Dresden marks anniversary of WWII bombings

Feuer Frei! · 02-13-11, 08:03 AM

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 · 02-13-11, 08:38 AM

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 · 02-13-11, 09:06 AM

Alas, C'est la guerre

Gerald · 02-13-11, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oberon

Alas, C'est la guerre

"It's the war!"

Feuer Frei! · 02-13-11, 09:15 AM

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 · 02-13-11, 09:23 AM

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! · 02-13-11, 09:36 AM

Quote:

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 · 02-13-11, 09:43 AM

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 · 02-13-11, 10:27 AM

Quote:

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.

Jimbuna · 02-13-11, 02:50 PM

Quote:

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.

02-13-11, 04:03 PM

Caution Long Post Ahead...

It helps to put the Dresden raid into context since it was the logical culmination of 25-years of airpower theories as applied to total war. Remember that the three greatest inter-war bomber theorists were all Allied in WW1, Britain's Hugh Trenchard, Italy's Guilo Douhet and America's William Mitchell. All advocated bombing civilian targets and the use of terror as a legitimate weapon.

As early as 1920 British Secretary of State for War, one Winston Churchill advocated the RAF dropping mustard gas bombs on Iraqi towns during the Iraqi Revolt 1920-22. The only reason why it didn't happen (see Ferguson The War of the World) was that the bombs were not available in quantity so high explosive was subtituted with great effect. Later the Italians would successfully use chemicals and high explosive bombs in Abyssinia both during the war and the resistance after.

Ironically only the Allies entered the war with effective bombers specifically designed to bomb urban targets, the B-17 first flew in 1936 and the RAF's Short Stirling in 1939. The Allies were already pumped to bomb Axis cities long before the Luftwaffe hit urban London for the first time. Bomber Command had exercised massed night bombing techniques starting as early as 1934 so the oft-repeated canard that they were "forced" into doing so by losses in 1940 is probably a bit of after the fact hyperbole.

Nevertheless, Dresden was a watershed event. As noted above the city did meet all the criteria of a legitimate military target as such things were understood in 1945. There was no reason to slack off even with the end in sight although undamaged urban areas in unoccupied Germany were at a premium by February 1945. Who on the Allied side could forget how Hitler manipulated the German public to achieve power with his "stab in the back" propaganda effectively hiding the defeat of the German armed forces in 1918? In 1945 and with vast urban areas in ruins, there could be no repeat of such lies, everybody in Germany, Nazi or not, knew that they were beaten; completely, decisively and totally at the mercy of the victors. In 1919 it was possible to spin defeat into some sort of victory but the bomber took that option off the table in post-war Germany, East or West.

For all of that it is possible that the bomber theorists were correct and the defeat of a nation by destruction of its infrastucture and terrorizing its citizens could be achieved by the bomber alone. Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that the a solution had been developed to the biggest operational problem of strategic bombing, the need to revist the target time and again. So complete was the destruction caused by the atomic bomb that there was nothing to repair, huge swaths of cities could simply disappear in an instant.

Fortunately one of the lessons learned after Dresden was that destruction on this scale had a political cost and after Japan surrendered, paying that cost ceased to have relevance in the limited wars during and after the Cold War. When, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay told President Kennedy that the nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union would probably cost the lives of only 20-30 Million Americans, the latter very sensibly looked for another solution. The political and moral lessons of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been well learned.

In 1939-45, targeting of civilians and their infrastructure were reasonable responses on the rocky road to defeat Nazism and Japanese militarism. In the limited wars of today the opposite is true and Dresden was one of those seminal events that proved it to be so.

August · 02-13-11, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catfish

Only a theory i know, but apart from generally hating Germany he was a very vengeful fellow, taking lots of things personally

I know you're looking for someone to blame here but Dresden was just the next thing the allies could attack in a long series of attacks. You say Germany was already defeated but the truth is they had already been defeated for months if not years. but that didn't stop them from fighting. Just a couple months before the Dresden attack the supposedly defeated Germans mounted a huge offensive in the Ardenne.

In a fight to the finish you just keep punching until your opponent goes down. No fighter can tell you what the 2nd or 3rd to last punch in a fight is going to be before he throws it. Dresden was just one of those last punches in a fight that is now over.

Oberon · 02-13-11, 04:15 PM

To be fair Raptor, Catfish is partially correct, Hitlers biggest gamble was that Britain would want to get out of the war early, I believe one of his quotes was something like "Britain is not our natural enemy", in fact IIRC he even expressed his respect for Britain and the British Empire, but once the war had begun and France and Britain declared war, then he wanted to knock France out ASAP so he could get to work on his primary target which was Russia, going through the Maginot line would be suicide, so the only other real choice was through neutral Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. I mean, I guess he could have gone through Belgium and left Holland but then what if Holland flipped to Allied control and they broke through the advance before the Ardennes thrust? Norway was because of resources and I think Yugoslavia would have been strategic in terms of preventing troop movement bottlenecks.

Not condoning the Nazis here, but writing off Hitler as nothing more than a lunatic is underestimating him a bit, and that's a dangerous thing to do to any person, dead or alive.

EDIT: And in terms of invading the Soviet Union...well...I don't really know if Germany had invaded the Soviet Union without having to go through Poland whether Britain would have declared war immediately...nor France. IIRC, Communists were seen as a great threat in the 1930s due to the various uprisings and strikes throughout Europe, so there probably would have been a bit of "Well, let the two idiots fight it out and destroy each other". With the short-sightedness that if one or the other would have won they would have greated a powerhouse.

Catfish · 02-13-11, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by August

... You say Germany was already defeated but the truth is they had already been defeated for months if not years. but that didn't stop them from fighting. Just a couple months before the Dresden attack the supposedly defeated Germans mounted a huge offensive in the Ardenne.
In a fight to the finish you just keep punching until your opponent goes down. No fighter can tell you what the 2nd or 3rd to last punch in a fight is going to be before he throws it. Dresden was just one of those last punches in a fight that is now over.

Yes, i agree - but then i did not say anything else. I am not looking for someone to blame - we both know who the one to blame (or the country)initially is.

The thing with Churchill and Dresden came up recently, when the fight at the Falklands (former Malvinas) in WW1 was thoroughly researched, with the "Dresden" running and hiding in South America - which had made Churchill really furious - he did take this personally after it had escaped the second battle at the Falkland isles.

When the "Dresden" was detected again, it was able to outrun the british again, and finally reached an island in the Pacific (forgot the name), where the crew decided to surrender.
Its engines (turbines, thus the speed) lacking any maintenance, outworn and spent, no coal in the bunkers and half of the british fleet on their back there was no way out. Some of the crew was on the beach, and some were aboard under the white flag, when the british task force came in sight and blew the "Dresden" to smithereens.

This had been directly ordered by Churchill, " ... accept no surrender, and after the sinking kill them or take prisoners as you see fit."

Interesting enough, one of the survivors was the later chief of the german SD, a Mr. Canaris. He was involved in several tries to assassinate Hitler, and it it appears likely that MI6 maintained contact with Canaris even after the Munich agreement signed on 30 September 1938. When Winston Churchill came to power after the resignation of Chamberlain in May 1940, Canaris' hopes were high, given the new Prime Minister's strong position against Hitler.

Greetings,
Catfish

MH · 02-13-11, 05:29 PM

Bombing Dresden was one of many ways that Allies wanted to bring war to an end as quick as possible.
Strategic bombing was part of it and definitely contributed to shortening the war and saving Allies lives while not being entarily decisive factor.
Remember that A bomb was actually meant for Germany first but dropped on Japan ending the war without the need to attack mainland.
Bombing of Dresden is one of those sad events of WW2 that that is pointless to argue about in retrospect.
Could the war be won without bombing of Dresden -properly yes.
Could it be won without strategic bombing so "quickly" or at all without loss of many more Allies lives?

02-13-11, 08:03 AM	#1
Feuer Frei! Navy Seal Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Valhalla Posts: 5,295 Downloads: 141 Uploads: 17	Dresden marks anniversary of WWII bombings 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. __________________ "History is the lies that the victors agree on"- Napoleon LINK TO MY SH 3 MODS

02-13-11, 09:15 AM	#5
Feuer Frei! Navy Seal Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Valhalla Posts: 5,295 Downloads: 141 Uploads: 17	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 __________________ "History is the lies that the victors agree on"- Napoleon LINK TO MY SH 3 MODS

02-13-11, 09:43 AM	#8
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	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. __________________ "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine

02-13-11, 08:38 AM	#2
Catfish Dipped Squirrel Operative Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: ..where the ocean meets the sky Posts: 17,773 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	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

02-13-11, 09:06 AM	#3
Oberon Lucky Jack Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 25,976 Downloads: 61 Uploads: 20	Alas, C'est la guerre

02-13-11, 09:23 AM	#6
Oberon Lucky Jack Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 25,976 Downloads: 61 Uploads: 20	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.

02-13-11, 04:03 PM	#11
Randomizer Stowaway Posts: n/a Downloads: Uploads:	Caution Long Post Ahead... It helps to put the Dresden raid into context since it was the logical culmination of 25-years of airpower theories as applied to total war. Remember that the three greatest inter-war bomber theorists were all Allied in WW1, Britain's Hugh Trenchard, Italy's Guilo Douhet and America's William Mitchell. All advocated bombing civilian targets and the use of terror as a legitimate weapon. As early as 1920 British Secretary of State for War, one Winston Churchill advocated the RAF dropping mustard gas bombs on Iraqi towns during the Iraqi Revolt 1920-22. The only reason why it didn't happen (see Ferguson The War of the World) was that the bombs were not available in quantity so high explosive was subtituted with great effect. Later the Italians would successfully use chemicals and high explosive bombs in Abyssinia both during the war and the resistance after. Ironically only the Allies entered the war with effective bombers specifically designed to bomb urban targets, the B-17 first flew in 1936 and the RAF's Short Stirling in 1939. The Allies were already pumped to bomb Axis cities long before the Luftwaffe hit urban London for the first time. Bomber Command had exercised massed night bombing techniques starting as early as 1934 so the oft-repeated canard that they were "forced" into doing so by losses in 1940 is probably a bit of after the fact hyperbole. Nevertheless, Dresden was a watershed event. As noted above the city did meet all the criteria of a legitimate military target as such things were understood in 1945. There was no reason to slack off even with the end in sight although undamaged urban areas in unoccupied Germany were at a premium by February 1945. Who on the Allied side could forget how Hitler manipulated the German public to achieve power with his "stab in the back" propaganda effectively hiding the defeat of the German armed forces in 1918? In 1945 and with vast urban areas in ruins, there could be no repeat of such lies, everybody in Germany, Nazi or not, knew that they were beaten; completely, decisively and totally at the mercy of the victors. In 1919 it was possible to spin defeat into some sort of victory but the bomber took that option off the table in post-war Germany, East or West. For all of that it is possible that the bomber theorists were correct and the defeat of a nation by destruction of its infrastucture and terrorizing its citizens could be achieved by the bomber alone. Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that the a solution had been developed to the biggest operational problem of strategic bombing, the need to revist the target time and again. So complete was the destruction caused by the atomic bomb that there was nothing to repair, huge swaths of cities could simply disappear in an instant. Fortunately one of the lessons learned after Dresden was that destruction on this scale had a political cost and after Japan surrendered, paying that cost ceased to have relevance in the limited wars during and after the Cold War. When, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay told President Kennedy that the nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union would probably cost the lives of only 20-30 Million Americans, the latter very sensibly looked for another solution. The political and moral lessons of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been well learned. In 1939-45, targeting of civilians and their infrastructure were reasonable responses on the rocky road to defeat Nazism and Japanese militarism. In the limited wars of today the opposite is true and Dresden was one of those seminal events that proved it to be so.

02-13-11, 04:15 PM	#13
Oberon Lucky Jack Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 25,976 Downloads: 61 Uploads: 20	To be fair Raptor, Catfish is partially correct, Hitlers biggest gamble was that Britain would want to get out of the war early, I believe one of his quotes was something like "Britain is not our natural enemy", in fact IIRC he even expressed his respect for Britain and the British Empire, but once the war had begun and France and Britain declared war, then he wanted to knock France out ASAP so he could get to work on his primary target which was Russia, going through the Maginot line would be suicide, so the only other real choice was through neutral Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. I mean, I guess he could have gone through Belgium and left Holland but then what if Holland flipped to Allied control and they broke through the advance before the Ardennes thrust? Norway was because of resources and I think Yugoslavia would have been strategic in terms of preventing troop movement bottlenecks. Not condoning the Nazis here, but writing off Hitler as nothing more than a lunatic is underestimating him a bit, and that's a dangerous thing to do to any person, dead or alive. EDIT: And in terms of invading the Soviet Union...well...I don't really know if Germany had invaded the Soviet Union without having to go through Poland whether Britain would have declared war immediately...nor France. IIRC, Communists were seen as a great threat in the 1930s due to the various uprisings and strikes throughout Europe, so there probably would have been a bit of "Well, let the two idiots fight it out and destroy each other". With the short-sightedness that if one or the other would have won they would have greated a powerhouse.

02-13-11, 05:29 PM	#15
MH Ocean Warrior Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 3,184 Downloads: 248 Uploads: 0	Bombing Dresden was one of many ways that Allies wanted to bring war to an end as quick as possible. Strategic bombing was part of it and definitely contributed to shortening the war and saving Allies lives while not being entarily decisive factor. Remember that A bomb was actually meant for Germany first but dropped on Japan ending the war without the need to attack mainland. Bombing of Dresden is one of those sad events of WW2 that that is pointless to argue about in retrospect. Could the war be won without bombing of Dresden -properly yes. Could it be won without strategic bombing so "quickly" or at all without loss of many more Allies lives?