Bombing of Dresden in World War II

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Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, was bombed by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13th and 15th, 1945, three months before the end of World War II in Europe on May 8 of that year. The bombing of Dresden remains controversial after 60 years because of the legal and moral justifications for the raids.

Contents 1 Reasons for the attack 2 The attacks 3 Impact of the attack 4 Controversy 5 Allied experiences of the attack 6 Post-war reconstruction and reconciliation 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 10 Footnotes 10.1 References

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. Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, noted on January 26 1945, that "a severe blitz will not only cause confusion in the evacuation from the East but will also hamper the movement of troops from the West."^{9 p.332} However he mentioned that aircraft diverted to do 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, C-in-C 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, "with the particular object of exploiting the confused conditions which are likely to exist in the above mentioned cities during the successful Russian advance"^{2 p.212}.

On the same day, Winston Churchill pressed the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair: "I asked [yesterday] whether Berlin, and no doubt other large cities in East Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. Pray report to me tomorrow what is going to be done" ^{2 p.212}. On January 27 Sinclair replied:

The Air Staff have now arranged that, subject to the overriding claims of attacks on enemy oil production and other approved target systems within the current directive, available effort should be directed against Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig or against other cities where severe bombing would not only destroy communications vital to the evacuation from the east, but would also hamper the movement of troops from the west. ^{9 p.332 2 p.213}

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. Their recommendation was: "We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end. ... Attacks against oil targets should continue to take precedence over everything else, "^{2 pp.206-208}

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 Germany. The US ambassador to Russia, W. Averill Harriman, discussed it with Joseph Stalin as did General Eisenhower's deputy at SHAEF, British Air Marshal Arthur W. Tedder in January 1945, when he explained how the strategic bomber could support the Soviet attack as Germany began to shuffle forces between the fronts. On January 31 after studying the JIC recommendation which was contained in a document entitled "Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive" and consulting with the Soviets, Tedder and his 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. He was counting on strategic airpower in 1945 to "prevent the enemy from switching forces back and forth at will" from one front to the other. ^{6 ss.14,15,16}[1]

When the Allies met the Yalta Conference on February 4, the decision to target Dresden had already been taken by the Western Allies. The Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, General Aleksei Antonov raised two issues at the conference relating to the Western Allied strategic bomber force. The first was the demarcation of a bomb-line running north to south, where to avoid accidentally bombing Soviet forces, Western Allied aircraft would not bomb east of the line without specific Soviet permission. The second was to hamper the movement of troops from the western front, Norway and Italy, in particular by paralysing the junctions of Berlin and Leipzig with aerial bombardment. In response to the Soviet requests, Portal (who was in Yalta) sent a request Bottomley to send him a list of objectives which could be discussed with the Soviets. The list sent back to him included oil plants, tank and aircraft factories and the cities of Berlin and Dresden. In the discussions which followed the Western Allies pointed out that unless Dresden was bombed as well, the Germans could route rail traffic through Dresden to compensate for any damage caused to Berlin and Leipzig. Antonov agreed and requested that Dresden was added to his list of requests. Once the targets had been agreed at Yalta, the Combined Strategic Targets Committee, SHAEF (Air), informed the USAAF and the RAF Bomber commands that Dresden was among targets selected to degrade German lines of communication. Their authority to do this came directly from the Western Allies' Combined Chiefs of Staff.

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 drafted by Bottomley for Portal, so that he could discuss targets with the Soviets at Yalta, 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. Both were bombed after Yalta.

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.⁷ 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 February 13 by the USAAF Eighth Air Force in daytime raids. The first time was October 7 1944 with 70 tons of high-explosive bombs. The second with 133 bombers on January 16, 1945 which dropped 279 tons of high-explosives and 41 tons of incendiaries.

The campaign should have begun with an USAAF Eighth Air Force raid on Dresden on February 13 but bad weather over Europe prevented any American operations. So it fell to RAF Bomber Command to carry out the first raid. During the evening of the February 13 796 Avro Lancasters and 9 De Havilland Mosquitoes were dispatched in two separate raids and dropped 1,478 tons of high explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs in the early hours of February 14. The first attack was carried out entirely by No. 5 Group, using their own low-level marking methods. A band of cloud still remained in the area and this raid, in which 244 Lancasters dropped more than 800 tons of bombs, was only moderately successful. The second raid, 3 hours later, was an all-Lancaster attack by aircraft of 1, 3, 6 and 8 Groups, with 8 Group providing standard Pathfinder marking. The weather was now clear and 529 Lancasters dropped more than 1,800 tons of bombs with great accuracy. Later on 14th during daylight hours 311 American B-17s dropped 771 tons of bombs on Dresden, with the railway yards as their aiming point. "Part of the American Mustang-fighter escort was ordered to strafe traffic on the roads around Dresden to increase the chaos"¹. There are reports that civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing Dresden in February 1945 were strafed by American aircraft, but these claims are not supported by recent work by a German historian. ⁵ The Americans bombed Dresden again on the February 15 and again on March 2. A total of 3,907 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.

Impact of the attack

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 not known. Estimates from most present day historians vary from 25,000 to more than 60,000. Contemporary official German records give a number of 21,271 registered burials, including 6,865 who were cremated on the Altmarkt. ⁵

There were around 25,000 offically buried dead by March 22, 1945, war related or not, according to official German report Tagesbefehl (Order of the Day) no. 47 ("TB47"). There was no registration of burials between May and September 1945.³ 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. ⁵ In recent years, the estimates have become a little higher in Germany and lower in Britain; earlier it was the opposite.

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. There have been higher estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as 300,000. They are from disputed sources, such as Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels, Soviet historians, and David Irving, a controversial, self-taught historian who denies holocaust, and who has retracted his higher estimates. ⁴ Both the Columbia Encyclopedia and Encarta Encyclopedia list the number as "from 35,000 to more than 135,000 dead" the higher figure of which is in line with Irving's published figures from his own research. At the time the International Red Cross said that they had reports of up to 275,000 people were killed.

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 areas⁸. 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. In late 2004, an RAF man involved in the raid said in an interview on the BBC's Radio 4 that another factor was the lower-than-expected level of anti-aircraft fire, which allowed a high degree of accuracy on the part of the bombers.

Controversy

Gunter Grass, the German novelist, and Simon Jenkins, the former editor of The Times, have both referred to the Dresden bombing as a war crime. [2] [3]. This implies that those allied commanders who ordered the action and the airmen who carried it out should have been tried as war criminals. However as no Axis personnel were tried at the post-war Nuremberg Trials for participating in the decisions on, or execution of, assault by aerial bombardment on defended enemy territory, there is no legal precedent available to indicate that these actions constituted a war crime.

Known as Elbflorenz, or Florence on the Elbe, Dresden was a beautiful city and a cultural centre, with noted architecture in the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House, and the Frauenkirche, its historic cathedral. Having been spared previous RAF night attacks, it was considered relatively safe. At the time of the raids the population had been increased by up to 300,000 refugees from the fighting in the east^{7 p 83}.

Before the war, the city's main industries had been china production, cups and saucers, and cigarettes. An official 1942 guide described the German city as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium to large factories and workshops which supplied the Army with military materiale ^{2 p.169}. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey listed at least 110 factories and industries in Dresden. [4] The city contained the Zeiss-Ikon optical factory and the Siemens glass factory, both of which, according to the Allies, were entirely devoted to manufacturing military gunsights. The immediate suburbs contained factories building radar and electronics components, and fuses for anti-aircraft shells. Other factories produced gas masks, engines for Junkers aircraft and cockpit parts for Messerschmitt fighters. [5]

The purpose of the area bombing of cities was laid out in a British Air Staff paper, dated September 23, 1941:

The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death. [6]

According to the Oxford Companion to the Second World War, at an off-the-record press briefing held by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force two days after the raids, British Air Commodore Grierson told journalists that the aim of Operation Thunderclap had been to bomb large population centres and prevent relief supplies from getting through. An Associated Press war correspondent subsequently filed a story saying that the Allies had resorted to terror bombing.

The destruction of the city provoked, for the first time, widespread unease in informed circles in Britain at the time of the bombing. [7]. By February 1945, it was plain that the war would be over within months, and attacks upon German cities had been seen in these circles as largely irrelevant to the outcome of the war. Moreover, the name of Dresden possessed a resonance for every cultured person in Europe � the home of so much charm and beauty, a refuge for Trollope�s heroines, a landmark of the Grand Tour.

Churchill, who approved the targeting of Dresden and supported the bombing campaign prior to the event, in face of public disquiet initiated by the Associated Press report distanced himself from the bombing. On March 28, in a draft memo by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff he wrote:

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. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land … The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.

The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the imitiate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive. ^{2 p.430} [8]

Having been given a paraphrased version of Churchill's draft memo by Bottomley, on March 29, Harris wrote to the Air Ministry:

I … assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as the tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.

The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things. ^{8 p.346 2 p.432}

The bones of one British grenadier is a deliberate echo of Bismark's "worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier". Under pressure from the Chiefs of Staff and in response to the views expressed by Portal and Harris among others, Churchill wrote in the final memo dated April 1 1945:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so called 'area-bombing' of German cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests. If we come into control of an entirely ruined land, there will be a great shortage of accommodation for ourselves and our allies… We must see to it that the that our attacks do no more harm to ourselves in the long run than they do to the enemy's war effort. ^{8 p.346 2 p.434}

Allied experiences of the attack

There are anecdotes of the pilots and crew having problems years later. Some had nightmares, some thought they would go to hell as war criminals, some had unshakable visions of the fires and the burning cities. Other veterans, however, doubt these anecdotes, noting that their briefings included details on what they were hitting, and that no one in their recollection had any misgivings about the mission.

Author Kurt Vonnegut had been captured during the Battle of the Bulge and was a prisoner of war near Dresden during the bombing. He later wrote about his experiences and feelings in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

Post-war reconstruction and reconciliation

After the war, and especially after German reunification, great efforts were made to rebuild some of Dresden's former landmarks, such as the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper or the Zwinger. A new synagogue was also built. Despite its location in the Soviet occupation zone (subsequently the DDR), in 1956 Dresden entered a twin-town relationship with Coventry, which had suffered the worst destruction of any English city at the hands of the Luftwaffe, including the destruction of its cathedral. Groups from both cities were involved in moving demonstrations of post-war reconciliation. During her visit to Germany in November 2004, Queen Elizabeth II hosted a concert in Berlin to raise money for the reconstruction of the Dresden Frauenkirche. The visit was accompanied by speculation in the British and German press, fuelled mostly by the tabloids, over a possible apology for the attacks, which did not occur. In February 2005, a cross made from medieval nails, which was rescued from the roof of the cathedral in Coventry after the bombing in 1940, was presented to the Bishop of Dresden.

See also

• Bombing of Frampol in World War II
• Bombing of Tokyo in World War II
• Bombing of Warsaw in World War II
• Bombing of London in World War II
• Terror bombing

Template:RAF WWII Strategic Bombing

References

1. Official RAF site: Bomber Command: Dresden, February 1945
2. "Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945". By Frederick Taylor;
   • US review, Pub (NY): HarperCollins, ISBN 0060006765.
   • UK review, Pub (Lon): Bloomsbury. ISBN 0747570787.
3. Luftkriegslegenden in Dresden von Helmut Schnatz
4. "The Destruction of Dresden".(correction)^(i.) By David Irving Pub: William Kimber; London 1963; but see
5. The Bombing of Dresden in 1945, by Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, a detailed critique of problems with David Irving's book .
6. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 14-15 FEBRUARY 1945 BOMBINGS OF DRESDEN Prepared by USAF Historical Division Research Studies Institute Air University, II. Section ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target, paragraph 9 (backup site)
7. Antony Beevor, Berlin: the Downfall, 1945. ISBN 0670886955 Page 83
8. Official RAF site: Campaign Diary March 1945 Note 11 March, Essen (1,079 aircraft) and 12 March, Dortmund (1,108 aircraft)
9. "The Bombers" by Norman Longmate, Hutchins & Co, (1983), ISBN 0091515087,
   • Churchill quote page:345. Source: "The Stratigic Air Offensive against Germany" (SOA), HMSO (1961) vol 3 pp 117-9
   • Harris quote Page:346. Source: Public Records Office ATH/DO/4B quoted by Lord Zuckerman "From Apes to Warlords" p.352.
10. AIR FORCE Magazine Online: The Dresden Legend October 2004, Vol. 87, No. 10

External links

• US Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War) September 30, 1945
• RAF Museum 1945 Page:"13-14 February"
• Quotes from accounts and sources regarding the bombing
• Alan Forbes on wartime atrocities, Boston Review, October/November 1995
• Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden
• Horrific fire-bombing images published, BBC News
• In German, but with a lot of pictures of modern buildings, easy to understand
• The legacy of Dresden

Footnotes

i) "The Dresden Raids letter to the Editor", by David Irving from The Times of London 1966/07/07. In this letter Irving, who had previously used figures as high as 250,000 admitted the confirmed casualty figures were actually 18,375, expected to rise to 25,000 including when those not registered in the city were taken into account. Despite the admission of his mistake contained in the letter, he has still used figures as high as 100,000 in articles and books on his own web site fpp.org some written as late as 2004.

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II, used under the GNU Free Documentation License