Bombing of Dresden in World War II


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The bombing of Dresden in World War II by the Allies remains controversial
after more than 50 years. Dresden, the capital of the German state of
Saxony, was fire-bombed by Allied air forces (the British Royal Air Force
(RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) over three days (February
13-15, 1945) near the end of World War II. Air Marshall Arthur Harris,
inventor of area bombing, ordered the action. He was never held accountable
for this alleged war crime.

Dresden was widely considered a city of little war-related industrial
or strategic importance, though, after the fact, in his memoirs
Winston Churchill described it as a "centre of communications of
Germany's Eastern Front." Dresden itself was most noted as a cultural
centre, with noted architecture in the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State
Opera House and its historic churches. It was also called "Elbflorenz", i.e.
Florence of the Elb, due to its stunning beauty. It has been claimed that
the bombing was at the request of Russia, to attack a German armoured
division in transit through the city. However, RAF briefing notes indicate
that one of the motives was to show "the Russians when they arrive, what
Bomber Command can do" (that is, to intimidate the Russians).

At the time, the town was cramped full of refugees fleeing from the
advancing Red Army. Dresden, having been spared from previous attacks, was
considered to be very safe. Bomber Command was ordered to attack Berlin,
Dresden, Leipzig and other east German cities to "cause confusion in the
evacuation from the east" and "hamper the movements of troops from the
west". This directive led to the raid on Dresden and marked the erosion of
one last moral restriction in the bombing war: the term "evacuation from the
east" did not refer to retreating troops but to the civilian refugees
fleeing from the advancing Russians. Although these refugees clearly did not
contribute to the German war effort, they were considered legitimate targets
simply because the chaos caused by attacks on them might obstruct German
troop reinforcements to the Eastern Front. There are eyewitness-reports that
even civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing Dresden in February 1945 were
strafed by British and American aircraft, though it is doubted [1].

The fire-bombing consisted of dropping large amounts of high-explosive 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. This eventually created a self-sustaining
'fire storm' with temperatures peaking at over 1500 degrees C. After the
area caught fire, the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and
rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and
people were sucked into the fire.

3,900 tonnes of bombs were dropped. Out of 28,410 houses in the inner city
of Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed. An area of 15 square kilometers was
totally destroyed, among that: 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19
churches, 5 theaters, 50 bank and insurance companies, 31 department stores,
31 large hotels, and 62 administration buildings.

The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is   [Dresden.jpg]
not known. Estimates vary from 35,000 to 135,000 dead. Such
estimates are made very difficult by the fact that the city was crowded at
that time by many unregistered refugees and wounded soldiers. (In
comparison, some 100,000 died in the bombing of Hiroshima, about 50,000 in
the bombing of Nagasaki and 100,000 in the bombing of Tokyo). There have
been larger estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as a quarter
of a million, but they are from disputed sources, such as the Nazi
Propaganda Ministry and Holocaust denier David Irving. The Nazis made use of
Dresden in their propaganda and promised swift retaliation.

This destruction is not out of line with the destruction of other German
cities and the tonnage of bombs dropped was lower than that used on many
other cities. The US Strategic Bombing Survey says nothing about Dresden but
says "On three nights in late July and early August 1943 it struck Hamburg
in perhaps the most devastating single city attack of the war -- about one
third of the houses of the city were destroyed and German estimates show
60,000 to 100,000 people killed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as
did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly
alarmed and there is some indication from interrogation of high officials
that Hitler himself thought that further attacks of similar weight might
force Germany out of the war. The RAF proceeded to destroy one major urban
center after another. Except in the extreme eastern part of the Reich, there
is no major city that does not bear the mark of these attacks. However, no
subsequent attack had the shock effect of the Hamburg raid."

The Dresden bombing is a strongly debated decision, and the action is still
widely perceived as lacking military justification, even within the context
of the controversial area bombing policy pursued against Germany by
Britain's Bomber Command in 1942-1945. The city has never regained its
pre-war population of 630,000.

One popular charge against the bombing is that the city was not a military
target. However, other evidence suggests otherwise; The city contained the
Zeiss-Ikon optical factory and the Siemens glass factory (both of which were
entirely devoted to manufacturing military gunsights). The immediate suburbs
contained factories building components of radars and electronics, and fuses
for anti-aircraft shells. Other factories produced gas masks, engines for
Junkers aircraft and cockpit parts for Messerschmitt fighters. After the
attack, Germany was to claim that Dresden's industry was only making civil
goods, a notion which much of the world accepted, and still accepts, as true.

There are anecdotes of the pilots and crew having problems years later. Some
had nightmares, some thought they would go to hell as war criminals, some
had unshakable visions of the fires and the burning cities. Many other
veterans, however, doubt these anecdotes, noting that their briefings
included details on what they were hitting, and that no one in their
recollection had any misgivings about the mission.

Author Kurt Vonnegut had been captured during the Battle of the Bulge and
was a prisoner of war near Dresden during the bombing. He later wrote about
his experiences and feelings in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

After the war great efforts were made to rebuild some of Dresden's former
landmarks, such as the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper or the Zwinger.