DRESDEN
Dresden was a much more
controversial target for civilian-affecting bombing than Hamburg because, to
almost all accounts, it really wasn’t industrial at all—such a cultural
epicenter, in fact, that it was called “Elbflorenz,”
or Florence of the Elbe. (Wikipedia
notes that dedicated factories for gunsights, radar
and electronics, anti-aircraft shells’ fuses, gas masks, aircraft engines,
cockpit parts were located in Dresden or in suburbs; Germany’s claim of ‘no
industry’ is almost entirely accepted though.)
There was much war strategy
surrounding the bombing of Dresden, implicit and
explicit. The Allies were to ‘take advantage
of the recently launched Soviet
offensive westwards from the Vistula and add to the
growing chaos in Germany by disrupting
the flow of refugees fleeing in the face of the Soviet attack. At the same
time, the western Allies wished to demonstrate to the Soviets at the
forthcoming Yalta conference that
they were giving them the support of their heavy bombers, and, indeed, at Yalta the Soviets
specifically requested help in this form.’ The demonstration of strength for the
Soviets would also have the benefit of eliminating Germany’s
communications center to its Eastern front, noted by Churchill.
In Early 1945, Dresden was crammed
full of refugees fleeing westward from Red Army moving eastward from Russia. Firebomb attacks would “create confusion in
the evacuation from the east” and “hamper the movements of troops from the
west,” and the ensuing chaos might impede the German military.
On the night of 13th February,
the Allies bombed Dresden in two waves,
three hours apart. Only six bombers were
shot down, as German air defenses were weak.
The first round of bombing consisted of high explosives, which would
expose wooden frames of buildings. The
second, incendiary round would ignite everything around it.
- 1,478 tons
of high explosives and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs (as much as 3,907
total, according to some sources) were dropped by 796 RAF bombers in the
first attack.
- US sent
between 317 and 527 bombers to continue on Feb 14th.
- Estimates
of those killed vary from 35,000-135,000 (unsure partly because of the
refugees in Dresden at the
time)
- Created a
self-sustaining firestorm, over 1500 degrees.
- Of 28,410
houses in central Dresden, 24,866
were destroyed. 15 sq km totally
demolished—of which there were: 14k homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19
churches, 5 theaters, 50 banks, 31 dept stores, 31 hotels, 62
administrative buildings.
Aftermath: Moral dilemma
Off
the record, the Allies had fully intended to bomb the German population, and
prevent the dispersal relief supplies. Churchill
response, who had supported the operation, said “the destruction of Dresden remains a
serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.”
Many
Germans did not know the truth about the firebombing of Dresden until decades
later. The reason for this is that the
Nazi propaganda machine, in its incessant effort to convince the German public
of imminent victory, never released accurate facts or pictures of Dresden.
The
scene in Dresden was
immortalized by Kurt Vonnegut, a captured American soldier, in his novel Slaughterhouse
Five.
