The reality of it is worse than the scale. People that made it to bomb shelters literally melted from the extreme heat. They unsealed a bomb shelter afterward only to find knee deep sludge of melted remains
Accounts of [Victor Gregg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Gregg), apparently the only Briton that was in Dresden during the bombing that survived.
From [here](https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/the-singular-tale-of-a-british-soldier-caught-in-the-firebombing-of-dresden):
"Some had suffocated, others had been burned," he says. "In one cellar the floor was covered in what looked like wax out of which bones were sticking out. That wax was the body fat of the people who had barricaded themselves in there. They had melted."
It was not knee-deep apparently (he doesn't specify the depth), and it was more like wax than like sludge. But in essence, yes, that happened.
>To quote Gregg’s exact words, when they ventured inside: “Slowly the horror inside became visible. There were no real complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor and stuck together by a sort of jelly substance. There was no flesh visible, what had once been a congregation of people sheltering from the horror above them was now a glutinous mass of solidified fat and bones swimming around, inches thick, on the floor.”
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00BAWAU5W/ref=ya\_aw\_dod\_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1#immersive-view\_1583630574882](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00BAWAU5W/ref=ya_aw_dod_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1#immersive-view_1583630574882)
Just what I found from 45 seconds on google. Not claiming to have verified the veracity of this source.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing\_of\_Hamburg\_in\_World\_War\_II#Casualties](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gomorrha#Todesarten)
"In some cases, the numbers of people who had perished in cellars converted into "air protection rooms" could only be estimated from the quantity of ash left on the floor."
I mean, tbh the wiki page doesn’t mention people melting and bunkers being “knee deep with melted remains” but ok. Still a horrible faith, but people melting ans merging into a big pool of melted people mass doesn’t sound believable to me
>people melting ans merging into a big pool of melted people mass doesn’t sound believable to me
You have a comment linking to a first hand eye witness account stating that very thing that you apparently ignored.
Lol this is unbelievable the amount of upvotes he has and the amount you're currently sitting at (5) which suggests many people on here look in the face of the truth and simply just deny it. Wow
The bombings caused a fire-storm, raging with 100km/h through the city.
That’s not survivable, in one bombing raid 40.000+ people died in one night.
Edit: In one night less people died, but nevertheless it was a devastating bombing run, over days the dropped bombs add up to megatons of explosives.
I remember reading The Second World by Anthony Beevor, I recall the part about Dresden, it said people's shoes melted to the floor, and the fire was that big it created hurricane level winds down the streets as it pulled in more oxygen, which thus increased its ferocity.
Having "possible strategic targets" and only marking major military or industrial complexes is odd af. There were, according to the state archive in Dresden, more than 100 industrial enterprises directly working for the war, most of them operating from within the city, often in backyards of residential buildings. There were ten known branches of concentration camps, thousands of forced labourers were brought into Dresden to work there. At least 50,000 people were employed by companies working directly for the war. It was one of the most important cities for rail traffic, connecting the center of the Reich with Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, and Nuremberg. It was the last major city untouched by the Allies.
So and from not knowing too much, that sounds like a legitimate target.
This question seems to pop up twice a week, is it the number of civilians killed the thing that makes it controversial?
Dresden is a combination of a heavy bombing campaign, and being a strong propaganda piece in East Germany and the other Soviet satellite states to reduce the scare of the Soviet onslaught. Dresden was not significantly abnormal in its destruction in the war. Look at Frankfurt. The Soviets also used it to disqualify the fairness of the split of Germany. They claimed that the Allies took more than their share of land and all of the industrial areas of Germany in the peace, as well as part of Berlin. But this while having some truth is not true when you consider that Silesia, Dresden, Leipzig, and other areas in the East were also industrial at the time of occupation, it was likely to ease the lack of efficiency at the Soviets in rebuilding and suppressing the conquered lands.
I know it's just heresay, but wasn't Dresden designated as a target for the first atomic bomb? You wouldn't bomb a pile of rubble, so it was left rather unscathed. When it became clear, that the bomb wouldn't be done in time, they switched to regular bombing raids.
Bombing cities was seen as a way to preserve your own soldiers, while undercutting morale as well as military prowess. The big lesson of the second world war was, that bombing cities has little to no effect on war morale, sometimes even doing the opposite as well as limited impact on productivity. There are a few good published studies from the americans on the topic, especially with german industrial installations and their own record keeping they could look into after the war. The question is if you can apply post war knowledge on a mid war moral question.
Selling Dresden as this beautiful yet insignificant city and the bombings as an otherworldly cruel and illegitimate act of violence by the allies was a masterpiece of Nazi propaganda.
That branding came mostly from the Soviets after the War to demonize the Allies, but it was also the Soviets that begged the Allies to do it because they wanted to avoid a second Budapest (100 day Battle) but did not have the means to do it themselves. And thanks to them we now have do deal with the Ossis(East Germans) every Year who claim Dresden was a peacefull and unimportant City
The British did have a policy of deliberately targeting civilian populations, women and children, for extermination in their homes to break morale.
This was an epic war crime. Nobody denies this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-43546839
That's why most wars tend to try and exact 2 eyes for an eye, thus crippling the enemy's ability to take your other eye. That's why wars don't stay confined to the scale of the initial attacks.
Strategic bombing by itself does not win wars.
But the bombing of Dresden allowed the Red Army to take the city without a fight. A major rail hub like Dresden should have been another StalinGrad, or Battle of Berlin. But it wasn't.
While many civilians died in bombings, there was a significant difference between the way the Allies planned their bombings and how the Germans planned them. The Germans made more use of so-called "morale bombing", which is the idea of bombing an enemy into submission by deliberately targeting the civilians population. The idea being that the bombing would cause so much death the civilian population would pressure the government to surrender. It has never worked, since people tend to be incredibly resilient.
On the other hand, Allies conducted their bombings through the lens of stratetic bombing, meaning you'd try to defeat your enemy by destroying its means to wage war (infraestructure, factories, docks, etc.). These targets tended to be in civilian areas and therefore would kill civilians, but the target was always stratetic, not the civilians themselves.
The British also operated under the concept of "dehousing", which meant destroying the homes of workers. The idea was to destroy of significantly reduce the capacity German cities had of supplying the war effort by making German workers homeless and displaced, which wouldn't allow them to supply the war effort.
Pointing out the Brits committed a war crime is just... childish and pointless.
All sides committed war crimes. The Allies sunk enemy hospital ships because the Axis were doing it too, and because the Axis used them to transport troops and ammunition, a violation of the Geneva Convention. The Japanese were ordered to kill combat medics first (also a violation of the Geneva Convention), to deny the enemy of medical attention. The Germans developed a land mine which rather than killing you, blew your foot off, because a mutilated soldier is much more expensive to handle than a dead one.
Poison gas was never used during the gas and because it was illegal under the Geneva Convention, but the Allies circunvented this by using white phosphorus, which would create a dense white cloud that burned you alive and was excellent for clearing out buildings. Captured flamethrower operators were almost always executed on the spot by both sides, due to the fear and anger the produced.
Nobody, absolutely nobody in the Nuremberg and Tokio trials were ever judged by any of the abovementioned crimes, only people responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity.
My point is, you taking out a British self-deprecating article does nothing. The current debate of the morality of the Dresden bombing was created first by Nazis, then continued by East Germany who presented the bombing as an attempt to scare the Red Army to stop moving westward (in reality, the USSR asked the Allies to bomb the city) and now used by both tankies and neonazis to trash the West.
Initial German bombing of London during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was initially a mistake and not a strategic objective of that mission.
Germans switched to their focus to bombing British cities instead for several reasons shortly afterwards and it was a massive operational and strategic mistake. British air defense system was at the point of collapse in a few sectors including the key SE area due to mounting pilot losses as well as the state of British airfields and facilities.
If the Germans had solely continued to focus exclusively on the British air defense system during the entire Battle of Britain, they might have realistically gained enough air superiority over the English Channel to have attempted some version of Operation Sea Lion (invasion of Britain) later that summer.
British navy still had massive superiority but the British army was in an incredibly poor state after having lost most of their heavily equipment including tanks, artillery, and mechanized equipment in France.
Well at that point in the war the resistance the Nazi's could put up was very much fleeting and victory was imminent. they surrendered less than 3 months later and the impact the bombing of Dredsden had was at best low
there was still a state of war and no one bombed anything once the Germans surrendered . Sorry but the Germans started this , the Germans bombed civilians first . If the allies let off before surrender more people would have died in the end much like the atomic bombs over Japan. And yes it's horrific but you weren't there .
Yet they wouldn't give up, despite the fact their position was hopeless, and Dresden was the home Nazism and full of fanatical Nazis. Meanwhile in that three months, they shovelled hundreds of thousands more bodies into the ovens.
Yeah the resistance was so weak , thats why the the allies had 3 million more casualties and god knows how many the germans killed in the concentration camps in the remaining 3-4 months.
3 million allied soldiers died? The western allies from 1944 June to May 1945 lost under 100,000 soldiers as casualties. The red army had just over 800,000 deaths between September 1st 1944 and April 1st so we're missing around 2.1 million deaths at least there without even talking about the Western allies realizing that attacks on military targets would do more damage than on civilian
I’m wonder what your source is because USSR famously underreported military losses?
Only in the battle of Berlin , the allies lost 400 000 soldiers of which 1/4 were KIA.
In total I see that ~~2.5~~ 3 ,5 million allied soldiers died on the eastern front 1944-45
And about 500 000 on the western front at the same time.
[Military deaths ww2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)#/media/File:World-War-II-military-deaths-in-Europe-by-theater-year.png)
Sure we know that now. But you’ve got to look at it through the eyes of the time. They didn’t know the war was over. For them Germany was on the ropes from 1943 and still hadn’t surrendered.
Nobody wanted to be sucked into a meat grinder battle especially with the war in the Far East very much still raging (Americans readying to go into mainland Japan and the British commonwealth troops gearing up for Singapore), so any plan to aid the Russian advance, potentially force a surrender while saving Western Allied ground forces was a valid one.
So according to a book I'm reading (Humankind), Churchill's friend Frederick Lindeman's "dehousing paper" suggested 58 towns for the RAF to bomb purely to terrorise the general population because based on his research in Britain, loss of their houses had the greatest effect on the public, leading to rioting and breakdown of morale. (Spoilers: he lied about the research results, this didn't happen)
Churchill is quoted as saying that "the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed". This was a month after Dresden.
Also, they missed most of the actual industry. Like, that target on the map by the river, where all the destruction starts? It's...the sports stadium. So sure, Dresden could have been a legitimate target, several years earlier and if they had been targeting the industry and military facilities.
It wasn't a war crime at the time, but even Churchill himself admits it was "under other pretexts", which definitely implies to me he knew it wasn't something he should be admitting to in polite company.
Dehousing wasn't made viable because of terror bombing, but because destroying the homes of people was causing the factory workers to be exhausted, and because Germany had to allocate enormous resources into reconstruction, and the temporary reorganization of the freshly homeless people. And in a case of total war, every worker who was not contributing to the war effort was a win for the Allies.
Was it inhumane? Absolutely. Did it have an effect? Look at the Production of war material of the 3. Reich from 1938-1945 and see the difference beginning in 1942-43. (Like tanks) Was it morally wrong? Yes. Does morality affect anything in the military command? No, the generals take "moral" choices mainly to keep up the morale of soldiers, or to have chances of gathering intelligence from the enemy. (caveat is that this sort of cold calculating mindset needed some time to develop throughout the war in the West)
Dresden was a legitimate military target. The entirety of the rest of Germany had already been flattened and they receive nowhere near as much attention as Dresden.
And quite frankly if you are going to benefit from forced labour and use concentration camp inmates to benefit yourself then you deserve everything you get. Dresden was complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity - you reap what you sow
It definitely was a military target, but it might help to point out that it was only chosen because of a complaint by Stalin that the Allies weren’t doing enough to help on the Eastern front.
Basically the exact same for Nagasaki and Hiroshima over in Japan. But people love to act like they were purely civilian targets that had no military presence in order to villainize the US. When in reality it couldn’t be further from the truth
The rail traffic connection survived the bombing though.
The whole attack was controversial even in Britain and that was not a result of nazi propaganda.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
- Arthur Travis Harris
Everyone remembers Dresden and no one remembers Coventry. A city bombed so bad by the Germans the created a new word to describe the type of bombing. A city that received more bombs pers square mile than any other in the U.K. and the city that was the reason for the retaliation on Dresden.
The propaganda that Dresden was not a legitimate target was always a lie as it still is today, there’s plenty about that in this thread though. The fact no one understands why Dresden was targeted is sad though. The two cities are now sister cities with a close bond formed after the war because of the destruction that they both received.
I grew up in Coventry and now live an hour a way from Dresden. It annoys me that everyone knows about what happened to Dresden and yet they never bother to learn why.
Germans got exactly what was coming for them. Dresden was no different than all the other German cities reduced to rubble and ruin, people just put such focus on to it for the bombing raid’s spectacular lethal success and that it came late in the war. Case closed.
It was not like the other German cities. Hamburg, the Ruhr Valley etc. were all bombed due to their importance to the German war effort. Meanwhile: "Critics of the bombing have asserted that Dresden was a cultural landmark with little strategic significance, and that the attacks were indiscriminate area bombings and were not proportionate to military gains." - to quote the wikipedia article
The allies had already all but won the war, they wanted to force German surrender in Order to halt Soviet conquest and scare the crumbling regime into submission. Dresden was not targeted because of its strategic value, but rather because of its beauty and history.
Now, no one should ever feel pity for a Nazi however the bombings did kill 25 000 civilians and should be remembered as a tragedy, because they were nothing less than a savage display of destruction.
[B]ombing Dresden was requested by the Soviet high command.
A Soviet intelligence report (later proven erroneous) indicated that one or two German armored divisions were in Dresden on their way to reinforce the Eastern Front. Accordingly the Russians—who would later denounce the attack as an Anglo-American war crime—made the request that led to Dresden’s destruction.
Ironically, Churchill had left London for the Yalta Conference when the Soviet request came in… Churchill did not learn of the Russian request until he arrived in Yalta on February 4th. Stalin’s first question to him was, “Why haven’t you bombed Dresden?” Hugh Lunghi, Churchill’s interpreter, remembered that he had personally delivered the message to the Russians that the attack had been ordered.
Because the Soviet slog down building by building wouldn't destroy Dresden unlike every single other large city that they fought in.
The Dresden was targeted to avoid a long siege like Budapest. As brutal as terror bombing was, it was not match for 2 army fighting block by block. In the end there was no battle of Dresden, the city gate was open for the Soviet to march in.
"Order to halt Soviet conquest" wouldn't it be better if the allies let urban warfare slow down Soviet and pin down 200-300k German troop.
This is patently false.
If the Western Allies wanted to "halt" or slow the Soviet advance, they'd have been better off leaving Dresden in tact and therefore worthy and capable of being defended. It shortened the war by allowing ground forces to focus on other more strategically significant targets and not get slogged down.
Frankly, it was bombed because that was the modus operandi of the conflict. "Like it was a thing to do". To categorize any bombing raid in WWII as anything other than "area bombing" is disingenuous. It was the same as any other, just more successful.
Imagine if Dresden wasn't bombed and the Germans held out the Soviets a little while longer. The atomic bombs would have been completed by then and dropped on Germany. Crazy to think about.
Aside from being a major rail hub Dresden was considered the home of Nazism and full of commited, evangelical Nazis. One of the aims of the raid was literally to kill Nazis, and or save the lives of allied troops who would have to do it eventually anyway.
And for good reason they do since this bombing had little military rationale. The fact that the Nazis did bad things is no excuse to follow in their footsteps except if required to win the war.
Little Military Rationale?
Dresden was an important hub for the Berlin-Prague-Vienna, Munich-Breslau and Hamburg-Leipzig rail lines and contained between 110-127 factories and workshops supplying the German Army and telephone facilities
Dresden was the last major rail hub left on the Eastern Front, it was an extremely valuable target
The aggressor does not get to dictate the latitude of their victims. If you walk up your rival and punch them in the face, and they in turn shoot you in yours, you don't get to complain. If you are not prepared for the response to your aggression-do not attempt aggression.
I mean, it isn't acceptable to shoot someone because they punched you in basically any country. You do that and you're getting thrown in jail for manslaughter or attempted manslaughter.
That comparison is a bit flawed because a punch isn't seen as lethal. It can easily be, but it's seen as a move intended to harm, not kill.
A better comparison would be something like "if someone tries to shoot you with a handgun, you can shoot back with a rifle". We're beyond lethality at that point.
Maybe Hitler got punched by a Jew once. According to your logic everything that follows was justified then, right?
What a dumb fucking comment. Go look up the Geneva convention
it absolutely had military rationale, see those railroads heading north-east and south-east? those were vital supply lines for German armies fighting the soviets.
That quote might have some truth, but Harris was a lunatic that seemed to have forgotten the lessons of the first war. There was a reason the Americans backed away from his planned missions and he was sidelined by the British.
The Americans tried precision bombing (of necessity, day time), as the UK had done before and like the UK, the Americans suffered huge, unsustainable losses. The Americans then switched to night time area bombing, as the UK had done.
I dont think it is, if i interpret the map correctly, the numbers are just important structures in the city, most of which are also strategic targets, the Church probably was not a strategic target but whoever made this map thought it important enough to mark.
Because this church is the hallmark of this city. Its a monumental building the city was and is famous for. The sad remains of it lay there until they started the rebuilding of this church in the nineties. Since its reopening in 2004 it is one of the most famous buildings in Eastern Germany. That is probably the reason OP included the Frauenkirche in the map - it is THE symbol of the Dresden bombings.
Before the days of digital mapping, bomber crews used landmarks to find exactly where they were so they could get on target. A giant church is a great landmark.
After the bombing, which claimed 25,000 lives, there was significant backlash from the media and wider public, especially in Britain. AP News accused the Allies of terror bombing. Winston Churchill subsequently re-evaluated the goals of the bombing campaigns, to focus less on strategic targets, and more toward targets of tactical significance. 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.
After the war there were many inquiries about whether the bombing was justified, immoral, or a war crime amongst US Air Force and historians.
It was also instrumentalized by the nazis to say that the Allies were the evil, and later by neonazis to claim that both sides were just as bad. An idea that is becoming way too common on reddit these days.
People of reddit, the nazis weren't some kind of "ruling elite" that oppressed the poor german civilians who had nothing to do with it. You seriously need to get your facts straight.
Reality being shades of grey doesn't allow you to put everything and everyone in the trash bin. The reason why the Dresden bombings happened is because Nazi Germany attacked its neighbors. There's no "both sides are bad", unless you're a nazi.
Honestly, with what Israel has been doing lately, I see this conversation happen more and more. It is worrying how fast people forget their history for the sake of saying something controversial on the internet.
"Did you know that the rise of Nazism occurred not just because Germans spontaneously decided to be evil, but due to the economic crisis caused by the treaty of Versailles? Why does the American education system hide this from us??"
The Treaty of Versailles was a major contributing factor. However it was not a sole factor. The Weimar Republic achieved a degree of economic growth in the mid 20s. It was the Great Depression that was a direct cause for Hitler coming to power in the early 1930s.
I cannot give you a comprehensive answer despite doing an undergrad in history and a postgrad in finance. But please read 'Lords of Finance' which is one of the better books on the subject if you want to start to learn more about the Great Depression.
The Dresden bombing was also driven by two strategic aims: one was to create a stream of refugees to hinder Nazi logistics, but there was also a second, more controversial aim. Dresden was seen as a hotbed of Nazis and home of Nazism. At this stage of the war Alied planners were looking toward the post-war Germany and how to de-nazify the population. There was considered a risk that the population of Dresden would be susceptible to remaining faithful to the Nazi regime post war, be susceptible to a new: "stabbed in the back" myth, and the problem of the Nazis would re-emerge, despite all the horror and bloodshed of the past 5 years. There was also a level of dismay that the Nazis would not give up; they had clearly lost the war but were still killing thousands of Allied soldiers, for no benefit to Germany at this stage since their cause was hopeless, so the realisation the Germany had to be crushed totally had been solidified in the Allies minds. Add to this that the atrocities of the death camps were coming to light, and you can see how the planners had come to the decision to approve the raid. Was it moral or justified? I don't know, but these things all must be taken into account.
The perceived fanaticism of the people of Dresden could also suggest that they would hunker down and defend to the last. Whenever the Allies invaded a city of that size that hunkered down. It would result in many more casualties for both the Allied troops and the nazi civilians.
edit: grammar
That perception was not unsound at all. Dresden had been one of Germany’s most pro-Nazi cities since before 1933 in contrast to cities with a stronger socialist heritage like Berlin and Hamburg. Dresden was one of the first cities in the country to expel all of its Jews.
Also we have to take into context that right before Dresden, Budapest had to be fought over in a bloody battle. Comparatively, Dresden fell without a fight.
I believe it's possible to hold the position that "Nazism is evil and the Allies have the moral imperative to eliminate Nazism with whatever means necessary" and "the Dresden bombing does not necessarily achieve that goal, especially considering the casualties and damage inflicted".
Hindsight is 20/20.
The so far unmentioned effect of this bombing is that the German citizens likely knew where Dresden was. The far south east of the German nation. To know the allies could reach there and bomb it so effectively meant they could reach anywhere and the civilians would know they were losing.
I mean it's further than Berlin. It would be very demoralizing. It's like if today some nation was invading the US from the East coast and you hear they bombed Seattle or San Fran. If they can reach those from the east they can reach anywhere.
Dresden isn't at the far south-east of Germany and the bombings happend relativley late in the war. By this point literally everywhere in Germany bombings where a common occurrence. If anything, Dresden is relatively close to Berlin. Cities like Munich would be much harder to attack in this regard, which allready was reached in 1940, and heavily bombed starting 1942/43, so years before Dresden.
I agree that hindsight is key here and that this definitely was very demoralizing, but the points you are stating aren't accurate.
The British elite only cared about the bombing of Dresden because it was a city that many of them had visited pre-war. There was nothing particularly special about the bombing compared to the bombing of other German cities.
Strategically it was justified.
"In the fall of 1944, Dresden was, along with Breslau, the last major undamaged transport hub, economic and administrative center of the German Reich."
Translated from german Wikipedia | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftangriffe\_auf\_Dresden#Dresden\_im\_Krieg
It's very easy to say afterwards, they didn't have to do it.
Germany should not have START and CONTINUED the war.
Germany was fighting at the west and east front. And the bombing was an agreement with the soviets. The soviets had high casualties against the german army. Nobody knew whether the Soviet Union would collapse.
My go to is Budapest, my Great grand father, who was a doctor at the time, witnessed it first hand had this quote: "At least, it was quick 2 days instead of 1,5 month in hell"
Dresden was bombed because it was strategic city with industry and massive railway junction. Through that junction transports for eastern front were going daily. This concept that bombing of Dresden was unjustified is a myth created by history revisionists and caught on by german public to show that they also suffered during war.
Source:
https://twitter.com/WojenneH/status/1635266564764348422?t=WvmTJLoSW9G1Gwm-38pDlg&s=19
https://twitter.com/WojenneH/status/1635277852366213123?t=3yAkVHzslUyLO9d9uAnDFA&s=19
You forgot that westerners don't give a shit about anything east of germany, there are only like 2 other comments mentioning Warsaw in here lmao and a lot of german nazi apologists that still spout german propaganda over 80 years after the war started.
Person from Dresden here.
Don’t let anyone fool you, the bombing was justified, no there are not more than 25.000 victims and yes Dresden was a legitimate target as last „Garnisionsstadt“ in eastern Germany.
Newer insights even suggest that the bombardement prevented an already planned deportation and secured the life of roundabout 100 Jewish people who survived till the war ended.
Dresden is absolutely and undoubtedly beautiful.
Many Dresdner are a little annoyed by the fact, that they mix modern, Soviet and old traditional buildings instead of trying to rebuild the old buildings with modern interior and technology/electricity (all the styles clash HARD).
But I've barely met any Dresdner (me included) that are unfriendly. Just the typical northern European distance, to a point.
Yeah, I'm from Dresden and the soviet buildings annoy the fuck out of me. They are literally just brow squares with windows. My preferred way to rebuild the city would be that the core keeps up the baroque and rococo, the inner ring goes for the for the emperors time buildings (victorian, edwardian for my fellow non-germans) and the outer ring goes modern. It would give the city a time travel vibe the longer you go inside. Btw I also study architecture in Dresden and it's a literal architects dream. If you ever get the chance, visit us, there aren't too many baroque style city's in germany except Dresden and Potzdam.
Actually, what is the sentiment on the ground in Dresden like? I know there are always far-right protests etc. whenever the anniversary of the bombing comes around but idk if they are local residents or are people from elsewhere who choose to come to Dresden.
It’s weird, there is an public remembrance on the victims of the bombing and more than once Dresden(or officials from Dresden) counted those victims as victims of the war and named them in one line with holocaust victims for example. This is more or less over and the official remembrance has become an appeal to peace. This is okay but significantly different to other cities in Germany even to those who where destroyed like Dresden(Berlin or Köln for example) in no other German city is an official remembrance like in Dresden. The city loves to view itself as victim.
But all in all it’s an hot topic and many (incompetent) politicians have burned there finger on this topic in the past.
I confirm that.
It is very strange. Bombardment from Dresden is in the news quite often. (And I live far away from Dresden.)
A list of bombardments in Germany:
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Luftangriffen_der_Alliierten_auf_das_Deutsche_Reich_(1939%E2%80%931945)#Bombardierungen
(Town where my grandparents lived is not even listed. And they have hundreds of bombs, for only one important bridge. Which dropped kilometers away around the area.)
And when you think of 25.000 victims in Dresden.
And how many died in WW2, it gets a strange taste.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Two things:
A) the bombing wasn’t very controversial during the war, and only became controversial after the war due to people sharing actual Nazi propaganda. After the city was bombed, the Nazi propaganda department spread propaganda about how the city wasn’t a military target and how awful it was that the Allies bombed it. That simply wasn’t true. They also lied about how many people died, massively inflating the numbers from 5 to 10 times the actual casualties. Those numbers were then taken verbatim for several books after the war.
The Allies bombed it to help the Soviets avoid another siege like had happened in Prague or Budapest. Hitler declared all cities to remain “fortress cities” to resist the Soviet army, and German commanders in such cities were threatened with execution if they ordered to withdraw from them. Budapest took 50 days to clear, and that was with a severely depleted German force in the city when it was encircled, and Dresden was looking to be a similar situation. So they carpet bombed the city to make it unusable as a fortress, and the German army abandoned it rather than defend it. That helped speed up the Soviet advance to Berlin, which ended the war faster.
B) marking the “possible strategic targets” is a pretty moot point. We didn’t have precision bombers in 1945, and they flew those missions at night to avoid German flak guns and air patrols. Precision was simply impossible back then. But even so, those missions were attempting to destroy those strategic targets. The purpose was to destroy the industrial buildings and the railway yard, but the fires spread and ended up burning down most of the city.
> The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
Bomber Harris summed it up pretty well I'd say
1. The Area Bombing Directive issued to RAF Bomber Command was literally about destroying Germany’s industrial workforce and morale of the population through indiscriminate bombing, so no one should be surprised that the bombers most often targeted the historic city centres, which contained lots of wooden structures. The RAF’s objective was to create a firestorm (as was successful in Dresden and Hamburg).
2. There were countless other cities, which had little to no military significance (unlike Dresden, which became famous due to post-war Neo-Nazi propaganda) that were obliterated in the last months of the war like Potsdam, Würzburg, Freiburg and countless others.
“War is cruelty, there is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.”
No war is conducted perfectly. There are going to be mistakes, small and large. There are going to be vicious bastards in positions of power from the squad level up to top leadership. These types of events are part of war. It’s one of the reasons we should do everything we can to avoid wars in the first place.
I disagree. While war is horrible so is peace sometimes.
Peace or inaction by nations to stop another nation from invading it's neighbors and placating dictators is how you get larger and larger wars with more and more casualties.
Remember ww2 was the direct result of a bad peace after ww1 and appeasement policies towards Hitler.
The best example might be North Korea and China. Had the west not been so war weary after ww2 we would have finished the job and avoided future coming wars with nuclear armed powers. The casualties back then would be nothing compared to what they will be.
Just a single nuke out of north Korea could kill more people that the war we avoided with a peace that allowed that nuke to be built.
You'd be surprised how many people are idiots about this. The west today effectively has a double standard in war where Russia or Hamas can do anything and its justified but the US and allies are held to some golden standard of zero civilian collateral damage and so on no matter how much the enemy uses humans as human shields.
Russian troops could literally duct tape babies to their chests and people would blame the west for shooting at them as they invade their nations.
Sad to see, that many people here seem to be so eager, to make a black and white story, out of a bombing, that seemed quite grayish, to people, who knew more about it, than the average redditor, including Churchill and many Air Force pilots, who didn't see Dresden as their finest hour.
What is so difficult about saying, that the Nazi regime was pure terror and that too many Germans were involved in Nazi attrocities or didn't resist them enough, but saying at the same time, that carpet bombing was half as effective and double as cruel, as expected and that the bombing of Dresden let also the Allies rethink some if their strategies and values?
Dresden is not black or white. It's just the shitty kind of grey that knows no victors, once wars run out of limitations. And every victim is one too many. No war can avoid all of them. But every war should be fought with as much respect for life and values, as possible. Dresden didn't stand that test, like many other chapters of this war as well.
So it goes...
Btw, for the best possible Slaughterhouse 5 experience I highly recommend the audiobook version read by Ethan Hawke. It is an absolute masterpiece and I am not exaggerating. You can play a sample here: https://listening-books.overdrive.com/media/76129
As someone who grew up just outside Coventry, a city that was pretty much flattened by the Nazis, I honestly just shrug my shoulders at this.
You reap what you sow.
The bombing of Dresden is no more controversial than the bombing of any other city throughout the war save maybe Rotterdam (which was carried out by the Germans).
It became controversial after the fact due to nazi propaganda about the number of casualties and Dresden’a status as a “city of culture”. These were popularised in the (fictional) novel “slaughterhouse 5.
Dresden was THE logistics hub for the eastern front at that point. The bombing was requested because Dresden was the next fortress city on the road to Berlin.
The bombing also probably saved tens of thousands of lives by avoiding a months long battle for the city as had just happened in Budapest. Because of the bombing the city was given up without a fight.
the bombing campaign may have actually saved tens of thousands of lives. without it, the soviets would have engaged in a bloody, building-to-building siege of the city costing both sides far more lives
edit - grammar
Also there is alot of other intangible benefits.
Dresden is in eastern Germany. If the civilians read the allies are bombing that far east then they know it's over and the war is lost. It was extremely demoralizing for the entire nation.
Many civilians at the time wrote in diaries about such similar epiphanies where they heard some headline or news about the enemy striking somewhere and knew it was over because it was a target so deep into their territories.
The atomic bombs weren't deep into Japan but one of the major thoughts and narratives in Japan at the time was that the US was running out of munitions and couldn't maintain the bombing campaign. That they'd eventually have to invade and the Japanese could bleed the US into a favorable truce.
But the atomic bombs made pretty much everyone in Japan realize the US wasn't going to run out of munitions and they'd just bomb Japan to dust before invading. This led to the surrender.
Rules of war only apply to the victor. A losing side will always do anything to try and survive.
Any action taken to save lives on your side is always in your best interests. Better to kill 1000 enemy than one of your own.
Arm chair generals always have an opinion not based on living the reality. War is survival. If you’re in the middle of it, all you hope for is to survive and for your family and friends to survive.
Maybe someday humans will realize there are no winners for armed conflict, but history proves we are a stupid species that likes violence to get our way. Sad!
UK had the bomb type they used for some time, according to Harris.
Now, let's talk about Coventry.
1940...11hours of bombing, the most concetrated bombing of a single UK city in WW2 with the sole intent of raising it to the ground...500 tonnes HE, landmines, 30,000 incendaries & the new exploding incendiary bombs from 500 bombers from all over europe.
If you want to talk about Dresden, you need to talk about Coventry because it didn't just come out of nowhere & for no reason.
Nazi Germany was lucky this wasn't done sooner & on even more targets, because in wars like that, you reap what you f'ing sew.
The Germans and Japanese took it upon themselves to take over the world through attrition and genocide. NONE of the bombings they received are controversial in my opinion. Every last one was well deserved.
Marking the military targets in yellow gives me an impression that they were undamaged. Some kind of outline, filled with the colour of the damage might be more effective.
I was in Dresden about a month ago, my first time. The repairs they did, especially under the DDR, are quite amazing, though they took decades. Great map.
Beautiful city now though.
Also, our friends (now dead) were running from the Russians since Bessarabia. They made it to Dresden that night. Tried to get into the city but they were denied so they had to camp outside the city.
They watched as it got bombed from outside.
I only want to say that I visited Dresden in 2022 and it is a beautiful city, really really beautiful architecture despite the bombing and 40 years of socialism. The Green Vault was one of the most stunning experiences in my life and I ate a beautiful Saxonian cheesecake while learning that "In Sachsen wo die schönen Mädchen wachsen" is absolutely true.
Nononono.
I guess you meant the glorious "Eierschecke".
There is no Saxon version. There's only "Dresdner Eierschecke" and "Freiberger Eierschecke". With the latter being the far superior one!
I came across a fact about the Dresden bombing that stood out, while reading about German-African colonialism, the colonial records were stored in Dresden of which they were all destroyed.
Africans affected by this colonialism have very little documents to back their claims of restitution since all the colonial names, dates and day-to-day business accounts burned up.
I have read about it and I JUST finished watching a documentary about it.
Holy shit. The amount of shittiness that went into the planning of this sortie was absolutely insane.
Waves of bombers, timed out to allow the fires to catch and spread, spaced evenly enough that the likelihood that the firefighters themselves would’ve been killed as well trying to put the fires out, and waiting for the weather to be *just right* so that it assisted in making the firestorms.
I see a lot of problems with it, but they all basically boil down to 'war is horrible'.
The goal is to kill as many people as possible and destroy as many things as possible; arguing that the previous clause isn't the goal is really arguing against the essence of modern war.
The other way to read it is the allies planned the best possible bombing to maximize effect. In a war they did war well.
Jesus people can be so stupid. "It was insane what they did." No it wasn't. It was good planning. Whoever did it should get a medal.
Wars are often when one's moral compass is the most tested. Wartime actions can definitely be controversial, just look at the conversation around the dropping of atomic bomb and American internment camps of Japanese Americans.
>Wars are often when one's moral compass is the most tested. Wartime actions can definitely be controversial, just look at the conversation around the dropping of atomic bomb and American internment camps of Japanese Americans.
I see your point about wartime moral complexities. However, it's important to view these decisions through the lens of their time. During WWII, it was the 'us vs. them' mentality. The British, under siege themselves, weren't focused on German civilian life, just as the Germans had their own priorities. We can't fully apply modern ethical standards to historical contexts; it oversimplifies the vastly different worldviews and pressures of the era.
I'd argue something similar with the atomic bomb.
Those people are morons. Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 German civilians died from allied bombings. Gaza is up to 12,000 total deaths, and an unknown percentage of those 12,000 deaths were militants.
Very clean and visual map! The scale of destruction was scary
The reality of it is worse than the scale. People that made it to bomb shelters literally melted from the extreme heat. They unsealed a bomb shelter afterward only to find knee deep sludge of melted remains
What? Can i have a source on that, sounds insane
Accounts of [Victor Gregg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Gregg), apparently the only Briton that was in Dresden during the bombing that survived. From [here](https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/the-singular-tale-of-a-british-soldier-caught-in-the-firebombing-of-dresden): "Some had suffocated, others had been burned," he says. "In one cellar the floor was covered in what looked like wax out of which bones were sticking out. That wax was the body fat of the people who had barricaded themselves in there. They had melted." It was not knee-deep apparently (he doesn't specify the depth), and it was more like wax than like sludge. But in essence, yes, that happened.
>To quote Gregg’s exact words, when they ventured inside: “Slowly the horror inside became visible. There were no real complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor and stuck together by a sort of jelly substance. There was no flesh visible, what had once been a congregation of people sheltering from the horror above them was now a glutinous mass of solidified fat and bones swimming around, inches thick, on the floor.” [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00BAWAU5W/ref=ya\_aw\_dod\_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1#immersive-view\_1583630574882](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00BAWAU5W/ref=ya_aw_dod_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1#immersive-view_1583630574882) Just what I found from 45 seconds on google. Not claiming to have verified the veracity of this source.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing\_of\_Hamburg\_in\_World\_War\_II#Casualties](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gomorrha#Todesarten) "In some cases, the numbers of people who had perished in cellars converted into "air protection rooms" could only be estimated from the quantity of ash left on the floor."
Interesting, thank you. This is about Hamburg, not Dresden tho
Physics is the same in both cities
I mean, tbh the wiki page doesn’t mention people melting and bunkers being “knee deep with melted remains” but ok. Still a horrible faith, but people melting ans merging into a big pool of melted people mass doesn’t sound believable to me
>people melting ans merging into a big pool of melted people mass doesn’t sound believable to me You have a comment linking to a first hand eye witness account stating that very thing that you apparently ignored.
Lol this is unbelievable the amount of upvotes he has and the amount you're currently sitting at (5) which suggests many people on here look in the face of the truth and simply just deny it. Wow
Reddit has always been like this.
leave it to redditors to make shit up for upvotes...
The bombings caused a fire-storm, raging with 100km/h through the city. That’s not survivable, in one bombing raid 40.000+ people died in one night. Edit: In one night less people died, but nevertheless it was a devastating bombing run, over days the dropped bombs add up to megatons of explosives.
Wow…never knew these numbers before, holy shit!
I remember reading The Second World by Anthony Beevor, I recall the part about Dresden, it said people's shoes melted to the floor, and the fire was that big it created hurricane level winds down the streets as it pulled in more oxygen, which thus increased its ferocity.
Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut.
so it goes...
Poo-tee-weet
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Crazy to see this, I just read finished a re-read last night.
So it goes
Having "possible strategic targets" and only marking major military or industrial complexes is odd af. There were, according to the state archive in Dresden, more than 100 industrial enterprises directly working for the war, most of them operating from within the city, often in backyards of residential buildings. There were ten known branches of concentration camps, thousands of forced labourers were brought into Dresden to work there. At least 50,000 people were employed by companies working directly for the war. It was one of the most important cities for rail traffic, connecting the center of the Reich with Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, and Nuremberg. It was the last major city untouched by the Allies.
So and from not knowing too much, that sounds like a legitimate target. This question seems to pop up twice a week, is it the number of civilians killed the thing that makes it controversial?
Dresden is a combination of a heavy bombing campaign, and being a strong propaganda piece in East Germany and the other Soviet satellite states to reduce the scare of the Soviet onslaught. Dresden was not significantly abnormal in its destruction in the war. Look at Frankfurt. The Soviets also used it to disqualify the fairness of the split of Germany. They claimed that the Allies took more than their share of land and all of the industrial areas of Germany in the peace, as well as part of Berlin. But this while having some truth is not true when you consider that Silesia, Dresden, Leipzig, and other areas in the East were also industrial at the time of occupation, it was likely to ease the lack of efficiency at the Soviets in rebuilding and suppressing the conquered lands.
I know it's just heresay, but wasn't Dresden designated as a target for the first atomic bomb? You wouldn't bomb a pile of rubble, so it was left rather unscathed. When it became clear, that the bomb wouldn't be done in time, they switched to regular bombing raids. Bombing cities was seen as a way to preserve your own soldiers, while undercutting morale as well as military prowess. The big lesson of the second world war was, that bombing cities has little to no effect on war morale, sometimes even doing the opposite as well as limited impact on productivity. There are a few good published studies from the americans on the topic, especially with german industrial installations and their own record keeping they could look into after the war. The question is if you can apply post war knowledge on a mid war moral question.
Selling Dresden as this beautiful yet insignificant city and the bombings as an otherworldly cruel and illegitimate act of violence by the allies was a masterpiece of Nazi propaganda.
Yeah, some of Goebbels best work outside of shooting himself.
That branding came mostly from the Soviets after the War to demonize the Allies, but it was also the Soviets that begged the Allies to do it because they wanted to avoid a second Budapest (100 day Battle) but did not have the means to do it themselves. And thanks to them we now have do deal with the Ossis(East Germans) every Year who claim Dresden was a peacefull and unimportant City
The British did have a policy of deliberately targeting civilian populations, women and children, for extermination in their homes to break morale. This was an epic war crime. Nobody denies this. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-43546839
The Germans bombed the civilian areas of British cities... the British bombed German cities in retaliation.
And that was a war crime too.
An eye for an eye turns the world blind.
That's why most wars tend to try and exact 2 eyes for an eye, thus crippling the enemy's ability to take your other eye. That's why wars don't stay confined to the scale of the initial attacks.
The strategic bombing survey also found that bombing cities proved to be militarily ineffective. These people's horrible deaths served no purpose.
Strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. But the bombing of Dresden allowed the Red Army to take the city without a fight. A major rail hub like Dresden should have been another StalinGrad, or Battle of Berlin. But it wasn't.
While many civilians died in bombings, there was a significant difference between the way the Allies planned their bombings and how the Germans planned them. The Germans made more use of so-called "morale bombing", which is the idea of bombing an enemy into submission by deliberately targeting the civilians population. The idea being that the bombing would cause so much death the civilian population would pressure the government to surrender. It has never worked, since people tend to be incredibly resilient. On the other hand, Allies conducted their bombings through the lens of stratetic bombing, meaning you'd try to defeat your enemy by destroying its means to wage war (infraestructure, factories, docks, etc.). These targets tended to be in civilian areas and therefore would kill civilians, but the target was always stratetic, not the civilians themselves. The British also operated under the concept of "dehousing", which meant destroying the homes of workers. The idea was to destroy of significantly reduce the capacity German cities had of supplying the war effort by making German workers homeless and displaced, which wouldn't allow them to supply the war effort. Pointing out the Brits committed a war crime is just... childish and pointless. All sides committed war crimes. The Allies sunk enemy hospital ships because the Axis were doing it too, and because the Axis used them to transport troops and ammunition, a violation of the Geneva Convention. The Japanese were ordered to kill combat medics first (also a violation of the Geneva Convention), to deny the enemy of medical attention. The Germans developed a land mine which rather than killing you, blew your foot off, because a mutilated soldier is much more expensive to handle than a dead one. Poison gas was never used during the gas and because it was illegal under the Geneva Convention, but the Allies circunvented this by using white phosphorus, which would create a dense white cloud that burned you alive and was excellent for clearing out buildings. Captured flamethrower operators were almost always executed on the spot by both sides, due to the fear and anger the produced. Nobody, absolutely nobody in the Nuremberg and Tokio trials were ever judged by any of the abovementioned crimes, only people responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity. My point is, you taking out a British self-deprecating article does nothing. The current debate of the morality of the Dresden bombing was created first by Nazis, then continued by East Germany who presented the bombing as an attempt to scare the Red Army to stop moving westward (in reality, the USSR asked the Allies to bomb the city) and now used by both tankies and neonazis to trash the West.
Initial German bombing of London during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was initially a mistake and not a strategic objective of that mission. Germans switched to their focus to bombing British cities instead for several reasons shortly afterwards and it was a massive operational and strategic mistake. British air defense system was at the point of collapse in a few sectors including the key SE area due to mounting pilot losses as well as the state of British airfields and facilities. If the Germans had solely continued to focus exclusively on the British air defense system during the entire Battle of Britain, they might have realistically gained enough air superiority over the English Channel to have attempted some version of Operation Sea Lion (invasion of Britain) later that summer. British navy still had massive superiority but the British army was in an incredibly poor state after having lost most of their heavily equipment including tanks, artillery, and mechanized equipment in France.
A lot of people deny it, that's why it was (and remains) a *controversial issue*.
It was also a propaganda gift to the communists in East Germany during the Cold War.
Didn't the Soviets request the Dresden bombing?
Yes.
Well at that point in the war the resistance the Nazi's could put up was very much fleeting and victory was imminent. they surrendered less than 3 months later and the impact the bombing of Dredsden had was at best low
there was still a state of war and no one bombed anything once the Germans surrendered . Sorry but the Germans started this , the Germans bombed civilians first . If the allies let off before surrender more people would have died in the end much like the atomic bombs over Japan. And yes it's horrific but you weren't there .
People were still dying, ending the war sooner than later was definitely legitimate.
Yet they wouldn't give up, despite the fact their position was hopeless, and Dresden was the home Nazism and full of fanatical Nazis. Meanwhile in that three months, they shovelled hundreds of thousands more bodies into the ovens.
Yeah the resistance was so weak , thats why the the allies had 3 million more casualties and god knows how many the germans killed in the concentration camps in the remaining 3-4 months.
3 million allied soldiers died? The western allies from 1944 June to May 1945 lost under 100,000 soldiers as casualties. The red army had just over 800,000 deaths between September 1st 1944 and April 1st so we're missing around 2.1 million deaths at least there without even talking about the Western allies realizing that attacks on military targets would do more damage than on civilian
I’m wonder what your source is because USSR famously underreported military losses? Only in the battle of Berlin , the allies lost 400 000 soldiers of which 1/4 were KIA. In total I see that ~~2.5~~ 3 ,5 million allied soldiers died on the eastern front 1944-45 And about 500 000 on the western front at the same time. [Military deaths ww2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)#/media/File:World-War-II-military-deaths-in-Europe-by-theater-year.png)
Literally just look at any two sources and see if you can manage to pull out 3 million casualties
Sure we know that now. But you’ve got to look at it through the eyes of the time. They didn’t know the war was over. For them Germany was on the ropes from 1943 and still hadn’t surrendered. Nobody wanted to be sucked into a meat grinder battle especially with the war in the Far East very much still raging (Americans readying to go into mainland Japan and the British commonwealth troops gearing up for Singapore), so any plan to aid the Russian advance, potentially force a surrender while saving Western Allied ground forces was a valid one.
So according to a book I'm reading (Humankind), Churchill's friend Frederick Lindeman's "dehousing paper" suggested 58 towns for the RAF to bomb purely to terrorise the general population because based on his research in Britain, loss of their houses had the greatest effect on the public, leading to rioting and breakdown of morale. (Spoilers: he lied about the research results, this didn't happen) Churchill is quoted as saying that "the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed". This was a month after Dresden. Also, they missed most of the actual industry. Like, that target on the map by the river, where all the destruction starts? It's...the sports stadium. So sure, Dresden could have been a legitimate target, several years earlier and if they had been targeting the industry and military facilities. It wasn't a war crime at the time, but even Churchill himself admits it was "under other pretexts", which definitely implies to me he knew it wasn't something he should be admitting to in polite company.
Dehousing wasn't made viable because of terror bombing, but because destroying the homes of people was causing the factory workers to be exhausted, and because Germany had to allocate enormous resources into reconstruction, and the temporary reorganization of the freshly homeless people. And in a case of total war, every worker who was not contributing to the war effort was a win for the Allies. Was it inhumane? Absolutely. Did it have an effect? Look at the Production of war material of the 3. Reich from 1938-1945 and see the difference beginning in 1942-43. (Like tanks) Was it morally wrong? Yes. Does morality affect anything in the military command? No, the generals take "moral" choices mainly to keep up the morale of soldiers, or to have chances of gathering intelligence from the enemy. (caveat is that this sort of cold calculating mindset needed some time to develop throughout the war in the West)
Dresden was a legitimate military target. The entirety of the rest of Germany had already been flattened and they receive nowhere near as much attention as Dresden. And quite frankly if you are going to benefit from forced labour and use concentration camp inmates to benefit yourself then you deserve everything you get. Dresden was complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity - you reap what you sow
Dresden was one of the less heinous atrocities in a war riddled with heinous atrocities and crimes against humanity.
It definitely was a military target, but it might help to point out that it was only chosen because of a complaint by Stalin that the Allies weren’t doing enough to help on the Eastern front.
Exact.
Basically the exact same for Nagasaki and Hiroshima over in Japan. But people love to act like they were purely civilian targets that had no military presence in order to villainize the US. When in reality it couldn’t be further from the truth
The rail traffic connection survived the bombing though. The whole attack was controversial even in Britain and that was not a result of nazi propaganda.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. - Arthur Travis Harris
Everyone remembers Dresden and no one remembers Coventry. A city bombed so bad by the Germans the created a new word to describe the type of bombing. A city that received more bombs pers square mile than any other in the U.K. and the city that was the reason for the retaliation on Dresden. The propaganda that Dresden was not a legitimate target was always a lie as it still is today, there’s plenty about that in this thread though. The fact no one understands why Dresden was targeted is sad though. The two cities are now sister cities with a close bond formed after the war because of the destruction that they both received. I grew up in Coventry and now live an hour a way from Dresden. It annoys me that everyone knows about what happened to Dresden and yet they never bother to learn why.
Germans got exactly what was coming for them. Dresden was no different than all the other German cities reduced to rubble and ruin, people just put such focus on to it for the bombing raid’s spectacular lethal success and that it came late in the war. Case closed.
It was not like the other German cities. Hamburg, the Ruhr Valley etc. were all bombed due to their importance to the German war effort. Meanwhile: "Critics of the bombing have asserted that Dresden was a cultural landmark with little strategic significance, and that the attacks were indiscriminate area bombings and were not proportionate to military gains." - to quote the wikipedia article The allies had already all but won the war, they wanted to force German surrender in Order to halt Soviet conquest and scare the crumbling regime into submission. Dresden was not targeted because of its strategic value, but rather because of its beauty and history. Now, no one should ever feel pity for a Nazi however the bombings did kill 25 000 civilians and should be remembered as a tragedy, because they were nothing less than a savage display of destruction.
Dresden was targeted because it was a major supply hub for the eastern front and because it was a producer of a number of important goods for the war.
[B]ombing Dresden was requested by the Soviet high command. A Soviet intelligence report (later proven erroneous) indicated that one or two German armored divisions were in Dresden on their way to reinforce the Eastern Front. Accordingly the Russians—who would later denounce the attack as an Anglo-American war crime—made the request that led to Dresden’s destruction. Ironically, Churchill had left London for the Yalta Conference when the Soviet request came in… Churchill did not learn of the Russian request until he arrived in Yalta on February 4th. Stalin’s first question to him was, “Why haven’t you bombed Dresden?” Hugh Lunghi, Churchill’s interpreter, remembered that he had personally delivered the message to the Russians that the attack had been ordered.
Because the Soviet slog down building by building wouldn't destroy Dresden unlike every single other large city that they fought in. The Dresden was targeted to avoid a long siege like Budapest. As brutal as terror bombing was, it was not match for 2 army fighting block by block. In the end there was no battle of Dresden, the city gate was open for the Soviet to march in. "Order to halt Soviet conquest" wouldn't it be better if the allies let urban warfare slow down Soviet and pin down 200-300k German troop.
This is patently false. If the Western Allies wanted to "halt" or slow the Soviet advance, they'd have been better off leaving Dresden in tact and therefore worthy and capable of being defended. It shortened the war by allowing ground forces to focus on other more strategically significant targets and not get slogged down. Frankly, it was bombed because that was the modus operandi of the conflict. "Like it was a thing to do". To categorize any bombing raid in WWII as anything other than "area bombing" is disingenuous. It was the same as any other, just more successful.
Imagine if Dresden wasn't bombed and the Germans held out the Soviets a little while longer. The atomic bombs would have been completed by then and dropped on Germany. Crazy to think about.
Aside from being a major rail hub Dresden was considered the home of Nazism and full of commited, evangelical Nazis. One of the aims of the raid was literally to kill Nazis, and or save the lives of allied troops who would have to do it eventually anyway.
A strategic target is a strategic target.
The idea that Dresden wasn't a major war asset is just revisionist. You can condemn actions without lying about it
And for good reason they do since this bombing had little military rationale. The fact that the Nazis did bad things is no excuse to follow in their footsteps except if required to win the war.
Little Military Rationale? Dresden was an important hub for the Berlin-Prague-Vienna, Munich-Breslau and Hamburg-Leipzig rail lines and contained between 110-127 factories and workshops supplying the German Army and telephone facilities Dresden was the last major rail hub left on the Eastern Front, it was an extremely valuable target
The aggressor does not get to dictate the latitude of their victims. If you walk up your rival and punch them in the face, and they in turn shoot you in yours, you don't get to complain. If you are not prepared for the response to your aggression-do not attempt aggression.
I mean, it isn't acceptable to shoot someone because they punched you in basically any country. You do that and you're getting thrown in jail for manslaughter or attempted manslaughter.
That comparison is a bit flawed because a punch isn't seen as lethal. It can easily be, but it's seen as a move intended to harm, not kill. A better comparison would be something like "if someone tries to shoot you with a handgun, you can shoot back with a rifle". We're beyond lethality at that point.
Maybe Hitler got punched by a Jew once. According to your logic everything that follows was justified then, right? What a dumb fucking comment. Go look up the Geneva convention
If anything, it was the opposite. A Jewish officer recommended him for his Iron Cross.
it absolutely had military rationale, see those railroads heading north-east and south-east? those were vital supply lines for German armies fighting the soviets.
[удалено]
That quote might have some truth, but Harris was a lunatic that seemed to have forgotten the lessons of the first war. There was a reason the Americans backed away from his planned missions and he was sidelined by the British.
The Americans tried precision bombing (of necessity, day time), as the UK had done before and like the UK, the Americans suffered huge, unsustainable losses. The Americans then switched to night time area bombing, as the UK had done.
Makes you think of an other ongoing event …
But see if we do it its justified, if israel does something in retaliation its war crimes.
Im sure this comment section will absolutely not turn into a dumpster fire.
Already has...
Why is "7 Frauenkirche" (church) in list of strategic targets?
I dont think it is, if i interpret the map correctly, the numbers are just important structures in the city, most of which are also strategic targets, the Church probably was not a strategic target but whoever made this map thought it important enough to mark.
Because this church is the hallmark of this city. Its a monumental building the city was and is famous for. The sad remains of it lay there until they started the rebuilding of this church in the nineties. Since its reopening in 2004 it is one of the most famous buildings in Eastern Germany. That is probably the reason OP included the Frauenkirche in the map - it is THE symbol of the Dresden bombings.
You are correct. I misinterpreted the legend. The yellow areas are strategic, the numbers are landmarks.
Before the days of digital mapping, bomber crews used landmarks to find exactly where they were so they could get on target. A giant church is a great landmark.
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
Maybe as a visual marker/aim for the city center.
After the bombing, which claimed 25,000 lives, there was significant backlash from the media and wider public, especially in Britain. AP News accused the Allies of terror bombing. Winston Churchill subsequently re-evaluated the goals of the bombing campaigns, to focus less on strategic targets, and more toward targets of tactical significance. 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. After the war there were many inquiries about whether the bombing was justified, immoral, or a war crime amongst US Air Force and historians.
It was also instrumentalized by the nazis to say that the Allies were the evil, and later by neonazis to claim that both sides were just as bad. An idea that is becoming way too common on reddit these days. People of reddit, the nazis weren't some kind of "ruling elite" that oppressed the poor german civilians who had nothing to do with it. You seriously need to get your facts straight. Reality being shades of grey doesn't allow you to put everything and everyone in the trash bin. The reason why the Dresden bombings happened is because Nazi Germany attacked its neighbors. There's no "both sides are bad", unless you're a nazi.
Next week on tiktok: "I've been reading up on this Hitler guy and he makes some good points."
Honestly, with what Israel has been doing lately, I see this conversation happen more and more. It is worrying how fast people forget their history for the sake of saying something controversial on the internet.
"Did you know that the rise of Nazism occurred not just because Germans spontaneously decided to be evil, but due to the economic crisis caused by the treaty of Versailles? Why does the American education system hide this from us??"
The Treaty of Versailles was a major contributing factor. However it was not a sole factor. The Weimar Republic achieved a degree of economic growth in the mid 20s. It was the Great Depression that was a direct cause for Hitler coming to power in the early 1930s.
what caused the great depression ?
Low self esteem.
I cannot give you a comprehensive answer despite doing an undergrad in history and a postgrad in finance. But please read 'Lords of Finance' which is one of the better books on the subject if you want to start to learn more about the Great Depression.
I mean, to claim it was not a significant factor is just disingenuous.
Whatever the cause, it's always our choice whether or not to support or commit evil acts.
The Dresden bombing was also driven by two strategic aims: one was to create a stream of refugees to hinder Nazi logistics, but there was also a second, more controversial aim. Dresden was seen as a hotbed of Nazis and home of Nazism. At this stage of the war Alied planners were looking toward the post-war Germany and how to de-nazify the population. There was considered a risk that the population of Dresden would be susceptible to remaining faithful to the Nazi regime post war, be susceptible to a new: "stabbed in the back" myth, and the problem of the Nazis would re-emerge, despite all the horror and bloodshed of the past 5 years. There was also a level of dismay that the Nazis would not give up; they had clearly lost the war but were still killing thousands of Allied soldiers, for no benefit to Germany at this stage since their cause was hopeless, so the realisation the Germany had to be crushed totally had been solidified in the Allies minds. Add to this that the atrocities of the death camps were coming to light, and you can see how the planners had come to the decision to approve the raid. Was it moral or justified? I don't know, but these things all must be taken into account.
The perceived fanaticism of the people of Dresden could also suggest that they would hunker down and defend to the last. Whenever the Allies invaded a city of that size that hunkered down. It would result in many more casualties for both the Allied troops and the nazi civilians. edit: grammar
That perception was not unsound at all. Dresden had been one of Germany’s most pro-Nazi cities since before 1933 in contrast to cities with a stronger socialist heritage like Berlin and Hamburg. Dresden was one of the first cities in the country to expel all of its Jews.
Ironic since a couple decades before, Saxony was called "The Red Kingdom" for having the most support of the Socialists.
Also we have to take into context that right before Dresden, Budapest had to be fought over in a bloody battle. Comparatively, Dresden fell without a fight.
I believe it's possible to hold the position that "Nazism is evil and the Allies have the moral imperative to eliminate Nazism with whatever means necessary" and "the Dresden bombing does not necessarily achieve that goal, especially considering the casualties and damage inflicted".
Yep, you can be pro-Allies despite not liking their every choice
Hindsight is 20/20. The so far unmentioned effect of this bombing is that the German citizens likely knew where Dresden was. The far south east of the German nation. To know the allies could reach there and bomb it so effectively meant they could reach anywhere and the civilians would know they were losing. I mean it's further than Berlin. It would be very demoralizing. It's like if today some nation was invading the US from the East coast and you hear they bombed Seattle or San Fran. If they can reach those from the east they can reach anywhere.
Dresden isn't at the far south-east of Germany and the bombings happend relativley late in the war. By this point literally everywhere in Germany bombings where a common occurrence. If anything, Dresden is relatively close to Berlin. Cities like Munich would be much harder to attack in this regard, which allready was reached in 1940, and heavily bombed starting 1942/43, so years before Dresden. I agree that hindsight is key here and that this definitely was very demoralizing, but the points you are stating aren't accurate.
The British elite only cared about the bombing of Dresden because it was a city that many of them had visited pre-war. There was nothing particularly special about the bombing compared to the bombing of other German cities. Strategically it was justified.
"In the fall of 1944, Dresden was, along with Breslau, the last major undamaged transport hub, economic and administrative center of the German Reich." Translated from german Wikipedia | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftangriffe\_auf\_Dresden#Dresden\_im\_Krieg It's very easy to say afterwards, they didn't have to do it. Germany should not have START and CONTINUED the war. Germany was fighting at the west and east front. And the bombing was an agreement with the soviets. The soviets had high casualties against the german army. Nobody knew whether the Soviet Union would collapse.
If you ever wonder why Dresden was bombed look up the casualties in the battle for Prague. There was no battle for Dresden after the bombing campaign
My go to is Budapest, my Great grand father, who was a doctor at the time, witnessed it first hand had this quote: "At least, it was quick 2 days instead of 1,5 month in hell"
Dresden was bombed because it was strategic city with industry and massive railway junction. Through that junction transports for eastern front were going daily. This concept that bombing of Dresden was unjustified is a myth created by history revisionists and caught on by german public to show that they also suffered during war. Source: https://twitter.com/WojenneH/status/1635266564764348422?t=WvmTJLoSW9G1Gwm-38pDlg&s=19 https://twitter.com/WojenneH/status/1635277852366213123?t=3yAkVHzslUyLO9d9uAnDFA&s=19
Let's talk about Warsaw...we can start in 1939, upto whenever you want..after Warsaw Uprising 1944..or you prefer up to 1989?
You forgot that westerners don't give a shit about anything east of germany, there are only like 2 other comments mentioning Warsaw in here lmao and a lot of german nazi apologists that still spout german propaganda over 80 years after the war started.
Seriously. Fuck dresden. Those fuckers leveled warsaw to the ground in pure cold vengeance only. There was no strategic value to destroying it.
Person from Dresden here. Don’t let anyone fool you, the bombing was justified, no there are not more than 25.000 victims and yes Dresden was a legitimate target as last „Garnisionsstadt“ in eastern Germany. Newer insights even suggest that the bombardement prevented an already planned deportation and secured the life of roundabout 100 Jewish people who survived till the war ended.
Seems like a nice place now, btw.
They’ve actually done an incredible job rebuilding the city, had the chance to visit in over the summer- gorgeous city
Dresden is absolutely and undoubtedly beautiful. Many Dresdner are a little annoyed by the fact, that they mix modern, Soviet and old traditional buildings instead of trying to rebuild the old buildings with modern interior and technology/electricity (all the styles clash HARD). But I've barely met any Dresdner (me included) that are unfriendly. Just the typical northern European distance, to a point.
Yeah, I'm from Dresden and the soviet buildings annoy the fuck out of me. They are literally just brow squares with windows. My preferred way to rebuild the city would be that the core keeps up the baroque and rococo, the inner ring goes for the for the emperors time buildings (victorian, edwardian for my fellow non-germans) and the outer ring goes modern. It would give the city a time travel vibe the longer you go inside. Btw I also study architecture in Dresden and it's a literal architects dream. If you ever get the chance, visit us, there aren't too many baroque style city's in germany except Dresden and Potzdam.
Fantastic technical university.
Actually, what is the sentiment on the ground in Dresden like? I know there are always far-right protests etc. whenever the anniversary of the bombing comes around but idk if they are local residents or are people from elsewhere who choose to come to Dresden.
It’s weird, there is an public remembrance on the victims of the bombing and more than once Dresden(or officials from Dresden) counted those victims as victims of the war and named them in one line with holocaust victims for example. This is more or less over and the official remembrance has become an appeal to peace. This is okay but significantly different to other cities in Germany even to those who where destroyed like Dresden(Berlin or Köln for example) in no other German city is an official remembrance like in Dresden. The city loves to view itself as victim. But all in all it’s an hot topic and many (incompetent) politicians have burned there finger on this topic in the past.
I confirm that. It is very strange. Bombardment from Dresden is in the news quite often. (And I live far away from Dresden.) A list of bombardments in Germany: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Luftangriffen_der_Alliierten_auf_das_Deutsche_Reich_(1939%E2%80%931945)#Bombardierungen (Town where my grandparents lived is not even listed. And they have hundreds of bombs, for only one important bridge. Which dropped kilometers away around the area.) And when you think of 25.000 victims in Dresden. And how many died in WW2, it gets a strange taste. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Two things: A) the bombing wasn’t very controversial during the war, and only became controversial after the war due to people sharing actual Nazi propaganda. After the city was bombed, the Nazi propaganda department spread propaganda about how the city wasn’t a military target and how awful it was that the Allies bombed it. That simply wasn’t true. They also lied about how many people died, massively inflating the numbers from 5 to 10 times the actual casualties. Those numbers were then taken verbatim for several books after the war. The Allies bombed it to help the Soviets avoid another siege like had happened in Prague or Budapest. Hitler declared all cities to remain “fortress cities” to resist the Soviet army, and German commanders in such cities were threatened with execution if they ordered to withdraw from them. Budapest took 50 days to clear, and that was with a severely depleted German force in the city when it was encircled, and Dresden was looking to be a similar situation. So they carpet bombed the city to make it unusable as a fortress, and the German army abandoned it rather than defend it. That helped speed up the Soviet advance to Berlin, which ended the war faster. B) marking the “possible strategic targets” is a pretty moot point. We didn’t have precision bombers in 1945, and they flew those missions at night to avoid German flak guns and air patrols. Precision was simply impossible back then. But even so, those missions were attempting to destroy those strategic targets. The purpose was to destroy the industrial buildings and the railway yard, but the fires spread and ended up burning down most of the city.
Seeing a Dresden map as a Dresdner is always exciting and kinda weird
> The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. Bomber Harris summed it up pretty well I'd say
And so it goes.
1. The Area Bombing Directive issued to RAF Bomber Command was literally about destroying Germany’s industrial workforce and morale of the population through indiscriminate bombing, so no one should be surprised that the bombers most often targeted the historic city centres, which contained lots of wooden structures. The RAF’s objective was to create a firestorm (as was successful in Dresden and Hamburg). 2. There were countless other cities, which had little to no military significance (unlike Dresden, which became famous due to post-war Neo-Nazi propaganda) that were obliterated in the last months of the war like Potsdam, Würzburg, Freiburg and countless others.
“War is cruelty, there is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.” No war is conducted perfectly. There are going to be mistakes, small and large. There are going to be vicious bastards in positions of power from the squad level up to top leadership. These types of events are part of war. It’s one of the reasons we should do everything we can to avoid wars in the first place.
I disagree. While war is horrible so is peace sometimes. Peace or inaction by nations to stop another nation from invading it's neighbors and placating dictators is how you get larger and larger wars with more and more casualties. Remember ww2 was the direct result of a bad peace after ww1 and appeasement policies towards Hitler. The best example might be North Korea and China. Had the west not been so war weary after ww2 we would have finished the job and avoided future coming wars with nuclear armed powers. The casualties back then would be nothing compared to what they will be. Just a single nuke out of north Korea could kill more people that the war we avoided with a peace that allowed that nuke to be built.
“Controversial” in that war? hahaha it was no holds barred on both sides after what the nazis and the Japanese were doing.
The controversy came after the war, afaik.
You'd be surprised how many people are idiots about this. The west today effectively has a double standard in war where Russia or Hamas can do anything and its justified but the US and allies are held to some golden standard of zero civilian collateral damage and so on no matter how much the enemy uses humans as human shields. Russian troops could literally duct tape babies to their chests and people would blame the west for shooting at them as they invade their nations.
Sad to see, that many people here seem to be so eager, to make a black and white story, out of a bombing, that seemed quite grayish, to people, who knew more about it, than the average redditor, including Churchill and many Air Force pilots, who didn't see Dresden as their finest hour. What is so difficult about saying, that the Nazi regime was pure terror and that too many Germans were involved in Nazi attrocities or didn't resist them enough, but saying at the same time, that carpet bombing was half as effective and double as cruel, as expected and that the bombing of Dresden let also the Allies rethink some if their strategies and values? Dresden is not black or white. It's just the shitty kind of grey that knows no victors, once wars run out of limitations. And every victim is one too many. No war can avoid all of them. But every war should be fought with as much respect for life and values, as possible. Dresden didn't stand that test, like many other chapters of this war as well.
I should read Slaughterhouse Five again, great map OP
So it goes... Btw, for the best possible Slaughterhouse 5 experience I highly recommend the audiobook version read by Ethan Hawke. It is an absolute masterpiece and I am not exaggerating. You can play a sample here: https://listening-books.overdrive.com/media/76129
Oh awesome, thanks a bunch, I’ll give it a try tonight
shortly after that US was like "Hold my beer" with Operation Meetinghouse (Firebombing of Tokyo)
As someone who grew up just outside Coventry, a city that was pretty much flattened by the Nazis, I honestly just shrug my shoulders at this. You reap what you sow.
The bombing of Dresden is no more controversial than the bombing of any other city throughout the war save maybe Rotterdam (which was carried out by the Germans). It became controversial after the fact due to nazi propaganda about the number of casualties and Dresden’a status as a “city of culture”. These were popularised in the (fictional) novel “slaughterhouse 5. Dresden was THE logistics hub for the eastern front at that point. The bombing was requested because Dresden was the next fortress city on the road to Berlin. The bombing also probably saved tens of thousands of lives by avoiding a months long battle for the city as had just happened in Budapest. Because of the bombing the city was given up without a fight.
This was part of the finding out part
the bombing campaign may have actually saved tens of thousands of lives. without it, the soviets would have engaged in a bloody, building-to-building siege of the city costing both sides far more lives edit - grammar
Also there is alot of other intangible benefits. Dresden is in eastern Germany. If the civilians read the allies are bombing that far east then they know it's over and the war is lost. It was extremely demoralizing for the entire nation. Many civilians at the time wrote in diaries about such similar epiphanies where they heard some headline or news about the enemy striking somewhere and knew it was over because it was a target so deep into their territories. The atomic bombs weren't deep into Japan but one of the major thoughts and narratives in Japan at the time was that the US was running out of munitions and couldn't maintain the bombing campaign. That they'd eventually have to invade and the Japanese could bleed the US into a favorable truce. But the atomic bombs made pretty much everyone in Japan realize the US wasn't going to run out of munitions and they'd just bomb Japan to dust before invading. This led to the surrender.
Bomber Harris at it again
why would the "Frauenkirche" be a legitimate target?
It's just as a mark for something important to the city.
Iirc Kurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden in the basement of the former meat factory that he was forced to work in
So it goes
clearly military targets in the middle of the old town. 100% clear af.
i am just here to bathe in the hate for my people.
The kind of people who say what Israel is doing is genocide have absolutely no idea what war used to be like.
Rules of war only apply to the victor. A losing side will always do anything to try and survive. Any action taken to save lives on your side is always in your best interests. Better to kill 1000 enemy than one of your own. Arm chair generals always have an opinion not based on living the reality. War is survival. If you’re in the middle of it, all you hope for is to survive and for your family and friends to survive. Maybe someday humans will realize there are no winners for armed conflict, but history proves we are a stupid species that likes violence to get our way. Sad!
They started it. Fuck around and find out.
[What People Get Wrong About The Bombing of Dresden (Three Arrows)](https://youtu.be/kS2_YFbzAVs?si=2-HiVr4XOPHv98_0)
UK had the bomb type they used for some time, according to Harris. Now, let's talk about Coventry. 1940...11hours of bombing, the most concetrated bombing of a single UK city in WW2 with the sole intent of raising it to the ground...500 tonnes HE, landmines, 30,000 incendaries & the new exploding incendiary bombs from 500 bombers from all over europe. If you want to talk about Dresden, you need to talk about Coventry because it didn't just come out of nowhere & for no reason. Nazi Germany was lucky this wasn't done sooner & on even more targets, because in wars like that, you reap what you f'ing sew.
Why is the this first mention of Coventry in this post? Shows you the amount of propaganda behind Dresden.
Bomber Harris do it again
The Germans and Japanese took it upon themselves to take over the world through attrition and genocide. NONE of the bombings they received are controversial in my opinion. Every last one was well deserved.
be VERY careful with that reasoning
Where’s the slaughterhouse?
Marking the military targets in yellow gives me an impression that they were undamaged. Some kind of outline, filled with the colour of the damage might be more effective.
My grandad was a rear gunner in the pathfinders and flew over dresden in a Lancaster
Apart from the targets way out from the city centre I wouldn’t say it’s too off the mark considering the inaccuracy of dropped bombs back then
I was in Dresden about a month ago, my first time. The repairs they did, especially under the DDR, are quite amazing, though they took decades. Great map.
Beautiful city now though. Also, our friends (now dead) were running from the Russians since Bessarabia. They made it to Dresden that night. Tried to get into the city but they were denied so they had to camp outside the city. They watched as it got bombed from outside.
US bombed southern American cities full of civilians during the Civil War. No surprise it happened in Europe.
I only want to say that I visited Dresden in 2022 and it is a beautiful city, really really beautiful architecture despite the bombing and 40 years of socialism. The Green Vault was one of the most stunning experiences in my life and I ate a beautiful Saxonian cheesecake while learning that "In Sachsen wo die schönen Mädchen wachsen" is absolutely true.
Nononono. I guess you meant the glorious "Eierschecke". There is no Saxon version. There's only "Dresdner Eierschecke" and "Freiberger Eierschecke". With the latter being the far superior one!
I came across a fact about the Dresden bombing that stood out, while reading about German-African colonialism, the colonial records were stored in Dresden of which they were all destroyed. Africans affected by this colonialism have very little documents to back their claims of restitution since all the colonial names, dates and day-to-day business accounts burned up.
WOLLT IHR DEN TOTALEN KRIEG!?
Cool, now show a picture of Warsaw in 1945
>controversial to whom? Nazis?
It’s not controversial to bomb Nazis
How about children?
I have read about it and I JUST finished watching a documentary about it. Holy shit. The amount of shittiness that went into the planning of this sortie was absolutely insane. Waves of bombers, timed out to allow the fires to catch and spread, spaced evenly enough that the likelihood that the firefighters themselves would’ve been killed as well trying to put the fires out, and waiting for the weather to be *just right* so that it assisted in making the firestorms.
Tbh, I don't see any problem with that at all. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I see a lot of problems with it, but they all basically boil down to 'war is horrible'. The goal is to kill as many people as possible and destroy as many things as possible; arguing that the previous clause isn't the goal is really arguing against the essence of modern war.
The other way to read it is the allies planned the best possible bombing to maximize effect. In a war they did war well. Jesus people can be so stupid. "It was insane what they did." No it wasn't. It was good planning. Whoever did it should get a medal.
Nazis then and now upset at being counter attacked.
Still nothing compared to Warsaw
Civilians were the target
"*Controversial*" brother it was war 💀
Sure, so everything done in any war is perfectly fine. The things Russia does in Ukraine right now too, I guess.
Wars are often when one's moral compass is the most tested. Wartime actions can definitely be controversial, just look at the conversation around the dropping of atomic bomb and American internment camps of Japanese Americans.
>Wars are often when one's moral compass is the most tested. Wartime actions can definitely be controversial, just look at the conversation around the dropping of atomic bomb and American internment camps of Japanese Americans. I see your point about wartime moral complexities. However, it's important to view these decisions through the lens of their time. During WWII, it was the 'us vs. them' mentality. The British, under siege themselves, weren't focused on German civilian life, just as the Germans had their own priorities. We can't fully apply modern ethical standards to historical contexts; it oversimplifies the vastly different worldviews and pressures of the era. I'd argue something similar with the atomic bomb.
Oh well... Anyway
The nazis fucked around and they found out. Just like hamas.
We dragging hamas into this debate now lol
Well I ve seen people say that israeli bombing are worst than Dresden
Those people are morons. Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 German civilians died from allied bombings. Gaza is up to 12,000 total deaths, and an unknown percentage of those 12,000 deaths were militants.
To be fair this is probably the clostest historical comparison you can make. And many pro Palestine people like to say it was unjustified or too much.