Dresden marks anniversary of WWII bombings

[Feuer Frei!]

THE eastern German city of Dresden on Sunday marked the 66th anniversary of a deadly Allied bomb attack at the end of World War II.

The day began with a wreath-laying ceremony at a cemetery where thousands of victims are buried attended by Stanislaw Tillich, who heads the regional government of Saxony and other political and religious representatives.
A massive bombing raid by Allied forces on Dresden beginning on February 13, 1945 sparked a firestorm that destroyed much of the historical centre of the city.

Critics said the raid was strategically unjustified as Hitler's Germany was already effectively defeated and the bombs appeared to target civilians rather than military targets.
Among those who perished in the flames were hundreds of refugees who had fled the horrors of the Eastern front.

In March, an official commission concluded that up to 25,000 people died in the raids, fewer than often estimated.

[Catfish]

Hello,
usually right-wingers speak of 50,000 dead, others of 25,000 - bad enough regardless which numbers exactly. According to some reports the city was full of displaced persons and german civilian fugitives, which may not have been counted. At a certain temperature like in this firestorm, there will not even bones be left.
A theory of the reason of this late bombing is that Churchill had a special hate against Dresden, since this name was one symbol of an audacity as he saw it, when the german cruiser "Dresden" escaped and managed to hide for months - along with the Gallipoli failure and the U-boats underestimated by him this lead to his dismissal as the 1st sealord, in WW1.
Only a theory i know, but apart from generally hating Germany he was a very vengeful fellow, taking lots of things personally

Greetings,
Catfish

[Oberon]

Alas, C'est la guerre

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Alas, C'est la guerre

"It's the war!"

[Feuer Frei!]

Presumably they decided only to go with the number of corpses they actually pulled out of the rubble and buried/burned. That number has been recorded and is widely available... which means they are ignoring the fact that so many people were burned alive in temperatures reaching about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. How do you count the mound of ash you find in a cellar? Was it a family of 5 people? Of 10? Maybe even 15?

As for the hundred thousand people registered as missing, we know what missing means because the same person clarified his language in a previous decode about 200 officers missing in the same raid, saying that missing meant that they were most likely now corpses incinerated beyond recognition in the ruins.

British and U.S. bombers pounded the eastern German city of Dresden with 3,900 tons of high explosives and incendiaries.
Germany has been told for too long that it should feel eternal guilt and also accept 100% of the blame.
It is about time that others recognize the true magnitude of THEIR countries' guilt too.
All they have done is parrot the Dresden estimate (25,000) from The Report of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey issued in 1945.

Eyewitness account:
"It is not possible to describe! Explosion after explosion. It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. It became more and more difficult to breathe. It was dark and all of us tried to leave this cellar with inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon, luggage was left or snatched up out of our hands by rescuers. The basket with our twins covered with wet cloths was snatched up out of my mother's hands and we were pushed upstairs by the people behind us. We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm. My mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub.
We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.

I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them."

—Lothar Metzger, survivor

[Oberon]

It's war, everyone is to blame, war is one big atrocity. They bombed us, we bombed them, and we kept on doing that until it ended. Dresden was a horrible event, so was Tokyo, Hamburg, Geurnica, Coventry, Rotterdam and others, in fact Hamburg was worse, so much worse than Dresden and yet rarely receives as much attention.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's war, everyone is to blame, war is one big atrocity. They bombed us, we bombed them, and we kept on doing that until it ended. Dresden was a horrible event, so was Tokyo, Hamburg, Geurnica, Coventry, Rotterdam and others, in fact Hamburg was worse, so much worse than Dresden and yet rarely receives as much attention.

Indeed, it's war. However, this thread marks Dresden's anniversary. Not to lessen other tragic events, if we can focus on all things Dresden, for the purpose of this thread.
It is all too easy to compare and ie then lessen or multiply the nature of the event, it's human nature.

[tater]

During the Soviet era, they used Goebel's figures, which were the official German figures contemporary to the bombing with a zero added to the end.

Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor is a good read on the subject.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Indeed, it's war. However, this thread marks Dresden's anniversary. Not to lessen other tragic events, if we can focus on all things Dresden, for the purpose of this thread.
It is all too easy to compare and ie then lessen or multiply the nature of the event, it's human nature.

Oh, indeed so and no disrespect to the dead intended, however there was a danger of this turning into less of a homage to those fallen but more an attack on those who conducted the event, which would be rather hypocritical.

[UnderseaLcpl]

I wish the US would give as much concern to the Dresden fire-bombing as it does to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In truth, I wish there was as much concern given to the entire allied bombing campaign. We talk about terror now as though it were some kind of recent and heartless invention by other people, but we and our allies bombed civilian areas for the sole purpose of sowing terror. Even when we didn't bomb civilian areas, we managed to hit them a great deal of the time, which is little better, and we threw thousands of bomber crewmen into the teeth of German interceptors with no support and without regard to strategy.

Militarily speaking, we have learned from those mistakes, though it took us a while and we reformed our approach for the sake of battlefield efficacy, not regret. However, there is very little mention of the allied bombing campaign and the horrors it inflicted upon civilians in the textbooks our children study, other than to portray it as a heroic success. The most valuable lessons are not being learned.

[tater]

The total number of civilians killed by allied bombing adds up to noise just compared to the axis murder of civilians under their direct control.

Given that a good % of civilian bombing deaths are in fact "legitimate" legally, the number of improper deaths is an even smaller % (all japanese males over 15 (and under 65) were conscripted as a "home guard" and women 17-47 as well at the time of the firebombing. That made the bulk of japanese fatalities in the firebombing in fact "troops." The actions of the civilians on Okinawa demonstrate that they were more than willing to die in great numbers (at their own hands), too. Also, many of the targets were in fact fine. Dresden in particular. Contrary to myth, it was not a town of art workshops, virtually all industry there had long since been converted to wartime supplies. The least "military" factory was the cigarette plant (cigs that wen to... the military). Given it's proximity to the Russian Front at the time of the bombing (under 90km as I recall), it was a legitimate target as troops were moving towards the front, even while refugees went the other way. The axis also threw all the "rules" out the window given their wholesale, sometimes mechanized slaughter of civilians who had already capitulated to them.

The axis was in complete control. THEY started the war, it was their choice to wait to surrender as long as they did. Their surrender was long since a foregone conclusion, and they in fact did so, so the poor timing (not quitting before they were bombed into the stone age) is their own fault.

The US bombing campaign (daylight) would have been better had we concentrated on the petroleum supply chain, but other than that, I have little problem with it. High-altitude strategic bombing over Japan was very ineffective due to the jet stream.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's war, everyone is to blame, war is one big atrocity. They bombed us, we bombed them, and we kept on doing that until it ended. Dresden was a horrible event, so was Tokyo, Hamburg, Geurnica, Coventry, Rotterdam and others, in fact Hamburg was worse, so much worse than Dresden and yet rarely receives as much attention.

Agreed....it was a time of war and many were killed on either side as a result of bombing.

So many could have been saved had Germany had the foresight or common sense to surrender earlier when it was obvious what the eventual outcome would be.

May all the victims regardless of their country of origin RIP.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by tater

The total number of civilians killed by allied bombing adds up to noise just compared to the axis murder of civilians under their direct control.

Up to 5 million civilians killed by german troops in WW2, right. Only a tenth (about 500,000+ civilians) in Iraq, up to now. But then US soldiers call them "sand ******s" - somehow reminds me of people defined as "inferior", by a "superior" ... race ? Nation ?
I really doubt anyone has learned anything from history, other than being self-righteous and hypocritic while only seeing others committing war crimes, or crimes against humanity. What the US did to its own US people of japanese origin in WW2, deserves an own monument of shame.

The axis was in complete control. THEY started the war, it was their choice to wait to surrender as long as they did. Their surrender was long since a foregone conclusion, and they in fact did so, so the poor timing (not quitting before they were bombed into the stone age) is their own fault.

It was without doubt good, that Hitler and this arrogant policy against the "Untermenschen" was stopped. However to say that Hitler started the world war ? He surely did not want it, he had indeed believed England would not join the war after the invasion of Poland, however it did declare war - "Total Germany" - like England had done in 1914 initiating the first world war, after the german invasion of Belgium.

Greetings,
Catfish

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by Catfish

It was without doubt good, that Hitler and this arrogant policy against the "Untermenschen" was stopped. However to say that Hitler started the world war ? He surely did not want it, he had indeed believed England would not join the war after the invasion of Poland, however it did declare war - "Total Germany" - like England had done in 1914, after the german invasion of Belgium.

Greetings,
Catfish

Because obviously if he was so opposed to a world war the most sensible thing to do was to invade neutral countries like Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union...

[tater]

Every excess death in Europe (and North Africa) during WW2 was Germany's fault. On all sides. There were 6 million killed in the camps alone. More civilians elsewhere. Plus all troops killed on all sides. 25 million is closer to the mark, not 5 million. The total deaths to allied bombing (all theaters) were ~600,000.

The country that starts the war gets credit for all deaths. It's like a robbery. A guy robs a store, and someone in the back room has a heart attack and dies (completely unaware the robbery is going on). The robber is now charged with murder since a death occurred during the commission of a crime.

Japan killed maybe 10 million total.

Regarding Iraq, the war started when Iraq invaded Kuwait (the intervening years were a cease-fire that could have legitimately gone hot the very first time they so much as turned on a radar). Iraq is responsible for the outcome.