The firebombing of Dresden - 60 year anniversary

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Kidicious


You can't really blame just Hitler can you?

Of course I can


Nah, I blaim France and Britain and USA for being too mild earlier.

[Micha]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Also rememebr that those resisting in the end were not so much fighting for the present, but for what was to come.

After the Ruhr pocked surrended the Western Allies rain into very little resistance. Most Germans had been believing in a myth that peace with the west to jointly fight the Soviets was a real possibility. They did not fear western occupation once defeat was emminent.

The eastern part of Germany, however, was a different story all together. The knew they were going to be occupied by a brutal revenge bent CULTURAL/IDEOLOGICAL enemy. Nazism and capitalism are not so dire of enemies as far as systems go, and the underlying culture of Germany that Nazism was built from was not much different than France and Britian. The populations, and especially the miltary, on the Eastern front knew life as they knew it was over. There would be nothing to return to. Survival just ment 20 years in the prison camp to maybe come home to find Prussia no longer exists and what little of the past remains is dominated by the hated Bolsheviks.

Thats why you can have most of Germany just waiting for it to end while at the same time V2s are hitting London. There was a good bit of fatalism going around.

Excellent explaination!

As a citizen of Dresden I can assure you that the bombing of that city only served the purpose of creating hatred towards the British. Especially the destruction of the many castles and churches, like the "Frauenkirche". When the story about the erection of a statue honouring the man who was responsible for the bombings came up in the media, the Queen was just about to visit Dresden. Needless to say she was greeted with foul eggs (as TV showed her inaugurating the memorial herself).

About east/west: Most people hoped for Western occupation. My father was 5 years old when the Americans reached his village just west of the Elbe. They brought chocolate and were greeted as liberators.
A few months later they pulled out of the region and the Soviets came, killing my grandparents, raping and plundering what was left.
The Nazis had no problem to get the population fight the Soviets, because they feared the "Ivan" more than the death in the battle. At this time, most cities would just have surrendered to the Western Allies if they would have been given the chance. Assisting the Soviets by bombing refugee camps is neither an excuse nor an explaination. Especially if you take into account that Churchill was well aware of the future rivalry between the West and the East. It was like sacrificing a pawn to buy time. Just that it wasn´t their pawn...

Having said this, I hold no grudge against either side. Most of us didn´t live yet at that time, and most of those involved are dead already. Today´s Russians, Americans, British and Germans are very similar in their values and wishes, and in my opinion there´s no point in hating people for something their ancestors did.

Just let everyone honour the dead, from both sides. Most soldiers who died in the wars fought for what they thought was the right, and politician´s job was (and is) to make them think that. Today´s armies are no different to this. American soldiers in Iraq enrolled because they think it´s the right thing to do, while for many Irquis it´s an unprovoked invasion of foreign infidels. Propaganda is made on both sides, and each will use the "atrocities" of the others to justify the own ones.

It was that way, it still is that way and it will be so for quite some time too.

(Hm, got distracted somehow... anyway, it´s late, thanks for reading this.)

[Sava]

the defenders of atrocities are just more proof that the human race needs to be wiped out... getting rid of all of humanity wouldn't be an atrocity... it'd be a service to the universe.

humans

fukwads in this thread

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Sava
the defenders of atrocities are just more proof that the human race needs to be wiped out... getting rid of all of humanity wouldn't be an atrocity... it'd be a service to the universe.

humans

fukwads in this thread

most people go their entire lives without visiting violence on anybody else.

Humanity isn't as horrible as you seem to think.

[Heresson]

Life is not black and white.
(Sava's shocked)

[DanS]

Just let everyone honour the dead, from both sides. Most soldiers who died in the wars fought for what they thought was the right, and politician´s job was (and is) to make them think that.

I may be misconstruing what you are writing, but I don't see much need for moral relativism here. On the whole, Germany got what was rightly coming to it.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Geronimo


most people go their entire lives without visiting violence on anybody else.

I don't think that's true.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse

The idea that Dresden was a non military target seems to have grown up after the war.

That seems true. Dresden was apparently a center of high-tech (not smokestack) war industry, was an important rail hub, and got into Nazism early and with particular gusto (killing 96% of its Jewish residents, for example).

Not only that, it's casualty figures may not have been that unusual compared with other cities of comparable size.

From op-ed piece in The Scotsman:

Of all major German cities of comparable size, Dresden had been second only to Breslau in its willing embrace of Nazism, and it proved as eager as many to persecute the Jews. The destruction of the city’s great baroque cathedral, the Frauenkirche, is always held up as the arch symbol of the Allies’ bombing of the city, and post-war German-British reconciliation has focused much benevolent energy on its rebuilding; it will officially be reconsecrated later this year.

Yet, the city’s synagogue was burned to the ground in 1938 during the infamous Kristallnacht, and the Jews systematically persecuted, forced to wear the yellow star and deported to the death camps with little protest. Of the 5,000 Jews in Dresden when Hitler came to power, only 198 were left in the city by 1945.

As Hitler’s programme of rearmament accelerated in the 1930s,Dresden’s numerous small factories which turned out cameras, lenses, typewriters and radios were duly rewarded with military contracts. Unlike Hamburg, Dusseldorf, or Essen, other German cities devastated by Allied bombing, Dresden had no obvious smokestack industries.

But it was as fully mobilised for war as its Ruhr cousins. "The work rhythm of Dresden," boasted the city’s Chamber for Industry and Commerce in 1941, "is defined by the needs of the army." Three years later, on the eve of the Allied raid, a German army handbook recorded 127 factories working on war production. That figure, historians now know, was incomplete.

Moreover, the city had become an important strategic centre. The war in the east created tens of thousands of refugees who poured into its streets and parks and brought its administration close to the brink of collapse, and it was also a key railway junction, with dozens of military trains passing through every 24 hours.

On New Year’s Day, 1945, just six weeks before the raid, the German army declared the city a military strongpoint, to be defended to the bitter end, and destroyed if necessary. If things had been slightly different the Nazis themselves, or perhaps Red Army artillery, might have been the ones to obliterate Dresden’s treasures.

On the civilian casualties:

For decades, such hyperbole has dogged the debate. This was always obvious, but has become even clearer with the opening of the archives since the collapse of communism in East Germany a decade and a half ago. Historians, both British and German, have now explored the records. The picture that emerges challenges still widely-believed myths about the events of 13-14 February, 1945.

Scrupulous statistics compiled by the city authorities shortly after the bombing - and deliberately ignored by Nazi propagandists and, later, apologists for Hitler’s regime - reveal that 21,271 victims were buried or cremated. Even allowing for those who were not found, of whom there were certainly some, the best-informed German historians now calculate the maximum number of dead was between 25,000 and 40,000. Bad enough, but a far cry indeed from the fantasies so often bandied about.

The figure also enables us to compare Dresden’s fate with that of other German cities. The RAF raid on Hamburg in July 1943 saw 40,000 people die in a firestorm. And in the southern city of Pforzheim, bombed just ten days after Dresden, 25 per cent of the population were killed, compared with just 5 per cent in the "Florence on the Elbe". Dresden was not exceptional; and, contrary to myth, it had also been attacked before, twice.

More on both sides here

Interesting that the German Army itself was planning to destroy Dresden if necessary.

Of course the civilian deaths are horrifying in hindsight, what death isn't? But this was a time of nations fighting for their survival - for the second time in a generation.

I think you have to be very, very careful to morally criticize leaders who were years into fighting a grim, death-match WORLD WAR - again. If they did their best to try to insure that it would be the last one, I am going to be reluctant before second-guessing them.

[notyoueither]

Dresden was not exceptional;

Actually, I think it was. Dresden is uncommon during the war in that crticism of its firebombing was brought up in Westminster, before the war was over. It was not common at the time to criticise Allied conduct of a military operation.

If they did their best to try to insure that it would be the last one, I am going to be reluctant before second-guessing them.

As would I, however Allied leaders were second guessing themselves once they realised what Harris (and others, no doubt) had done to Dresden in the name of 'victory'. There are indications that Dresden was too much for Churchill, and I would be inclined to trust his judgement.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Micha
Having said this, I hold no grudge against either side. Most of us didn´t live yet at that time, and most of those involved are dead already. Today´s Russians, Americans, British and Germans are very similar in their values and wishes, and in my opinion there´s no point in hating people for something their ancestors did.

Just let everyone honour the dead, from both sides.

Well said.

[Alexander's Horse]

If you want to blame someone for Dresden, blame Hitler. The only reason that city got bombed, and many others, was Hitler prolonged the war beyond reason, when there was no hope of victory. All for nothing.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


It may be that the City wasn´t officially declared an open city, as you say.
But it had no important industry and was to date unharmed by Bombing raids (contrary to other large cities througout the remnants of germany)

The ideas that Dresden was defenceless and had no important industry seem to be part of the successful post-war propaganda campaign:

" II. ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target

5. At the outbreak of World War II, Dresden was the seventh largest city in Germany proper.2 With a population of 642,143 in 1939, Dresden was exceeded in size only by Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, and Essen, in that order.3 The serial bombardments sustained during World War II by the seven largest cities of Germany are shown in Chart A.

6. Situated 71 miles E.S.E. from Leipzig and 111 miles S. of Berlin, by rail, Dresden was one of the greatest commercial and transportation centers of Germany and the historic capital of the important and populous state of Saxony.4 It was, however, because of its geographical location and topography and as a primary communications center that Dresden assumed major significance as a military target in February 1945, as the Allied ground forces moved eastward and the Russian armies moved westward in the great combined operations designed to entrap and crush the Germans into final defeat.



7. Geographically and topographically, Dresden commanded two great and historic traffic routes of primary military significance: north-south between Germany and Czechoslovakia through the valley and gorge of the Elbe river, and east-west along the foot of the central European uplands.5 The geographical and topographical importance of Dresden as the lower bastion in the vast Allied-Russian war of movement against the Germans in the closing months of the war in Europe.

8. As a primary communications center, Dresden was the junction of three great trunk routes in the German railway system: (1) Berlin-Prague-Vienna, (2) Munich-Breslau, and (3) Hamburg-Leipzig. As a key center in the dense Berlin-Leipzig railway complex, Dresden was connected to both cities by two main lines.6 The density, volume, and importance of the Dresden-Saxony railway system within the German geography and e economy is seen in the facts that in 1939 Saxony was seventh in area among the major German states, ranked seventh in its railway mileage, but ranked third in the total tonnage carried by rail.7

9. In addition to its geographical position and topography and its primary importance as a communications center, Dresden was, in February 1945, known to contain at least 110 factories and industrial enterprises that were legitimate military targets, and were reported to have employed 50,000 workers in arms plants alone.8 Among these were dispersed aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabric Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); the great Zeiss Ikon A.G., Germany’s most important optical goods manufactory; and, among others, factories engaged in the production of electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch and Sterzel A.G.), gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke), and electric gauges (Gebruder Bassler).9

10. Specific military installations in Dresden in February 1945 included barracks and hutted camps and at least one munitions storage depot.10

11. Dresden was protected by antiaircraft defenses , antiaircraft guns and searchlights, in anticipation of Allied air raids against the city.11 The Dresden air defenses were under the Combined Dresden (Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Luftwaffe Administration Commands.12 "

http://www.earth-lights.net/dresden/Dresden_Bombing_Document.htm

Given that the United Kingdom had suffered attack from Germany's increasingly sophisticated rocket bombs, I'm not sure what people thought that the British Air Force should have done: dropped Valentine's Day cards perhaps?

In any case, I prefer to think of the spirit of reconciliation embodied in the restoration of the Dresden churches and architecture, and the cross of nails presented by representatives of Coventry Cathedral.

[Alexander's Horse]

Its also a myth to suggest that in February 1945 the war was over. It wasn't.

The battle of Berlin had not yet begun, that alone involved several million troops, and although in some areas allied forces met light resistance, in other areas there was fierce fighting. Allied troops were wearying of the fight. No allied soldier wanted to be the killed in 1945 when the end was in sight.

The allies were fearful of high casualties as they invaded Germany and were trying to persuade the German people to give up the fight. There was real concern that the nazis would retreat into an "Alpine fortress" in the South of Germany. So they kept up the bombing offensive against German cities to keep the pressure on right till the end.

Bombing communications centres like Dresden helped hasten the end. Germany still had large armies in the field and their movement was impeded. In the case of Dresden it hampered for example the possible relief of the Oder front and Berlin by Army Group Centre, which was by this time based in Czechoslovakia.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Its also a myth to suggest that in February 1945 the war was over. It wasn't.

It's that terrible eye affliction, hindsightism.

I didn't actually realize that cities weren't meant to look like Coventry when I was young. My parents lived on the edge of one of the areas that had been heavily bombed, and I vivdly recall seeing all these redbrick terraces open to the elements, with exposed lath and plaster, peeling wallpaper, piles of bricks and rubble everywhere, doors opening on to air.


Then of course, the city planners completed what the Luftwaffe could not achieve.

[Alexander's Horse]

I really became anti war when I went to Germany and saw the bomb damage - you can still see it today in places like Hamburg and Cologne. Like Coventry, parts are still bombed out and the rubble is burnt. Just little patches of rubble left as it was since the war.

The Cologne Cathedral made a powerful impression. Everything around it was destroyed and the exterior still bears the marks of bomb damage. It made me think how fragile even large buildings are. One direct hit and the cathedral would have been obliterated with everyone in it.

The best thing you could do for the victims of Dresden and other places like Coventry is fight for peace in your own time.