Dresden was bombed between Feb. 13-15, 1945. It was a joint operation between the RAF and the USAAF. Anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 citizens were killed in a city that is said held no military targets whatsoever. It remains controversial. Some Germans believe the fatality number was in excess of 100,000. I wanted to get your oppinions on it. So what have you, War Crime, Justified, or Undecided?
Anywhere from 30 million to 60 million
I think that a more correct figure would be 150,000-200,000 people.
:oops: :oops: Embarrassing mistake on my part. I have corrected it.
From what I have read… The bombing of Dresden was to help out the Russian army in its drive through Germany. Dresden not only had hundreds… possibly a thousand factories… it was also a major rail hub… where any supplies or troops going to and from the eastern front… would pass through Dresden.
There were something like…30-40 000 people killed… although the real number will never be known due to the fact that Dresden was crammed full with refugees.
Dresden had very very few air defence shelters and no anti-aircraft protection…
The fact is… Dresden was not ready for a major attack… nothing was done to defend the city… or to protect the citizens… and it just happened to be such a perfect night… that the Allies were able to create the so called “Perfect firestorm”.
Correct me if I am wrong anywhere… I just finished reading the book “Dresden”… its an interesting read. Joseph Goebelles is the one who said Dresden held no military value…but the books tells a different picture.
You are correct in saying that Gobbels said that the town served no military purpose. He was trying to turn the ordeal into propaganda masterpiece.
I consider deliberately killing thousands of innocent people a war crime, choosing such a soft target knowing there were a lot of women and children there and then bombing the hell out of it. I don’t think it was of any real strategic importance it was just to get back at the Germans for Bombing Britain.
Dresden was a major rail hub, there were also substantial amounts of factories in the area turning out all kinds of war matierial. The fact that it was unguarded means nothing, it was after all a city.
When you read the statistics of the bombers involved ask yourself why would the allies risk that kind of man power, and expend that amount of bombs if there was no useful purpose in it?
The reason for so many bombs on target? Bombing was not the precise sicience it is today. In order to hit the target, bombs had to be dropped in vast quantities. So yes it was justified.
Agreed 
Most people used basements as air raid shelters… but it became so hot that almost everyone who was killed suffocated to death.(lack of oxygen)
In the book it describes survivors walking up to people sitting on benches and talking to them… only to find that they were all dead. A good read for anyone interested!
I thought it was a war crime.
SS-Totenkopfverbande wrote
I thought it was a war crime.
Any reasoning behind this thought?
Why am I not surprised with that avatar and your choice of name.
Please adjust it to be no more than 100 x 100.
Also, we cannot judge the actions of those in the past who were fighting a very serious war against a very serious and deadly foe. As has been stated before, the weapons of 1945 are not the weapons of 2005.
After all, the Germans didnt allow foreign and Slave laborours into Air Raid shelters, what do you think of that?
I will not say that the Nazis were right or that I agree with what they did, but if the Allies only bombed the factory’s I would have said go for it, but they did not do it at Dresden they just bombed. The same with Berlin. The Allies did not even think of stopping after the fire storms had started. If the City had such big production why did they not just bomb the factory’s the whole time.
the Germans did bomb Londen and other citys in Europe and Russia but not even so many people died in those attacks. The fact still remains that wars are the worst thing that can happen to a continant or country. We can not judge the RAF and US Airforce for bombing citys of Germany because it was war, how they did it is the thing that bother me.
Henk
Please explain how you hit factories and rail hubs dispersed around a city at night with 1940s bomber technology, from a great height, whilst avoiding collateral damage.
As I said, you cant put 2005 technology into 1945 aircraft. Area bombing was thought of as the way to go in the 30’s and carried on into the war. All countries did it, if the scale was greater by the allies, then so be it, it just reflected more reasources. Dont you believe for one minute that if the Germans could have done it on the same scale they wouldnt have.
Ok, the Germans would have done it if they could, but during war the allies did do area bombing, but after the war it became more and more used. I must agree with you that we can not compare it to bombing today and bombing in a area where there are civilians are still today a big problem, but why did the RAF still keep on bombing the city after the fire storm started?
Henk
There are two thoughts: The germans never gonna surrender if don’t take they country anyway. Remember Hitler never justify one.
The other, they take the countries and treat like slaves to its people.
The german are “the master raze”
It’s was ok for me. :arrow:
No doubt due to the fact that a number of German Jews (such as Victor Klemperer) who would otherwise have been murdered in the Holocaust survived as a result of the bombing?
Had you actually bothered to learn a bit about the laws and customs of war you would very rapidly have realised that it was nothing of the sort. The relevant law (1907 Hague convention IIRC) can be found here. Whether it should have been a war crime or not is a whole other discussion, but the fact still remains that by the laws and customs of war extant at the time it was not a war crime.
Incidentally, several things should be noted:
- Burning things down is a whole lot more efficient than blowing them up.
- Due to the way industries are organised, simply blowing up individual factories has little effect on production. To have a major effect, you have to destroy factories, subcontractors, utilities and transport links all at the same time. This was very well known to the British from their experience in repairing bomb damage in 1940 and 1941.
- Railway marshalling yards in particular (one of the major targets of the Dresden raid) are an absolute horror to destroy. Short of precision targeted nuclear weapons (a 100kT ground burst nuclear device initiating 800 yards away from a railway marshalling yard will do next to no damage, they really are that tough). Burning the city down around it is actually one of the best ways to render a marshalling yard unusable.
These comments are not specifically targeted at the morality of a particular bombing campaign, but are more intended to explain the type of damage done to German (and more particularly) Japanese cities in WW2. With the exception of the B-29, all allied heavy bombers were effectively prewar designs which reflected prewar doctrine rather than wartime experience (in the RAF’s case, the bombers were effectively designed around prewar day bombing doctrine - the problem of course being that the doctrine was savagely flawed and they could only survive bombing by night). Hence, until the advent of the B-29 allied bombing doctrine was determined by the available aircraft types (rather than vice-versa) and the fact that there would be a bombing campaign was determined by the industrial base available.
Further comments - the figure of 250,000 to 300,000 dead at Dresden was arrived at by Goebbels taking the estimate he was given (25,000-30,000) and adding a zero for propaganda purposes. It was given further credence postwar by David Irving assuming the number to be true and then constructing a plausible chain of events in his book which convinced many people the number was actually true. He has since of course been discredited since and people now give his numbers much less credence.
To stop it going out :roll:
Dresden was a major factory center. In order to stop the production of war they had to shut down the production centers. It is no different then the incendiary bombings of Tokyo except that Dresden most likely didn’t suffer as many casualties as did the Japanese. Area bombing was a standard practice and was used by the Axis and Allies alike. Just because one operation is more successful then a previous one doesn’t make the previous right and the successful one a war crime.
So what you are saying that they should just have kept on going. You can not justify it by saying that the Nazis killed many Jews and slaves, not that it was right in any way. In war I believe that you should not pannish the people but mostly it doeshappen and they normally do get involved.
They should just have stopped when they saw that it was already burning out of controle just like in Hamburg.
Henk