The 'bombing of
Dresden', led by the
Royal Air Force (RAF) and followed by the
United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between
February 13 and
February 15,
1945, remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of
World War II. The exact number of casualties is uncertain, but most historians agree that the firebombing resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Historian
Frederick Taylor says:
Photo of the destroyed city centre shortly after the attacks
Reasons for the attack
Early in 1945, the Allies' political-military leadership 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 the summer of 1944, plans for a large and intense offensive targeting these cities had been discussed under the code name ''Operation Thunderclap'', but then shelved on
August 16.
[1] These were re-examined, but the decision was made to draw up a more limited plan. Sir
Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, noted on
January 26 1945, that ''"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"''.
[ Longmate, p. 332.] 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. Sir
Norman Bottomley, the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, requested
Arthur "Bomber" Harris, Commander-in-Chief of
RAF Bomber Command and an ardent supporter of
area bombing, 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 [sic] advance"''.
[ Taylor, p. 212.]
On the same day,
Winston Churchill pressed the Secretary of State for Air, Sir
Archibald Sinclair: ''"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"''.
On
January 27 Sinclair replied:
The
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had come to the conclusion that the Germans could reinforce their eastern front with up to 42 divisions (half a million men) from other fronts and that, if the Soviet advance could be helped by hindering that movement, it could shorten the war. They thought that the Germans could complete the reinforcement by March 1945. The JIC's analysis was backed up by
Ultra Enigma-code intercepts, which confirmed that the Germans had such plans. Their recommendation was:
The Soviets had several discussions with the Allies on how the strategic bomber force could help their ground offensives once the eastern front line approached Germany. The US ambassador to the USSR,
W. Averell Harriman, discussed it with
Joseph Stalin as did General
Eisenhower's deputy at
SHAEF, British Air Marshal
Arthur W. Tedder in January 1945, when he explained how the strategic bomber could support the Soviet attack as Germany began to shuffle forces between the fronts. On
January 31 after studying the JIC recommendation which was contained in a document entitled "Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive" and consulting with the Soviets, Tedder and his air staff concurred and issued a recommendation that Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and associated cities should be attacked. The intention to use the strategic bomber forces in a tactical air-support role was similar to that for which Eisenhower had employed them before the
Normandy invasion in 1944. He was counting on strategic airpower in 1945 to "prevent the enemy from switching forces back and forth at will" from one front to the other.
[2][3]
When the Allies met at the
Yalta Conference on
February 4, the Western Allies had already decided to target Dresden. The Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, General
Aleksei Antonov raised two issues at the conference relating to the Western Allied strategic bomber force. The first was the demarcation of a bomb-line running north to south to avoid accidentally bombing Soviet forces; Western Allied aircraft would not bomb east of the line without specific Soviet permission. The second was to hamper the movement of troops from the western front, Norway and Italy, in particular by paralysing the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig with aerial bombardment. In response to the Soviet requests, Portal (who was in Yalta) sent a request to Bottomley to send him a list of objectives which could be discussed with the Soviets. The list sent back to him included oil plants, tank and aircraft factories and the cities of Berlin and Dresden. In the discussions which followed, the Western Allies pointed out that unless Dresden was bombed as well, the Germans could route rail traffic through Dresden to compensate for any damage caused to Berlin and Leipzig. Antonov agreed and requested that Dresden be added to his list of requests. Once the targets had been agreed at Yalta, the Combined Strategic Targets Committee, SHAEF (Air), informed the USAAF and the RAF Bomber commands that Dresden was among the targets selected to degrade German lines of communication. Their authority to do this came directly from the Western Allies'
Combined Chiefs of Staff.
RAF Air Staff documents state that it was their intention to use RAF bomber command to "destroy communications" to hinder the eastward deployment of German troops, and to hamper evacuation, not to kill the evacuees. The priority list drafted by Bottomley for Portal, so that he could discuss targets with the Soviets at Yalta, included only two eastern cities with a high enough priority to fit into the RAF targeting list as both transportation and industrial areas. These were Berlin and Dresden. Both were bombed after Yalta.
Soviet military intelligence asserted that trains stuck in the
main station were troop trains passing through Dresden to the front. This proved incorrect, as they were trains evacuating refugees from the east.
[4] RAF briefing notes mentioned a desire to show ''"the Russians, when they arrive, what Bomber Command can do."'' The specific intent of this statement is now unclear, and there are different possible interpretations: a statement of pride in the RAF's abilities; or to show the Soviets that the Western Allies were doing all they could to aid the Soviet advance; or a demonstration of western strength as a warning or threat to the Soviets in the lead-up to the
Cold War.
The attacks
Dresden from the air during the night attack
The railway yards, near the centre of Dresden, had been targeted and bombed twice before the night of
February 13 by the USAAF
Eighth Air Force in daytime raids: on
October 7 1944 with 70 tons of
high-explosive bombs, and then again with 133 bombers on
January 16,
1945 during which 279 tons of high-explosives and 41 tons of
incendiaries were dropped.
[5]
The
firebombing campaign was to have begun with a
USAAF Eighth Air Force raid on Dresden on
February 13, but bad weather over Europe prevented any USAAF operations. Due to the conditions,
RAF Bomber Command carried out the first raid. During the evening of
February 13, 796
Avro Lancasters and 9
De Havilland Mosquitoes were dispatched in two separate waves and dropped 1,478
tons of high explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs by the early hours of
February 14. The first attack was carried out entirely by
No. 5 Group, using their own low-level marking methods and tactics. The pathfinders marked the
Ostragehege stadium as the initial aiming point and each bomber fanned out from that point releasing their bombs at slightly different preassigned times on slightly different preassigned trajectories. The first bombs of No. 5 Group were released at 22:14 (
CET[6]) with all but one bomber releasing all their bombs within two minutes. This last Lancaster bomber of No 5 group dropped its bombs at 22:22. A band of cloud still remained in the area and this attack, in which 244 Lancasters dropped more than 800
tons of bombs, was only moderately successful. The fan shaped area was one and a quarter miles long and at its extreme about one and three quarters miles wide.
[7][Taylor References pp. 277-288]
The second attack, 3 hours later, was by Lancaster aircraft of
1,
3,
6 and
8 Groups, with 8 Group providing standard
Pathfinder marking. The weather had by then cleared and 529 Lancasters dropped more than 1,800 tons of bombs with great accuracy between 01:21 and 01:45. RAF casualties on the two raids were 6 Lancasters lost, with 2 more crashed in France and 1 in England.
Later on
February 14, from 12:17 until 12:30 311 USAAF
B-17s dropped 771 tons of bombs on Dresden, with the railway yards as their aiming point. ''"Part 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"''.
7 There are reports that civilians fleeing the
firestorm engulfing Dresden in February 1945 were strafed by American aircraft, but these claims have been disputed by the historian Götz Bergander.
[8][The Bombing of Dresden in 1945: Misstatement of circumstances: low-level strafing in Dresden, by Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, a detailed critique of problems with David Irving's book.] During this raid there was a brief, but possibly intense
dogfight between American and German fighters around Dresden; some rounds may have been mistaken for strafing fire when they struck the ground.
[ Taylor, pp. 497–8.] The Americans continued the bombing on
February 15 dropping 466 tons of bombs. During these four raids a total of around 3,900 tons of bombs were dropped.
The firebombing consisted, of the by-then standard methods,
[9][10] of dropping large amounts of high-explosive to blow off the roofs to expose the timbers within buildings, followed by incendiary devices (fire-sticks) to ignite them and then more high-explosives to hamper the efforts of the fire services. The consequences of these standard methods were particularly effective in Dresden: the bombings eventually created a self-sustaining firestorm with temperatures peaking at over 1500°
C (2700°
F). After a wide area caught fire, the air above the bombed area became extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from outside, and people were sucked into the fire.
After the main firebombing campaign between the 13th and 15th, there were two further raids on the Dresden railway yards by the USAAF. The first was on
March 2 by 406 B-17s which dropped 940 tons of high-explosive bombs and 141 tons of incendiaries. The second was on
April 17 when 580 B-17s dropped 1,554 tons of high-explosive bombs and 165 tons of incendiaries.
[11]
Impact of the attack
The former city plan of Dresden with the amount of destruction rendered
Black, total destruction; checkered, partially damaged.
A Dresden police report written shortly after the attacks stated that the old town and the inner eastern suburbs had been engulfed in a single fire which had destroyed almost 12,000 dwellings including residential barracks. The report also said that the raid had destroyed "24 banks; 26 insurance buildings; 31 stores and retail houses; 6470 shops; 640 warehouses; 256 market halls; 31 large hotels; 26 public houses; 63 administrative buildings; 3 theatres; 18 cinemas; 11 churches; 60 chapels; 50 cultural-historical buildings; 19 hospitals including auxiliary, overflow hospitals, and private clinics; 39 schools; 5 consulates; 1 zoological garden; 1 waterworks, 1 railway facility; 19 postal facilities; 4
tram facilities; 19 ships and barges." The report also mentioned that the Wehrmacht's main command post in the Taschenberg Palais, 19 military hospitals and a number of less significant military facilities were destroyed.
[12] Almost 200 factories were damaged, 136 seriously (including several of the
Zeiss Ikon precision optical engineering works), 28 with medium to serious damage, and 35 with light damage.
[ Taylor p. 409.]
"British assessments ... concluded that 23 percent of the city’s industrial buildings were seriously damaged and that 56 per cent of the non-industrial buildings (exclusive of dwellings) had been heavily damaged. Of the total number of dwelling units in the city proper, 78,000 were regarded as demolished, 27,700 temporarily uninhabitable but ultimately repairable, and 64,500 readily repairable from minor damage. This later assessment indicated that 80 per cent of the city’s housing units had undergone some degree of damage and that 50 per cent of the dwellings had been demolished or seriously damaged." and that the USAAF "raids against the city’s railway facilities on 14 and 15 February resulted in severe and extensive damage that entirely paralyzed communications.…" and that "The railway bridges over the Elbe river — vital to incoming and outgoing traffic — were rendered unusable and remained closed to traffic for many weeks after the raids."
[13]
The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Estimates are made difficult by the fact that the city and surrounding suburbs which had a population of 642,000 in 1939
[14] was crowded at that time with up to 200,000 refugees,
[15] and some thousands of wounded soldiers. The fate of some of the refugees is not known as they may have been killed and incinerated beyond recognition in the fire-storm, or they may have left Dresden for other places without informing the authorities. Earlier reputable estimates varied from 25,000 to more than 60,000, but historians now view around 25,000–35,000 as the likely range
['' Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen'' by Götz Bergander.][The Bombing of Dresden in 1945: Falsification of statistics, by Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, a detailed critique of problems with David Irving's book.] with the latest (1994) research by the Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert pointing toward the lower part of this range.
[16] It would appear from such estimates that the casualties suffered in the Dresden bombings were similar to those suffered in other German cities which were subject to firebombing attacks during
area bombardment.
[17]
Contemporary official German records give a number of 21,271 registered burials, including 6,865 who were cremated on the Altmarkt.
[18] There were around 25,000 officially buried dead by
March 22 1945, war related or not, according to official German report Tagesbefehl (Order of the Day) no. 47 ("TB47"). There was no registration of burials between May and September 1945.
[Luftkriegslegenden in Dresden von Helmut Schnatz.] War-related dead found in later years, from October 1945 to September 1957, are given as 1,557; from May 1945 until 1966, 1,858 bodies were recovered. None was found during the period 1990–1994, even though there was a lot of construction and excavation during that period. The number of people registered with the authorities as missing was 35,000; around 10,000 of those were later found to be alive.
In recent years, the estimates have become a little higher in Germany and lower in Britain; earlier it was the opposite.
There have been higher estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as 300,000. They are from disputed and unreliable sources, such as the
Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by
Joseph Goebbels,
Soviet historians, and
David Irving, the once popular but now discredited self-styled 'historian'
[19] who retracted his higher estimates.
[The Dresden Raids letter to the Editor from ''The Times'' 7 July 1966 a correction to "The Destruction of Dresden" by David Irving London: William Kimber, 1963. In this letter Irving, who had previously used figures as high as 250,000 admitted the confirmed casualty figures were actually 18,375, expected to rise to 25,000 including when those not registered in the city were taken into account. Despite the admission of his mistake contained in the letter, he has still used figures as high as 100,000 in articles and books on his own website fpp.org, some written as late as 2004.] Both the
Columbia Encyclopedia and
Encarta Encyclopedia list the number as "from 35,000 to more than 135,000 dead", the higher figure of which is in line with Irving's incorrect retracted estimates.
The Nazis made use of Dresden in their
propaganda efforts and promised swift retaliation. The Soviets also made propaganda use of the Dresden bombing in the early years of the
Cold War to alienate the East Germans from the Americans and British.
The tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was actually lower than in many other areas.
[RAF, Campaign Diary March 1945, Note 11 March, Essen (1,079 aircraft) and 12 March, Dortmund (1,108 aircraft).] However, ideal weather conditions at the target site, the
wooden-framed buildings, and "breakthroughs" linking the cellars of contiguous buildings and the lack of preparation for the effects of air-raids by
Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann,
[20] conspired to make the attack particularly devastating. For these reasons the loss of life in Dresden was higher than many other bombing raids during World War II. For example
Coventry, the English city which is now
twinned with Dresden, and is often compared and contrasted with it, lost 1,236 in
two separate raids in 1940. In late 2004, an RAF man involved in the raid said in an interview on the BBC's Radio 4 that another factor was the lower-than-expected level of anti-aircraft fire, which allowed a high degree of accuracy on the part of the bombers.
Overall, Anglo-American bombing of German cities claimed between 305,000 and 600,000 civilian lives.
[21] Whether these attacks hastened the end of the war is a controversial question.
Personal reminiscences
There are a number of first hand accounts documenting the civilian experience amidst the firebombing. One survivor, Margaret Freyer, recalled:
Another survivor, Lothar Metzger, provides an equally vivid account:
Political responses to the bombing
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.
[22]
Goebbels inflated the numbers of the dead by a factor of ten, and German diplomats circulated the figures, along with photographs of the destruction, the dead, and badly burned children, in neutral countries. By coincidence, the day before the Dresden raid, a German foreign affairs paper had been circulated to neutral countries describing Arthur Harris, as "the arch enemy of Europe" and a leading proponent of "Terror Bombing".
[23]
On
February 16, the Propaganda Ministry issued a press release that outlined the Nazi line: Dresden had no war industries, it was a place of culture and clinics.
On
February 25, a new leaflet with photographs of two burned children was released under the title "Dresden — Massacre of Refugees" and stating that not 100,000 but 200,000 had died. Since no official estimate had yet been developed, the numbers were speculative, but foreign journals such as the Stockholm ''
Svenska Morgenbladet'' used phrases like "privately from Berlin".
[24] 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
March 4,
Das Reich, a weekly general newspaper founded by Goebbels, published a lengthy article emphasising the suffering and the destruction of a cultural icon without mentioning any damage the attacks had caused to the German war effort.
[ Taylor, p. 424.]
Taylor observes that this propaganda was quite effective as it not only influenced attitudes in neutral countries at the time but also reached the
British House of Commons when
Richard Stokes quoted information from the German Press Agency (controlled by the Propaganda Ministry). Taylor suggests that, although the destruction of Dresden would have affected people's perception of the Allies' claim to absolute moral superiority in any event, part of the outrage involves Goebbels's master stroke of propaganda.
[ Taylor, p. 426.]
British
At a press briefing held by the
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force two days after the raids, British Air Commodore
Grierson told journalists "''First of all they [Dresden and similar towns] are the centres to which evacuees are being moved. They are centres of communications through which traffic is moving across to the Russian Front, and from the Western Front to the East, and they are sufficiently close to the Russian Front for the Russians to continue the successful prosecution of their battle. I think these three reasons probably cover the bombing.''"
[25] 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.
[26]
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 possessed a resonance for 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 argues that the bombing of Dresden was the first time Allied populations questioned the military actions used to defeat the Nazis.
[27]
Churchill's draft memo
Churchill, who approved of the targeting of Dresden and supported the bombing prior to the event, subsequently distanced himself from it.
[ Longmate, p. 345.]["The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany" (SOA), HMSO (1961) vol 3 pp. 117–9.][28] On
March 28, 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 draft memo by Bottomley, on
March 29, Harris wrote to the Air Ministry:
[29]
On reflection, 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.
[30][ Taylor, p. 433.] This final version of the memo completed on
April 1 1945, stated:
Was the bombing a war crime?
The ''Altmarkt'' (old market) square before its destruction
The nature of the bombing of Dresden has made it a unique point of contention and debate. Arguments for and against the bombing being a
war crime come from all across the political spectrum and are supported in a variety of ways.
Both
Günter Grass, German novelist and
Nobel laureate for literature, and
Simon Jenkins, former editor of ''
The Times'', have both referred to the Dresden bombing as a war crime.
[Eyes Open to the Past, RA Magazine, Spring 2003, verified 26 February 2005. ''N.B. this source appears to be a personal workstation and not the official online version of the magazine which was non-functional at the time of verification''][31] The historian
Max Hastings said in an article subtitled, 'the Allied Bombing of Dresden': ''I believe it is wrong to describe strategic bombing as a war crime, for this might be held to suggest some moral equivalence with the deeds of the Nazis. Bombing represented a sincere, albeit mistaken, attempt to bring about Germany's military defeat.''
[32]
Dr.
Gregory H. Stanton, president of
Genocide Watch, wrote: ''
Nazi Holocaust was among the most evil
genocides in history. But the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were also war crimes and, as
Leo Kuper and
Eric Markusen have argued, also acts of genocide.''
[How we can prevent genocide by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch.] Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn write in their book "The History and Sociology of Genocide" (page 24) that ''[the] definition of genocide also excludes civilian victims of aerial bombardment in belligerent states. In this we differ from
Jean-Paul Sartre and Leo Kuper.''
[33]
Far-Right politicians in Germany promote the term "''Bombenholocaust''" ("bombing holocaust") to describe the Allied aerial bombings, especially for the Dresden raids.
[34][35] Holger Apfel is the leader of the far-right
National Democratic Party of Germany (German acronym NPD) in Saxony and a member of the
Saxon Landtag. In a speech there on
January 22,
2005 he said that Allied bombing of Dresden was a "Holocaust of Germans". This was said under
parliamentary immunity but
Udo Voigt, the chairman of the NPD, repeated the allegations outside the parliament where he was not protected by parliamentary immunity.
[36][37] Many German mainstream politicians consider the NPD's rhetoric referring to the firebombing of Dresden as an attempt to advance neo-Nazi causes by exploiting the intense sentiment surrounding the bombing—-not only to win votes but also as propaganda to place Nazi crimes in a more relativist context and show a moral parity between the Allies of World War II and the Axis. Some Germans had considered the term a violation of German law which forbids
Holocaust denial, but in April 2005 the Hamburg public prosecutor's office decided that Voigt's statement was a constitutionally protected exercise of free speech since defamation was not the prime aim of the argument. Hannah Cleaver, in the ''
Daily Telegraph'', writes: ''Strictly speaking, the word 'holocaust', which comes from the ancient Greek for 'burnt', might seem apt for Dresden, much of it immolated by the fires started by the RAF's incendiary bombs. But its primary meaning is now so closely linked to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews that such etymology appears to be in bad taste.''
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.
[38] 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.
The case for the bombing as a war crime
Regarding the Allied decision to target Dresden, some proponents of the ''war crime'' position argue that an awareness of the devastation known to be caused by
firebombing and the effect on the civilian population below
['' Terrorism and the Protection of Cultural Heritage'', Copenhagen: August 2005. IFLA Conference.] was greater than that justified by
military necessity and establishes their case on a
prima facie basis. This goes without even mentioning that Dresden did not have a military garrison, that most of the industry was in the outskirts and not in the targeted city centre,
[Gerda Gericke (lucas) The Destruction of Dresden's Frauenkirche ''Deutsche Welle'', 26 October 2005.] and the cultural significance of the city.
In addition to Stanton, the aforementioned president of Genocide Watch,
Simon Jenkins contends that a mass assault against civilians simply constitutes a
crime against humanity.
[39]
Before the bombing, Dresden was regarded as a beautiful city and a cultural centre, and was sometimes known as ''Elbflorenz'', or
Florence on the
Elbe. Author
Kurt Vonnegut, who as an American POW was in Dresden before and during the firebombing, at his arrival in Dresden called it "''Oz''" (with allusion to the novel ''
The Wizard Of Oz''). Its notable architecture included the
Zwinger Palace, the
Dresden State Opera House, and the
Dresden Frauenkirche its historic cathedral. 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.
[40]
The author, journalist and literary critic
Christopher Hitchens is of the opinion that many small German residential districts were destroyed for no reason other than as live target practice for new bomber crews, and that the Allies incinerated German cities in 1944 and 1945 simply because they could.
[41] The Allies were aware of the effects of firebombing as British cities had been subject to them during
the Blitz.
[42]
In ''Fire Sites'', German revisionist historian
Jörg Friedrich posits that
Winston Churchill's decision to bomb Germany between January and March 1945 constitutes a war crime, because he claims that the RAF's relentless bombing campaign against German cities in the last months of the war served no military purpose.
[43]
Countering the claim that Dresden was a significant military target, Friedrich's earlier book, ''Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945'' focuses on the evidence showing that the German forces were in full retreat by February 1945. He argues that the impact on civilians was out of all proportion to the military goal, reiterating the argument that the Allied forces were aware of the destruction caused by incendiary bombs. Friedrich also argues that the Allies had known that future attacks were likely to cause ever increasing numbers of civilian deaths.
[44]
In ''Der Brand'', Friedrich also suggests that by 1945, the German air defense had collapsed. As for the counter claim that the nationalization of the air-defense system, the
Kammhuber Line, meant Dresden was defended, and therefore, a permissible military target, a closer examination is necessary. Given the state of the Luftwaffe after December 1944, the ability for routine air patrols was severely reduced due to fuel shortages.
[45] Furthermore, the Allies were completely in control of the air,
and Germany had committed all of its fighters originally dedicated to air defense at the
Battle of the Bulge[46] Concerning grounded
anti-aircraft capacity, it took an average of 16,000
88 mm Flak shells to bring down a single Allied
heavy bomber.
[47][48] Thus, the meaning of "defended" is disputable — much like the phrase "war crime."
The case against the bombing as a war crime
Ruins of the Frauenkirche in 1991
The
Military of the United States contended that the bombing of Dresden did not constitute a war crime based on the following claims:
[49]
# 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.
[ USAF, II. Section ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target, ¶ 9.]
In reference to the first claim, an inquiry conducted at the behest of the US Secretary of War, General
George C. Marshall, found that the raid was justified by the available intelligence. The inquiry declared that the elimination of the German ability to reinforce a counter-attack against Marshall 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 area bombardment of German cities.
[50]
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.
[51] 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.
[52] The United States Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110 factories and industries in Dresden,
albeit mainly in the outskirts, which were far less affected by the February 1945 raid. This reflects on a trend in late war German industrial production, as many industries began moved their manufacturing operations into the suburbs or even underground. Nevertheless, the city still contained the Zeiss-Ikon optical factory and the
Siemens glass factory, both of which, according to the Allies, were entirely devoted to manufacturing military gunsights. The immediate suburbs contained factories building radar and electronics components, and fuses for anti-aircraft shells. Other factories produced gas masks, engines for
Junkers aircraft and cockpit parts for
Messerschmitt fighters.
3
The second of the five points addresses the prohibition in the
Hague Conventions, of "attack or bombardment" of "undefended" towns. Marshall's inquiry concluded that the presence of active German military units nearby, and the presence of fighters and anti-aircraft within an effective range, Dresden qualified as "defended".
[USAF, II. Section ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target, ¶ 11.] By this stage in the war both the British and the Germans had integrated air defences at the national level. The Germans national air-defence system could be used to argue — as the tribunal did — that no German city was "undefended".
The third and fourth points claim 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
February 23,
1945, the Allies bombed
Pforzheim and caused an estimated 20,000
civilian fatalities; a raid on
Tokyo on
March 9–
10 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. One 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, as the city did not expect to be bombed.
[53] When
Braunschweig was bombed on nights of
October 14 and
15 1944, ''
hochbunkers'' and well trained fire fighters
saved 23,000 people from death in a firestorm. 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.
[54]
Marshall's tribunal declared that no extraordinary decision was made to single out Dresden, (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.
[ USAF, II. Section ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target, ¶ 33, 34.]
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: "The specific forces and means employed in the Dresden bombings were in keeping with the forces and means employed by the Allies in other aerial attacks on comparable targets in Germany. The Dresden bombings achieved the strategic objectives that underlay the attack and were of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians."
[55]
Post-war reconstruction and reconciliation
Reconstructed Frauenkirche 2005
After the war, and especially after
German reunification, great efforts were made to rebuild some of Dresden's former landmarks, such as the
Frauenkirche, the Semperoper, and the Zwinger. A new synagogue was also built. Despite its location in the
Soviet occupation zone (subsequently the
GDR), in 1956 Dresden entered a twin-town relationship with
Coventry, which had suffered the worst destruction of any English city at the hands of the
Luftwaffe in a single attack, including the destruction of its
cathedral. Groups from both cities were involved in moving demonstrations of post-war reconciliation. During her visit to Germany in November 2004,
Queen Elizabeth II hosted a concert in Berlin to raise money for the reconstruction of the
Dresden 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, which did not occur. On
February 13,
2005, a cross made by Alan Smith, the son of one of the bombers, from medieval nails recovered from the ruins of the roof of Coventry cathedral in 1940, was presented to the Lutheran Bishop of Saxony. On Sunday
30 October 2005 the Frauenkirche was rededicated, some 1,800 guests including the Duke of Kent, Germany's president, Horst Köhler, and the previous and current chancellors, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, attended the service.
[Cathedral hit by RAF is rebuilt by Luke Harding in The Guardian October 31, 2005.]
Influences on art and culture
★ In his 1945 diary,
Erich Kästner — a native of Dresden — describes his shock at arriving at the city shortly after its bombing and finding it a pile of ruins, so much so that he could recognise none of the streets and landmarks among which he had spent his childhood and youth.
★ Kästner's autobiographical book ''
When I was a Little Boy''
[56] begins with a lament for Dresden: "I was born in the most beautiful city in the world. Even if your father, child, was the richest man in the world, he could not take you to see it, because it does not exist any more. …In a thousand years was her beauty built, in one night was it utterly destroyed".
★ Translations of Kästner's book into numerous languagues had the effect of making children aware of the Dresden bombing in countries where this aspect of the
Second World War was obscured in school curricula.
★ The bombing of Dresden formed the core of
Kurt Vonnegut's most famous work, the anti-war novel ''
Slaughterhouse-Five'' (publ.
1969).
★ The very popular baroque instrumental piece, the
Adagio in G minor, was arranged by
Remo Giazotto from fragments of a Sonata in G minor for strings and
pipe organ, by
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, which Giazotto found in 1947 while sifting through the ruins of Dresden's Saxon State Library, destroyed in the firebombing.
★ In the book ''
Closing Time'' by
Joseph Heller the character Lewis Rabinowitz meets a character named
Kurt Vonnegut in a Dresden POW camp.
★
Science fiction novelists
Larry Niven and
Jerry Pournelle placed the general who ordered the bombing of Dresden in Hell in their novel ''
Inferno''.
★ Since 1990, the bombing of Dresden has become an increasingly popular theme in German culture, becoming the subject of many books and documentaries (like that of
Guido Knopp).
★ In
Jonathan Safran Foer's 2005 novel ''
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,'' the firebombing of Dresden is one of two traumatic events — the other being the
September 11 attacks — that define the narrator's family history.
★ The name of the
Saddle Creek band
Sorry About Dresden is a reference to this event.
★ The "cabaret punk" group
The Dresden Dolls also take their name from a picture taken of a destroyed doll factory following the bombing.
★ Australian pub-rock group
Cold Chisel wrote a song about the firebombings on their 1979 album ''Breakfast At Sweethearts'', named "Dresden".
★ British heavy-metal group
Iron Maiden also wrote a song about the firebombings on their 1990 album ''
No Prayer for the Dying'', named "Tailgunner".
★ In horror novelist Brian Hodge's book ''Hellboy: On Earth As It Is In Hell''
B.P.R.D.correspondent Dr.
Kate Corrigan proposes the controversial theory that Dresden was destroyed by
Seraphim, just like
Sodom and Gomorrah.
★ The 2006
ZDF film ''
Dresden'' starring
Felicitas Woll and
John Light is set in Dresden at the time of the February 13–14, 1945 raids.
★
''Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945)'' by Daniel Bukvich on his official site.
★ Post apocalyptic folk rock singer songerwriter Stuart Davis wrote a song called "Dresden" about the influence of the firebombing of the city
★ Victor Klemperer, known for his 1933-1945 diaries, was living in Dresden and was bombed out. He and his wife got away safely. In the confusion that followed the bombardment he removed the yellow Star of David, identifying him as a Jew, from his clothing.
★ The song "The Hero's Return" from the Pink Floyd album "The Final Cut" narrates the regret that torments a pilot who made part of Dresden bombing .
See also
References
★
Beevor, Antony; ''Berlin: the Downfall, 1945.'' ISBN 0-670-88695-5.
★ Bergander, Götz, ''Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen''. Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1977.
★ Grant, Rebecca; ''
The Dresden Legend'' (
PDF version),
Air Force Magazine (Online),
October 2004, Vol. 87, Nº 10.
★ Longmate, Norman; "The Bombers", Hutchins & Co, (1983), ISBN 0-09-151508-7.
★ Taylor, Frederick; ''Dresden: Tuesday,
February 13,
1945'';
US review, NY: HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-000676-5;
UK review, London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 0-7475-7078-7.
★ USAF Historical Division Research Studies Institute Air University ''
Historical Analysis of the 14–15 February 1945 Bombings of Dresden''.
Further reading
★
Among the Dead Cities, , A. C., Grayling, Walker Publishing Company Inc, 2006, ISBN 0-8027-1471-4
★ Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (editors); ''Firestorm: the Bombing of Dresden''; Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006.
★
„Der neue Plan von Dresden mit besonderer Kennzeichnung der total zerstörten Gebiete“ (The New City Map of Dresden with the completely destroyed areas marked). Stadtplan von 1947. Fotothek der SLUB-Dresden.
★
US Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War) September 30, 1945.
★
British Military Aviation in 1945 - Part 1: "13–14 February" RAF Museum.
★
Quotes from accounts and sources regarding the bombing (Spartacus site).
★ Forbes, Alan; ''
Atrocities: Dresden'';
Boston Review, October/November 1995.
★
Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden.
★
Horrific fire-bombing images published, BBC News.
★
In German, but with many pictures of modern buildings, easy to understand.
★
The legacy of Dresden.
★
"Surviving the Firestorm" (excerpt from the diary of
Victor Klemperer describing the bombing of Dresden).
★
The Fire-bombing of Dresden — An eye-witness account.
★
Machine-gunning civilian refugees.
★
The 'Bomber Harris Trust'.
★
Necessary or not, Dresden remains a topic of anguish By John Keegan
Daily Telegraph 31 October 2005.
★
Winston Churchill and the Bombing of Dresden UK online material from the National Archives.
★
Website of the film Asche-1945 with a different (German nationalist) point of view.
★
German website with a large photo gallery of the bombing.
★
Williamson Murray ''
The meaning of World War II'' (PDF) pp. 1, 5–6.
Footnotes
1. Taylor p. 207.
2. USAF pp. 14–6.
3. Grant, Rebecca; ''The Dresden Legend'', Air Force Magazine (Online), October 2004, Vol. 87, No. 10.
4. '' Berlin: the Downfall, 1945'' by Antony Beevor, p. 83.
5. USAF, References, II. Table in the Introduction.
6. Britain was on Summer time during the winter of 1945 so British watches were set to the same time as CET
7. RAF: Bomber Command: Dresden, February 1945.
8. '' Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen'' by Götz Bergander.
9. Taylor p. 365.
10. Longmante pp. 162–4.
11. USAF, II. Table in the Introduction.
12. Taylor p. 408.
13. USAF ¶ 25, 26.
14. USAF, II. § The Immediate Consequences of the Dresden Bombings on the Physical Structure and Populace of the City. ¶ 28, chart.
15. Taylor, pp. 262–4. There were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden, so the historians Matthias Neutzner, Götz Bergander and Frederick Taylor have used historical sources and deductive reasoning to estimate that the number of refugees in the city and surrounding suburbs was around 200,000 or less on the first night of the bombing.
16. Friedrich Reichert, ''Verbrannt bis zur Unkenntlichkeit — Die Zerstörung Dresdens 1945'', Dresden: Dresdner Museum, 1994.
17. USAF, II. Section: The Immediate Consequences of the Dresden Bombings on the Physical Structure and Populace of the City, ¶ 29. The comparisons use data extracted from "Fire Raids on German Cities", United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division, January 1945. Supporting Document No. 34.
18. The Bombing of Dresden in 1921, by Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, a detailed critique of problems with David Irving's book.
19. Richard Ingram Irving was the author of his own downfall in ''The Independent'' 25 February 2006: ''In 1969, after David Irving's support for Rolf Hochhuth, the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, ''The Daily Telegraph'' issued a memo to all its correspondents. "It is incorrect", it said, "to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author."''
20. Taylor, p. 5.
21. German Deaths by aerial bombardment. It is not clear if these totals includes Austrians, of whom about 24,000 were killed (Austrian Press & Information Service, Washington, DC) and people other territories in the Third Reich but not in modern Germany.
★ 600,000 about 80,000 were children in Hamburg, Juli 1943 (Der Spiegel ©SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003 )
★ Twentieth Century Atlas — Death Tolls lists the following totals and sources:
★
★ more than 305,000 (1945 Strategic Bombing Survey);
★
★ 400,000 ''Hammond Atlas of the 20th Century'' (1996)
★
★ 410,000 R. J. Rummel, 100% democidal;
★
★ 499,750 Michael Clodfelter ''Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618–1991'';
★
★ 593,000 John Keegan ''The Second World War'' (1989);
★
★ 593,000 J. A. S. Grenville citing "official Germany" in ''A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994)''
★
★ 600,000 Paul Johnson ''Modern Times'' (1983).
22. Taylor, pp. 420–6.
23. Taylor, p. 421.
24. Taylor, p. 423.
25. Taylor, p. 413.
26. Longmate, p. 344.
27. Still Explosive, RA Magazine, Vol 78, Spring 2003, verified 26 February 2005. ''N.B. this source appears to be a personal workstation and not the official online version of the magazine which was non-functional at the time of verification''.
28. Taylor, p. 431.
29. Taylor, p. 432.
30. Longmate, see References, p. 346. Harris quote as source: Public Records Office ATH/DO/4B quoted by Lord Zuckerman "From Apes to Warlords" p. 352.
31. Europe: Then And Now, Michael Elliott, ''Time (magazine)'' Europe, 10 August 2003, retrieved 26 February 2005.
32. Still Explosive, RA Magazine, Spring 2003, verified 26 February 2005. ''N.B. this source appears to be a personal workstation and not the official online version of the magazine which was non-functional at the time of verification''
33. "The History and Sociology of Genocide" by Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, p. 24.
34. Casualties of total war Leading article, in The Guardian February 12, 2005.
35. Carsten Volkery ''A War of Words'' Der Spiegel online February 2, 2005.
36. German far right unites for polls BBC website, 17 May, 2005.
37. Hannah Cleaver ''German ruling says Dresden was a holocaust'' in the ''Daily Telegraph'' 12 April 2005.
38. Javier Guisández Gómez '' The Law of Air Warfare'' 30 June 1998 International Review of the Red Cross nº 323, pp. 347–63.
39. Dresden: Time to Say We're Sorry by Simon Jenkins in the ''Wall Street Journal'' February 14, 1995, originally published ''The Times'' and ''The Spectator''.
40. '' Berlin: the Downfall, 1945'' by Antony Beevor p. 83.
41. Hitchens, Christopher ''Was Dresden a war crime?'', National Post, September 6, 2006.
42. Longmate p. 122 describes the 22 September 1941 memorandum prepared by the British Air Ministry's Directorate of Bombing Operatons, which put numbers to this analysis.
43. Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in ''The Guardian'', October 21, 2003.
44. Douglas Peifer A review of ''Der Brand'' Published in November, 2003, by H-German, a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine.
45. Otto Mehr, JSTOR review of Wolfgang Birkenfeld, ''Der synthetische Treibstoff 1933–1945'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 429.
46. Richard G. Davis, ''Bombing the European Axis Powers. A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive 1939–1945'' PDF. Alabama: Air University Press, 2006, p. 473.
47. Richard G. Davis,''Bombing the European Axis Powers. A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive 1939–1945'' Alabama: Air University Press, 2006, p. 594.
48. Williamson Murray, ''German Military Effectiveness'', Nautical & Aviation Pub Co of Amer (July 1992), p. 78.
49. USAF, II. Section ANALYSIS: Specific Target Objectives in the Dresden Area, ¶ 24.
50. Taylor p. 196.
51. Taylor p. 169.
52. Taylor quoting the RAF Group briefing paper, p. 3.
53. Taylor Chapter 12: "The Reich's air raid shelter".
54. Taylor prologue, p. 8.
55. USAF, II. § Analysis: Dresden as a Military Target, III. Conclusion.
56. German National Library, http://www.d-nb.de/eng/index.htm.
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