Bombing of Dresden--and for what?

it was bombed too late as industry has already been depleted and removed, I've said this so many times, it's getting old guys. why it was surely bombed in aide of Herr Stalin and the Soviets was the main line centre of the civilian and military retreating through the eastern Reich, it was a hub and BC and US AF did well plastering the place off the map. yes it would of been bombed anyway even if there had been no military installations and there weren't anyway, they were shells of their former selves, so it really does not matter it was done and that was that period ................. lets move on shall we ?

 

Yes perhaps it is best.

 

I don't have anything else that can possibly be added to this thread-how about you Gents?

 

All I can say is that I am in agreement with you CE. It was a sad event.

 

I think teammaico post 293 & FalkeEins are right in what there saying

 

actually when you realise that this thread has been going for seven years now (if I'm not mistaken) and you read the various contributions then I say that for such a 'sensitive' topic its a pretty impressive 'advert' for this forum and its members..

 

It's had it's 'moments' over those seven years.....

 

Thank you Chuikov, not opnly are you a Gentleman, but my favorite WWII Russian General & I appreciate it ;-))

 

And I agree with both of you Falke, Martin ;-))

 

As Stephen Ambrose put it, after many inteviews of those involved in Dresden firebombing: No pilot was overjoyed with the raid, but after seeing the German bombings of London, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Warsaw, etc, they weren't filled with remorse either. They also made a point that no Jews, Gypsies or Poles were killed during the Dresden bombings, because the good Bergers of Dresden had shipped them all off to Auschwitz.
Hopefully, it wasnt done to take headlines aways from the US 3rd Army

 

Without wishing to 'split hairs', but this wasn't quite true. Over 1,000 Jews had indeed been transported from Dresden, but the remaining 198 ( those who were married to non-Jews ) were ordered to report to the Gestapo for transportation. The order was made public on Tuesday, 13th February and that evening, the raid happened.

Some of the surviving Jews were killed, but some escaped including the Jewish academic, Victor Klemperer, whose diaries were published in 1998.

Klemperer called his personal deliverance 'a miracle'.

 

I don't think its a valid comparison either, Auschwitz and Dresden. Dresden had military significance, it was part of bringing the Third Reich to its knees, although I agree that killing 130,000 civilians is flat out atroucious. There is no justification for that, it was the Allies who started bombing the civilian areas not the Axis, Churchill was the one who gave the order to bomb a German city during the Battle of Britain which enraged Hitler who called for the bombing of London. Of course not that Hitler had any qualms with reigning V-2's down on London, and most likely New York if he had the capability. Now I will say that this is somewhat of a vaild comparison, dropping the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Negasaki and Aushwitz, vaporizing hundreds of thousands of civilians in a blink of an eye, but you could also say we warned the Japanese we had this weapon and the Japanese were no saints when he came to killing civilians either (rape of nanking). You could also say the S.S. only started liquidating in the mass millions too cover up their crimes, when we liberated most of the concentration camps the Jews said that the Germans ran out of ammunition to kill of them all. There's probably no justification for either, but at least with the A-bombs it saved another million American GI's lives.

 

I stand corrected, it wasn't 130,000 I read that number on this thread but since you said it wasn't true I did my own research, it was between 30 and 40,000 but that still doesn't make it any better. I wasn't saying the S.S. weren't exterminating them before they realized the war was going ill, I meant they rushed the project, don't get me wrong I'm not making excuses for it just saying the mass killings were rushed. Going back to the ammunition, yeah I meant at local concentration camps.

 

That isn't strictly true. The first large-scale, deliberate bombing of a City was Operation Seebad, launched against Warsaw on 15th September 1939. One can use the usual justifications about Warsaw being a military target, etc but the tactics used were certain to kill civilians and the Germans knew it.

Various Allied towns in the Low Countries were bombed in 1940, including most notoriously Rotterdam as mentioned above. German propaganda cited Freiburg as a precedent, where 57 German civilians had been killed in a 'terror' bombing attack on 10th May, 1940 - the first such raid on German soil.

( It was the Luftwaffe....)

 

The Spanish civil war is worth considering when talking 'who started it' regarding bombing towns as well.
Anyone for Geurnica?

Douhet's ideas were widespread.

 

Why do people get so worked up over Dresden?
Just another city that was trashed amongst many in WW2.
Why does this one create such heated debate?

 

I remember reading that whilst Dresden had not been a military target, because it had not been bombed up until the raid there had been some industry moved to the area as it was seen as a safe zone. This included the manufacture of optics and aircraft engine parts, thus I suppose you can justify it as a target, though not the scale of the raid. There is also the fact that the city was a massive transport hub, through which many soldiers were being moved either to or from the eastern front. Admittedly it was also full of refugees running away from the soviets but that sounds like the start of a new 'who started it' argument.

Then again, let's remember the most significant tactical purpose of the raid, to show the Soviets the destructive power of the RAF's strategic bombing and hopefully maye scare them a little. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Soviets actually request that the RAF bomb Dresden because they couldn't?

 

The first strategic bombing campaign in history started in 1915 during WW1, when the German air force commenced a bombing campaign against targets in Britain using zeppelins and then 'heavy' bombers

 

Dresden had in fact already been bombed twice before the raid in Feb 45, once in Oct 44 by a force of 30 USAAF bombers, and again in Jan 45 by 144 USAAF bombers

It has also been shown that Dresden was less full of refugees as is often claimed, as it was German policy to move them further west as soon as possible

Dresden was indeed bombed to help the Soviet forces, and the Allies did bomb it to 'impress' the Soviets, but not in the way you suggest. It was bombed to show them what good allies we were and how we were doing our bit to help them.
The claim that we hoped to scare them with our destructive power is a piece of Cold War invention