lawyers argue about all the time and I would not be prepared to commit myself nor do I see why I should. I'm a historian." Similarly, British philosopher A. C. Grayling has described British area bombardment as an "immoral act" and "moral crime" because "destroying everything ... contravenes every moral and humanitarian principle debated in connection with the just conduct of war", but "it is not strictly correct to describe area bombing as a 'war crime'."
Allegations that it was a war crime
According to Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, international lawyer and president of Genocide Watch:
Historian Donald Bloxham states, "The bombing of Dresden on 13-14 February 1945 was a war crime." He further argues there was a strong prima facie case for trying Winston Churchill among others and a theoretical case Churchill could have been found guilty. "This should be a sobering thought. If, however it is also a startling one, this is probably less the result of widespread understanding of the nuance of international law and more because in the popular mind 'war criminal', like 'paedophile' or 'terrorist', has developed into a moral rather than a legal categorisation."
Fomer Waffen SS member Günter Grass is one of a number of intellectuals and commentators who have also called the bombing a war crime.
Proponents of the war crime position argue the devastation known to be caused by firebombing was greater than anything that could be justified by military necessity alone, and this establishes their case on a prima facie basis. The Allies were aware of the effects of firebombing, as British cities had been subject to them during the Blitz. War crime proponents say that Dresden did not have a military garrison, that most of the industry was in the outskirts and not in the targeted city centre, and that the cultural significance of the city should have precluded the Allies from bombing it.
British historian Anthony Beevor wrote that Dresden was considered relatively safe, having been spared previous RAF night attacks, and that at the time of the raids there were up to 300,000 refugees in the city seeking sanctuary from the fighting on the Eastern Front. In Fire Sites, Austrian historian Jörg Friedrich agrees the RAF's relentless bombing campaign against German cities in the last months of the war served no military purpose.
Far-right in Germany
Far-right politicians in Germany have sparked a great deal of controversy by promoting the term "Bombenholocaust" ("holocaust by bomb") to describe the raids. Der Spiegel writes that, for decades, the Communist government of East Germany promoted the bombing as an example of "Anglo-American terror," and now the same rhetoric is being used by the far right. An example can be found in the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD). The party's Juergen Gansel described the Dresden raids as "mass murder," and "Dresden's Holocaust of bombs." This provoked an outrage in the German parliament and triggered responses from Jewish interest groups and the media, especially since German law forbids denial or minimization of the Holocaust. However, prosecutors declined to press charges.
In popular culture
Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), about the bombings, was based on his own experiences as a prisoner of war at Dresden. Vonnegut recalled "utter destruction" and "carnage unfathomable." The Germans put him and other POWs to work gathering bodies for mass burial. "But there were too many corpses to bury. So instead the Nazis sent in troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians' remains were burned to ashes."
This experience formed the core of one of at least six other books and is included in his posthumously published stories: "Armageddon in Retrospect".
Miles Tripp, who was a bomb aimer in one of the aircraft which bombed Dresden, wrote a novel, Faith is a Windsock (1953), plus a non-fiction work, The Eighth Passenger (1969), based on his experiences.
The bombings also are a central theme in the 2006 German TV production Dresden by director Roland Suso Richter. Despite the romantic plot between a British bomber pilot and a German nurse, the movie attempts to reconstruct the facts surrounding the Dresden bombings from both the perspective of the RAF pilots as well as the Germans in Dresden at the time.
See also
Further reading
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