Bombing of Dresden--and for what?

Steve:
It's ALL political.
The military history is just an extension of the larger political story. These debates require some precision; when you say "America wanted to bomb such-and-such," do you mean the American government? the American people? Supreme military commanders? the Bomber Command? The soldiers?
If you want to find a military force which dominated the political, financial, as well as religious realms, you have to go back to
.
the Knights Templars

 

[ 30. October 2003, 04:02 PM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

 

You may well complain, but that does not make the two comparable.

10 million refugees is a gross overexaggeration. Even David Irving, a historian whose views on Dresden have been utterly discredited gave an (unsubstantiated and disproved) estimate of 'One or two million refugees'. Dresden was not as crammed with refugees as you claim.

 

Everyone complains about auschwits, last time I checked, but nazis.

 

Auschwitz and other camps: hmmm 6 million jewish and minority refugees as well as german civilians gassed in a killing machine...property taken and certain parts like gold teeth, hair, and skin used for products.

Dresden: 35,000-65,000 dead = tragic and pointless but not comparable in the slightest to the holocaust.

 

Or the SS.

 

Wouldn't the Taliban qualify here as well?

 

Definately!!!!

 

"Dresden's fate had been sealed at the February 4-11, l945 FDR-Churchill-Stalin conference at Yalta. Reports about the Dresden decision center on Stalin's desire to see it savaged as a means of enhancing the Red Army's offensive by jamming up German troop movements."

"Roosevelt and Churchill were of course well aware of Dresden's particulars, including the fact that it was a hospital, prisoner of war and, now, refugee center."

"Dresden had once been a pivotal communications and rail center important to the Wehrmacht. But as Irving notes, by the time it received its fatal blow, "The city's strategic significance was scarcely marginal . . . " it was home to 630,000 permanent residents, its numbers swelled by German and Allied wounded, Allied POWs(Stalag IVb at Mülhberg ) and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing areas in the path of the Red Army's advance. The city's authorities were convinced that a non strategic city with a large number of military hospitals, POW compounds, etc., would not receive anything approaching the annihilative smashing so many other cities and towns had undergone. Therefore most of the air defense and flak batteries that would otherwise be in Dresden were transferred to areas where it was assumed they'd be needed."

"Dresden was virtually undefended. Luftwaffe fighters stationed in the general vicinity were grounded for lack of fuel. With the exception of a few light guns, the anti-aircraft batteries had been dismantled for employment elsewhere. McKee quotes one British participant in the raid, who reported that "our biggest problem, quite truly, was with the chance of being hit by bombs from other Lancasters flying above us."

"Dresden was merely a staging center for a half million refugees from Silesia. The (rail) yards were not even attacked. There were no ammunition workshops and factories, only a small works making optical lenses for gun sights."

"13 February brought 796 Lancaster bombers and 9 Mosquitoes from the Royal Air Force (RAF). In 3 hours, they dropped 1,478 tons of explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiaries (incendiary bombs, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as magnesium, phosphorus or petroleum jelly (napalm), in clusters over a specific target. 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).American Flying Fortresses and Liberators dropped 1,800 explosive bombs and 136,800 fire sticks.American planes completed the raid when they returned and unleashed 3,700 more explosive bombs on Dresden .
Incendiaries caused the temperature to climb to degrees previously unheard of in Germany or Europe, 1800 degrees Fahrenheit (Black). The fires depleted oxygen and suffocated those who made it to bomb shelters."

"The task of the first wave was to create the fire storm. Three hours later, a second and much heavier night force of British bombers was timed to arrive when the German fighter and flak defenses would be off guard, and the rescue squads on their way. Its task was to spread the fire storm. Finally, the next morning, a daylight attack by the Eighth Air Force was to concentrate on the outlying areas, the new city"

"The cultural center of the city was totally destroyed. Meanwhile, the only possible military or economic targets--the barracks in the city's north and the train station where trains carrying reserves for the Eastern Front might depart--were left untouched."

"even the German authorities -- usually so pedantic in their estimates -- gave up trying to work out the precise total after some 35,000 bodies had been recognized, labeled and buried. We do know, however, that the 1,250,000 people in the city on the night of the raid had been reduced to 368,619 by the time it was over ."

"A look at aerial maps of the city before and after the terror attacks clearly shows the large white oil tanks owned by British-controlled Shell Oil. These tanks remained entirely untouched by the bombardment."

"Targets of genuine military significance were not hit, and had not even been included on the official list of targets. Among the neglected military targets was the railway bridge spanning the Elbe River, the destruction of which could have halted rail traffic for months. The railway marshalling yards in Dresden were also outside the RAF target area. The important autobahn bridge to the west of the city was not attacked. Rubble from damaged buildings did interrupt the flow of traffic within the city, "but in terms of the Eastern Front communications network, road transport was virtually unimpaired."

"In the course of the USAF daylight raids, American fighter- bombers strafed civilians: "Amongst these people who had lost everything in a single night, panic broke out. Women and children were massacred with cannon and bombs. It was mass murder." American aircraft even attacked animals in the Dresden Zoo. The USAF was still at it in late April, with Mustangs strafing Allied POWs they discovered working in fields."

"Those few who managed to escape the air attack were hounded later from the air by diving planes to kill off any fleeing survivors."

"This inferno was described in one account of the bombing aftermath as:
". . . scores of Mustang fighters diving low over the bodies, huddled on the banks of the Elbe, as well as on the larger lawns of the Grosse Garden, in order to shoot them up."

"British prisoners who had been released from their burning camps were among those to suffer the discomfort of machine gun attacks . . . Wherever columns of tramping people were marching in or out of the city they were pounced on by the fighters, and machine-gunned or raked with cannon fire."

"Precise casualty figures will never be known. The German authorities stopped counting when the known dead reached 25,000 and 35,000."

"few weeks before the end of World War II, Churchill drafted a memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff:

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing."

NOTE:
Once Dresden came under Soviet control as part of East Germany, as Davidson mentions, the Soviets used the attack as evidence that democratic countries, especially the United States, were vicious war criminals (119). American visitors were welcomed with comments that Dresden was their work that had become Russia’s “job to clean …up

http://www.westerndefense.org/bulletins/July-01.htm

http://www.meredith.edu/stones/newpage2.htm

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/001.html

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p247_Lutton.html

http://www.fpp.co.uk/reviews/Dresden/Esquire1163.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWfirestorm.htm

PS.

Sir,

Michael Shrimpton writes (Aug. 14) that Dresden was an important centre of communication and lay across the Red Army's line of advance: "It was a probable routing for some trains to the Auschwitz concentration camp." Not very probable: Auschwitz had been evacuated a month earlier; as for Dresden, the RAF target map for the raid, which is in my possession, shows that not one Elbe bridge, railway line or station was in the fan-shaped sector of the city marked out for saturation bombing. We now know that the twelve US air force bomb groups which attacked twelve hours later had these orders: "Primary target - visual - center of built up area Dresden. Secondary target - visual - M/Y [marshalling yards] Chemnitz. H2X [radar blind bombing] center of Dresden."

Yours faithfully,

David Irving

http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/ReadersLetters/Times140801.html

 

Friedrich, no flame intended, but just 2 questions:

1.) Would you rather consider yourself being more a neo-nazi or an ultra-nationalist or something else?

2.) Who is "we"?

I'm interested to know more about that "we" you feel to mention that often, because that implies that you might talk for all GERMANS out there.

So, you basically say that "we" should have better had done this or that to win the war for the nazis or "we" think that german war crminals shouldn't been tried or "we" equal Dresden with Auschwitz.

Well, I'm German, I'm adult, I'm a democrat, I have my values who are based on freedom, peace and individuality, and I think that I'm a "modern german" - and at least patriotic enough to say that I'm not part of your outdated, revanchist, pro-nazi "we".

nuff' said.

Cheers,

[ 23 October 2002, 06:36 PM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

I'm sure he didn't mean it as a pro-nazi comment...i believe he just feels it was a crime against his country a long time ago. But hey, i'm not him. He's condemmed the Nazi's before i believe.

But the comparisson with auschwitz did need clearing i think.

 

Ahhhh - Dresden again.....

Kai - where did that 'PS' come from ?

The first edition of Irving's 'Destruction of Dresden' reproduces the 'target map' showing 5 Group's 'fan-shaped area'. Clearly, two Elbe bridges are within the area which commences just past Neustadt and Wettin stations plus the Friedrichstadt marshaling yards, and stops just short of the Central station.

As I'm sure Irving would well have known, such raids always 'crept-back'. 5 Group were effectively marking for the main force and this is exactly what happened - his own book has photos showing the heavily-bombed marshalling yards and Central Station.

The misinformation flying around concerning this one operation is quite extraordinary !

 

It's easy to lose sight of a few things in the whole Dresden debate. Apparently poor Germany was already on her knees, the factories apparently weren't producing anything of importance, there were no people left in the army, the end of the war was just around the corner, and so on, according to many people.

Reality check people. Last time I checked, Germany had recently launched a rather large offensive in the Ardennes. And oddly enough these supposedly beaten and non-existant forces were about to unleash a rather nasty offensive of roughly the same proportions against the Russians in Hungary. The factories continued to churn out tanks during few months of 1945, actually more than in 1941, for example. Dresden had several small but significant industrial targets, such as the Zeiss optical works providing very nice sights for those tanks killing Allied troops.

I do think it's a bit presumptious to start a brutal war of conquest and extermination, and while still killing massive numbers of your enemies expect the opposition to pull their punches, just because the end is in sight. Had Germany been negotiating to surrender, the argument could perhaps hold some water. It was doing so in no way, shape or form.

Add to this that the effect was not anticipated by Bomber Command. In the words of Max Hastings:

"It is important to stress that to those who planned and directed it, the raid on Dresden was no different from scores of other operations
mounted during the years of war. Bomber Command's attacks had reached an extraordinary pitch of technical efficiency, but is was impossible to anticipate the firestorm which developed, multiplying the usual devastation and deaths a hundredfold. To the staff at High Wycombe, Dresden was simply another German town."

 

Martin,

The site is after the letter.

In my opinion it is true that Germany may blame itself in the end for all the bombings, but other than terror bombing the bombing of Dresden was not ( I´ll change my mind if proper evidence is shown ). Just previously they had seen the effect of the bombs in Hamburg so it was not a surprise what they would cause. And if the allied had any reasonable reconnaissance planes they knew what the Germans were having there?!

Why I think like I do?

1.75% of the bombs were incendiary bombs or kind and meant to cause the firestorm effect killing people as much as possible as well as burn the city to the ground.2. If the bombs did not destroy any military targets and the planes were able to fly low and had good accuracy then why only the city center was destroyed 3.Why were the fighters circling around the city killing people that were trying to escape the firestorm? Not very galant even if a couple of German soldiers would have died...4. If it was such a large center of war industry why wasn´t it bombed better previously ( seven times without a result on none at all?) but now only 10 weeks to the end of war it was bombed to kingdom come.Germany was kaput and everybody knew that.

Why the do it? The allied followed the ideology they had until the end, that is.

1. It´s better to bomb Germany than not to bomb anything by Sir Harris ( I think)
2.We need to make the enemy burn and bleed in every way." Winston Churchill in 1941
or
3.incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.

---------

Air Marshall Arthur Harris came under attack for the bombing raid on Dresden. In his autobiography he explained why he ordered the bombing of the city in February, 1945.

The bombers could fly with comparative safety even to targets as distant as Dresden or Chemnitz, which I had not ventured to attack before, because the enemy had lost his early warning system and the whole fighter defence of Germany could therefore generally be out-manoeuvred.Dresden; this was considered a target of the first importance for the offensive on the Eastern front. Dresden had by this time become the main centre of communications for the defence of Germany on the southern half of the Eastern front and it was considered that a heavy air attack would disorganise these communications and also make Dresden useless as a controlling centre for the defence.Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself, and that if their judgment was right the same arguments must apply that I have set out in an earlier chapter in which I said what I think about the ethics of bombing as a whole.(??)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm
--------

I get the evidence from the books and net and by this the attack seems unnecessary. Yet it was according to the ideology that was made by Harris and Churchill, so at the time they did what was in their recipe book. The bombing was as deliberate as Hamburg, except that the reaction in the outside world suprprised them, as we have seen by their comments.

 

About the fire bombs. The most efficient mix of HE and incendiary bombs had been perfected during much trial and error, and was used on every raid, not just in some devillish scheme to kill Dresdens population and refugees. First the huge "cookie cutter" bombs blew off the roofs and smashed windows, then follow-on aircraft dropped mostly incendiaries, with the open roofs and windows adding plenty of oxygen to the fires. Very standard procedure. On this night it worked unusually well, nothing more and nothing less. It's also worth pointing out that the Germans used the exact same method over London, they just sucked at it due to smaller HE and much smaller incendiary bombs.

Likewise, free-ranging fighters strafed vehicles and groups of people (that sometimes turned out to be civilians) were used every day by the Allies at this stage in the war. As had the Axis done when they had air superiority. Nothing extraordinarily cruel on this occasion.

Isn't it strange, that ordinary methods that were used night after night and day after day during the entire war, are portrayed as being something particularly horrible, sinister and calculated at Dresden? I don't get it.

 

Found it:

As Harris himself once expressed it in a letter to the Chief of Air Staff, Charles Portal: "In Bomber Command we have always worked on the principle that bombing anything in Germany is better than bombing nothing.

AND

Not long before his death (in 1984 at the age of 91) Harris, in an interview with Canadian journalist and military historian Gwynne Dyer, was still vigorously defending his beliefs: "Tell me one operation of war which is moral," he challenged. "Sticking a bayonet into a man's belly, is that moral? Then I say, well, of course strategic bombing involves civilians. Civilians are always involved in major wars... I don't believe it's right to hit a man in the nose and make his nose bleed. But if he's offensive enough, you hit him in the nose or anywhere else you can hit him in order to stop him. The same applies to nations."

http://www.valourandhorror.com/P_Reply/BC.htm#Bomber%20Harris
---------

Attacks on rail yards, oil facilities and armaments plants were the very targets to which Harris stubbornly balked at committing his forces, despite repeated air directives and entreaties by the Americans, the War Cabinet and Harris's boss, Sir Charles Portal. Harris continually dismissed these as "panacea targets" that, in his opinion, were of little strategic importance compared to the destruction of entire towns or cities.

While the Americans followed the directive, Harris usually found some excuse to bypass oil targets in favour of yet more area attacks. Between October and December, 58 percent of Bomber Command's raids were against cities, with only 14 percent directed against oil targets. "It was," says Max Hastings, "impossible to believe that Harris was applying himself to the September directive. He had merely returned to the great area-bombing campaign ... despite the almost unanimous conviction of the Air Staff that the policy had long been overtaken by events.

The facts support the film's thesis that saturation bombing was not only morally questionable, but also tactically unsound. A concentration on strategic objectives, versus indiscriminate area bombing, might have spared the lives of many Allied airmen; and, it goes without saying, the lives of countless German civilians.

The same site

http://www.valourandhorror.com/P_Reply/BC.htm#Effect

"Death by Moonlight is amply supported by the historical record and post-war analysis when it depicts the period after 1942 as a bombing offensive deliberately aimed at German civilians, yet disguised at home by the politicians, the Air Ministry and Bomber Command as strategic bombing on military and industrial targets." ?????

When the American equivalent to Bomber Command, the U.S. Eighth Air Force, joined the air battle in 1942, they made it clear that their squadrons of Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses would be directed only at military and industrial targets in Germany and occupied Europe.

British military historian Martin Middlebrook acknowledges that the Americans "were strategic-bombing purists. Heavy bombers, used by daylight to guarantee accurate bombing, should be used only in precision attacks on industrial and other legitimate targets of war. There was no hankering by the Americans to pursue an attack on civilian morale."37

(The Americans, of course, were not above applying area-bombing methods in the Pacific Theatre, as witnessed by their firestorm raids on Tokyo, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in Europe, at least, they stuck to precision bombing).

Despite overtures by Harris and others to have the Eighth Air Force join Bomber Command in the destruction of Germany's cities, the U.S. refused to alter its policy. Even in combined bombing operations (such as on Hamburg in July 1943) the B-17's struck by day, and targeted factories, shipyards, refineries and other such installations. They left the blasting of workers' homes and residential areas to the British.

Attacks on rail yards, oil facilities and armaments plants were the very targets to which Harris stubbornly balked at committing his forces, despite repeated air directives and entreaties by the Americans, the War Cabinet and Harris's boss, Sir Charles Portal. Harris continually dismissed these as "panacea targets" that, in his opinion, were of little strategic importance compared to the destruction of entire towns or cities.

Hmmm.... We have been talking about the faults of Goering so long that now after reading these I think that Sir Harris was not very far behind, unless you tell me this article is *****. I mean Goering shoud have bombed the air fields and plane factories, radar stations. Was Sir Harris in the end doing the same mistake? I mean lots of Brits and Canadians were killed for his stupid ideas if that´s the case?!

 

Kai,

The website link you are referring me to is David Irving's own website !!! ( Focal Point is Irving ). So as we can see, he contradicts himself by his own writings. I rest my case, as indeed the High Court rested it's case on Irving....

And Harris' autobiography : -

You've left a tiny but rather important piece out of your quotation . You've put ; -

''...generally be out-manouevred.Dresden; this was considered a target of the first importance...''

I'm sitting here looking at a first edition of 'Bomber Offensive ' (1947) and it actually says : -

''...generally be out-manouevred. In February of 1945, I was called upon to attack Dresden : this was considered a target of the first importance...''

Slightly different meaning, yes ? This makes it very clear that Harris was ordered to bomb the place.

An oversight - or are you trying to out-Irving Irving ???

 

Martin; but was Harris ordered to destroy civillians and leave the few strategic targets alone? Im not sure, but I think the point kai was making was that Harris was bloodthirsty and interested in terrorism more than fighting a war.

 

We've debated the 'Harris vendetta against Dresden' question earlier in this thread.

Fact : the area bombing of Germany was British policy. The USAAF as well, discovering that Europe is covered by 10/10ths cloud most of the time, effectively relied more and more on area bombing as the war went on.

Harris, agreed, was not a 'nice man'. Few war leaders are. Again, the overall policy ( decided before Harris took over at High Wycombe ) was to 'bring Germany to it's knees' by area bombing. Harris saw this as his job to the almost obsessive exclusion of anything else ( not just the oil ; he hated diverting his 'heavies' to support ground forces as well ).
He used the Schweinfurt 'ball-bearing panacea' as justification for avoiding oil tagets. Wrong, yes - and his superiors were weak in this case.

I know it's hard to face ; but a democracy decided to bomb German civilians and people in this country at the time shed few tears. Since the war, of course, people uncomfortable with this thought have found comfort in blaming it all on one man - sort of a 'lone nut with a thousand Lancasters' theory.

And being very selective with quotations is, IMHO, not a good way to debate on this Forum...

 

Heartland "Dresden was simply another German town."
In my view, Heartland is spot on with this remark.
Dresden was just another target for the Allied bomber forces, no more no less.They knew Dresden was a communications hub for this part of East Germany and that it had a number of war-related industries. The fact that it was an ancient city with lots of wooden buildings, and that it was full of refugee`s was of little interest to Bomber Command.