Central Dresden after the air raid, 1945 |
The bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between
13. and 15. February 1945 remains one of the most controversial events of World War II.
Although the Allies considered Dresden (capital of the German state of
Saxony) a military target, several historians regard Dresden more as a cultural
landmark than anything else and assert that the number of civilians killed was excessive to a criminal degree.
Reasons for the attack
Early in the year 1945, the higher Allied Western political-military leadership started to consider how they might
aid the Soviets with the use of the strategic bomber force. The plan was to bomb Berlin and several other eastern
cities in conjunction with the Soviet advance. The discussions were codenamed Operation Thunderclap. In the end
the initial plan was shelved and a more limited plan was made.
Aircraft diverted to such raids should not be taken away from the current primary tasks
of destroying oil production facilities, jet aircraft factories and submarine yards. Sir Norman Bottomley, the
Deputy Chief of the Air Staff requested Arthur "Bomber" Harris of RAF Bomber Command and an ardent
supporter of carpet bombing, to undertake attacks on Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz as soon as moon and
weather conditions allowed.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had come to the conclusion that the Germans could reinforce their eastern
front with up to 42 divisions (half a million men) from other fronts and that, if the Soviet advance could be
helped by hindering that movement, it could shorten the war. They thought that the Germans could complete the
reinforcement by March 1945. The JIC's analysis was backed up by Ultra Enigma-code intercepts, which confirmed
that the Germans had such plans.
The Soviets had had several discussions with the Allies on how the strategic bomber force could help their ground
offensives once the eastern front line approached Germanyand how the strategic bomber could support the
Soviet attack as Germany began to
shuffle forces between the fronts. On 31. January after studying the JIC recommendation and consulting with the
Soviets, the air staff concurred and issued a recommendation that Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and
associated cities should be attacked. The intention to use the strategic bomber forces in a tactical air-support
role was similar to that for which Eisenhower had employed them before the Normandy invasion in 1944.
The documents written by the RAF Air Staff state that it was their intention to use RAF bomber command to
"destroy communications" to hinder the eastwards deployment of German troops and to hamper evacuation, not
to kill the evacuees. The priority list included only two eastern cities with a high enough priority to fit into the RAF
targeting list as both transportation and industrial areas. These were Berlin and Dresden.
Soviet military intelligence asserted that trains stuck in the main station were troop trains passing through
Dresden to the front. This proved to be false, as they were trains evacuating refugees from the east. RAF
briefing notes mention a desire to show "the Russians, when they arrive, what Bomber Command can do".
Whether this was a statement of pride in the RAF's abilities, or to show the Soviets that the Western Allies
were doing all they could to aid the Soviet advance, or an early cold war warning, is not clear.
The attacks
The railway yards, near the centre of Dresden, had been targeted and bombed twice before the night of 13. February
in daytime raids.
The fire-bombing campaign should have begun on 13. February but bad weather over Europe prevented any operations.
During the evening two separate waves of planes were despatched and dropped 1,478 tons of high explosive and 1,182 tons
of incendiary bombs by the early hours of 14. February. The first attack was carried out entirely by RAF, using
their own low-level marking methods, which allowed all but one bomber releasing all their bombs within two minutes.
A band of cloud still remained in the area and the following attack, in which 244 Lancasters dropped
more than 800 tons of bombs, was only moderately successful.
The second attack, 3 hours later, was an all-Lancaster attack providing standard Pathfinder marking.
The weather was now clear and 529 Lancasters dropped more than
1,800 tons of bombs with great accuracy between 01:21 and 01:45. Later on 14th from 12:17 until 12:30 311
American B-17s dropped 771 tons of bombs on Dresden, with the railway yards as their aiming point.
The Americans continued the bombing on February 15 dropping 466 tons of bombs. During these four raids
a total of around 3,900 tons of bombs were dropped.
The fire-bombing consisted of by-then standard methods: dropping large amounts of high-explosive to blow
off the roofs 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 °C. After the area caught fire, the
air above the bombed area became extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level
from the outside and people were sucked into the fire.
There were two further raids on the Dresden railway yards by the USAAF. The first was on 2. March by 406 B-17s,
which dropped 940 tons of high-explosive bombs and 141 tons of incendiaries. The second was on 17. April,
when 580 B-17s dropped 1554 tons of high-explosive bombs and 164 tons of incendiaries.
Impact of the attack
Destroyed Dresden - view from city hall tower |
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. In total
there were 222,000 apartments in the city. 75,000 of them were totally destroyed, 11,000 severely damaged,
7,000 damaged, 81,000 slightly damaged. The city was around 300 square kilometres in area in those days.
Although the main railway station was destroyed completely, the railway was working again within a few days.
The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Earlier reputable estimates varied
from 25,000 to more than 60,000, but historians now view around 25,000-35,000 as the likely range.
Contemporary official German records give a number of 21,271 registered burials, including 6,865 who were
cremated on the Altmarkt. There were around 25,000 officially buried dead by 22. March 1945, war related or
not, according to official German report.
War-related dead found in later years, from October 1945 to September 1957, are given as 1,557; from May 1945
until 1966, 1,858 bodies were recovered. None were found during the period 1990-1994, even though there was
a lot of construction and excavation during that period. The number of people registered with the authorities
as missing was 35,000; around 10,000 of those were later found to be alive.
Estimates are made difficult by the fact that the city was crowded at that time by many unregistered refugees
and wounded soldiers, and that many dead were incinerated by the massive firestorm during the attack.
The Nazis made use of Dresden in their propaganda efforts and promised swift retaliation. The Soviets
also made propaganda use of the Dresden bombing in the early years of the Cold War to alienate the
East Germans from the Americans and British.
The destruction of Dresden was comparable to that of many other German cities, with the tonnage of bombs dropped
lower than in many other areas. However, ideal weather conditions at the target site, the wooden-framed buildings,
and "breakthroughs" linking the cellars of contiguous buildings, conspired to make the attack particularly devastating.
Was the bombing a war crime?
The nature of the bombing of Dresden has made it a unique point of contention and debate. Critics of the attack
come from across the political spectrum, from far left to far right.
Far right politicians in Germany also use Dresden as a symbol, holding rallies on the anniversary of the bombing,
and arguing that Dresden represents moral parity between the allies and the Axis. They promote the term Bombing
Holocaust for the Allied areal bombings, especially for the Dresden raids. Many German mainstream politicians consider
their using of fire bombing as an attempt to advance neo-Nazi causes by exploiting the intense sentiment surrounding
the bombing: not only for the purpose to win votes in elections, but also as a propaganda to relativate Nazi crimes,
especially the Holocaust. Some consider the term as a violation of German law, which forbids the Holocaust denial.
Some of the critics of the bombing of Dresden argue that there should have been prosecutions brought against RAF
Bomber Commander Arthur Harris, and even Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These critics argue that
if Japan and Germany had won the war, bombings like that of Dresden would certainly have been prosecuted as a war
crime. They argue that bombing of German cities was intended as a deliberate strategy to terrorize the German people
not only to win the war, but also in preparation for the post-war occupation. In fact, no alleged war crimes of the
Allies were ever tried after World War II.
Both the view that Dresden's bombing was a war crime, and the view that there should have been prosecutions for it,
even if it did not rise to that level, are strongly disputed. Critics of both views argue the necessities of war,
and the danger and horror of the Nazi regime were reasons for the attacks. They further argue that even if the
bombing of Dresden did violate the laws of war against excessive civilian casualties, that military decisions about
where and when to attack were not prosecuted at war crimes trials after World War II, and therefore the bombing of
Dresden should not have been prosecuted either, since it is a decision of the same type.
The bombing of Dresden, while it was one of the more devastating conventional attacks of the war, was part of a policy
of leveling cities and breaking the civilian ability to resist. That destruction of civilian morale was the intent of
area bombing is not under dispute: the doctrine of destroying civilian morale through bombing, an extension of Karl von
Clausewitz who argued that total war's aim was to break the opponent's will, was also approved in principle by the
American Joint Chiefs of Staff and formally inaugurated in June of 1943.
Within British high command, the use of bombing in this manner was retribution for the Blitz of London, and other Nazi
atrocities, and was also regarded as a means of breaking the connection between Germans and the Nazi Party, which seemed,
to the Allied leadership, to have an almost unbelievable degree of control over the minds and attitudes of the citizens
of the Reich.
Responses to the bombing
Dresden rapidly became a potent symbol of the effects of area bombing, and the ability of military technology to
inflict death and devastation beyond that which had been possible even a short time before. There were inquiries
mounted by both American and British military authorities, questions raised in the British House of Lords. This
would culminate in a directive from Prime Minister Winston Churchill to rethink the policy of area bombardment.
Longer term responses to Dresden would include adoption of more specific restrictions on the use of bombing against
civilian centres as an instrument of war, reflected in the language of later conventions. It would also remain an
embodiment of the nature of modern warfare, and a lens through which discussions and debates on the morality of
warfare and its means could be conducted.
Please have a look at some banknotes from the World War II.
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