Most of the victims were buried in the days and weeks after the bombing raids. 02/12/2020 At the end of World War II, Allied forces destroyed the baroque German city on the Elbe. Only a handful of raids ever actually conformed to this double-strike theory, and those that did were cataclysmic. An objective analysis of the evidence indicates that almost certainly far more than 25,000 people died from the bombings of Dresden. Thanks! They just bombed the densest populated parts of the city. [24] Overy, Richard, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War over Europe, 1940-1945, New York: Viking Penguin, 2014, p. 314. So, read a LOT more before you let your "stupid" show. DRESDEN, Germany (AP) Soviet troops were pressing into Germany from the east and the other Allies from the west, but for 12-year-old schoolboy Eberhard Renner the war seemed far away. Historian Richard J. Evans estimates that approximately 25,000 people died during these bombings. Taylor states that the best estimate by Gtz Bergander, who spent time on fire-watching duties and on refugee-relief work in Dresden, was that approximately 200,000 nonresidents were in Dresden on the night of February 13-14, 1945. How Many Germans Died under RAF Bombs at Dresden in 1945? 70 years later, bombing of Dresden still controversial - The San Diego They typically seat up to eight passengers and still provide enough cargo space for luggage and other items. The skyline of Dresden photographed in 2019, with the rebuilt Church of Our Lady (right). After neo-Nazis began inflating the figure further, talking of 500,000 to 1 million victims of a "bombing Holocaust," the city established an expert . They had taken shelter from the rain of bombs in an ancient vaulted subbasement, where their remains lay undisturbed for almost 50 years.[38]. Dutton, Inc., 1984, p. 275. She gave birth on Feb 7th and soon after was moved out to the surrounding countryside to make space for other expectant mothers. On the evening of February 13, 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raids begins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the "Florence of the Elbe" to rubble and flames, and killing roughly. See also DeBruhl, Marshall, Firestorm: Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden, New York: Random House, Inc., 2006, p. 255. At about 10.30pm that night, the air raid sirens started their mournful wailing and because this happened every night no notice was taken. The master bombers ordered the bombers to descend to lower altitudes, and the crews felt confident in doing so and in maintaining a steady altitude and heading during the bombing runs. FYI Napalm is flammable liquid weapon. Some 200,000 Silesians and East Prussians were living in tents or shacks in the Grosser Garten. Ursula Elsner was 14 when the bombs fell. The thousands of victims of the allied bomb raids are. Dutton, Inc., 1984, p. 248. Another dumbass "student" of Jewish lies. Eyes and hair carbonized but not shrunk. But after two weeks of work the job became too much to cope with and they found other means to gather up the dead. 156. Did you ever take the trouble to read the book, "Stalin's War of Extermination 1941-1945 Planning, Realization and Documentation" by the German historian, Joachim Hoffmann? De Bruhl states: One particularly poignant discovery was made when the ruins adjacent to the Altmarkt were being excavated in the 1990s. Historians also differ on whether or not bodies are still being recovered in Dresden. A few of the men who had been left over [from the Front] were busy shoveling corpse after corpse on top of the other. Don't want casualties of war? On the night of February 13, 1945, hundreds of RAF bombers descended on Dresden in two waves, dropping their lethal cargo indiscriminately over the city. [8] Ten Dyke, Elizabeth A., Dresden: Paradoxes of Memory in History, London and New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 82. And within minutes, thousands of tons of bombs rained down on Dresden. No, it's NOT "well said", in face it's nonsense. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Behind the Headlines: in a Twist of Fate, Bombing of Dresden Saved [20] Cox, Sebastian, The Dresden Raids: Why and How, in Addison, Paul and Crang, Jeremy A., (eds. Nazi propaganda from 1945 put the death toll at 200,000 and after the war some scholars estimated as many as 135,000 were killed more than the combined total of those immediately killed by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [4] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/death-toll-debate-how-many-died-in-the-bombing-of-dresden-a-581992.html. Thus, Reichert estimates that the number of people in Dresden on the night of the bombings was not much greater than the official figure of Dresdens population before the war.[12]. February 12, 2015 22 Photos In Focus In the last months of World War II, Allied bombers from the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force conducted several major bombing raids. People who managed to escape from their cellars were often sucked into the firestorm as they struggled to flee the city. Photos of the Bombing of Dresden Germany During World War II Why Was Dresden So Heavily Bombed? | HISTORY [25] Friedrich, Jrg, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, New York, Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 94. All Rights Reserved. 68-69. This image contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing. Also, Dresden was undefended: no searchlights, no bursting flak. The German government regarded the acceptance of Germans from the east as an essential duty. [35] Since temperatures in a cremation chamber normally reach only 1,400 degrees to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit[36], large numbers of people in Dresden would have been incinerated from the extreme heat generated in the firestorm. After that they moved in with an uncle. That is the nature of war. 44, 46. Many conflicting estimates have been made concerning the number of deaths during the raids of Dresden on February 13-14, 1945. The second wave of bombers in the Dresden raid appeared over Dresden at the very time that the maximum number of fire brigades and rescue teams were in the streets of the burning city. Bodies inside a Dresden basement where they had sought shelter from the bombs. I just happen to have witnessed the worst that man has to offer and I like it not one bit. 52-53. Fortunately most third world countries have seen so much suffering they do not wish it upon others, even for their inhuman perpetrators. A flower lies on a grave at the Heidefriedhof cemetery during a memorial to mark the 68th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden. [23] By the end of February 1945, only 369,000 inhabitants remained in the city. Like Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five, I wrote as I witnessed. In 2010, however, about 7,000 people turned out to peacefully commemorate both the victims of the Allied bombings and the victims of Nazi atrocities. Commuters boarding a tram amid the ruins in 1946. Women formed a human chain to carry bricks used in the reconstruction in 1946. We must not question one narrative from British, US, or Israeli sources coz if we do we get called Nazis, or Putin Bots or H Deniers. The images are from an overpowering representation of Dresden following the bombing raids on the city that took place on Feb. 13-15, 1945. De Bruhl notes that numerous other skeletons of victims were discovered in the ruins of Dresden as rubble was removed or foundations for new buildings were dug. Harris actually appealed to the British people that targeting civilians with "area bombing" was the only way to win the war. Dresden, a city unaffected by bombing up to that point in the war, lost many thousands of civilians in the firestorm that was created by the Allies. 74 years ago, Allied bombers obliterated one of Germany's most beautiful cities here are 18 photos of the bombing of Dresden Christopher Woody Updated Feb 15, 2019, 6:15 AM Commuters board a. 253-254. They burned bodies in a great heap in the center of the city, but the most effective way, for sanitary reasons, was to take flamethrowers and burn the dead as they lay in the ruins. The only particularly brutal lesson to everyone in the world is that you can commet war crimes, atrocities, massacres or any violation of international law if you have more planes, tanks, bombs, soldiers, and wins the war. It would be nice if more Germans read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. In an interview with Der Spiegel, she recalled her mother dragging her and her brother out of bed to hide in the cellar as the sirens wailed. Dresden: The World War Two bombing 75 years on - BBC News Even if the Allies thought it would shorten the war, he said he thinks the bombing was unjustifiable. Some 25,000 people were killed during the bomb attacks on Dresden, many incinerated in a firestorm so powerful people were literally sucked down streets and into the inferno. A record 6,000 extremists took to the streets there to mark the anniversary of the bombings in 2009. A pile of bodies before they were publicly cremated. [20] The RAF conducted a technically perfect fire-raising attack on Dresden.[21]. The incendiary bombs created so much fire that a firestorm developed. The raids that began on Feb. 13, 1945, left the city littered with corpses, and tens of thousands of Dresdens buildings had been turned to rubble, including its famous opera house and museums in the historic old city. At around 10 p.m. on February 13, 1945, 244 Lancasters rained this combination of incendiary and high explosives onto Dresden. Germans urged to 'defend democracy' 75 years after Dresden WWII bombing [30] Evans, Richard J., Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, New York: Basic Books, 2001, p. 158. Just to condense the cited material used, I will simply say Wikipedia Sir Arthur Harris, all the cited material I used is in the bibliography at the bottom of the page and the article is a condensed version of the material used. They plunged the world into war and killed more than 7 million innocent people (just during the "Final Solution." A British Lancaster bomber being fitted with sticks of fire-starting incendiaries and one "blockbuster" bomb. More importantly, he makes a fair account of what was really, beyond the myths shaped by Jewish media, happening before and through the war itself. The punishing, three-day Allied bombing attack on Dresden from February 13 to 15 in the final months of World War II became among the most controversial Allied actions of the war. People returning home after the evacuation. They would just turn the flamethrowers into the houses, burn the dead and then close off the entire area. The screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of those not yet hit. I found a tin and put their ashes in it. How I remained a sane person through all this I don't know. [9] Taylor, Frederick, Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945, New York: HarperCollins, 2004, pp. In Feb. 1945, Dresden was a major transport and communication hub less than 120 miles from the advancing Russians. Victor Klemperer was an eyewitness to the Dresden bombings at the end of World War II, on February 13 and 14, 1945. The bombers in the Dresden raids were able to conduct their attacks relatively free from fear of harassment by German defenses. 2:05 Dresden, Germany Soviet troops were pressing into Germany from the east and the other Allies from the west, but for 12-year-old schoolboy Eberhard Renner the war seemed far away. The Dresden attack was directly linked to the conduct of the war elsewhere -- in this case on the Eastern Front. A view from the Town Hall tower over the destroyed city center. German Far-Left Extremists Topple Statue to Dresden Firebombing Victims In the days to come, he would see many more. Richard Evans does not recognize that the incineration of corpses on the Dresden market square, the Altmarkt, was not the only means of disposing of bodies at Dresden. The more the city burned, the more oxygen was sucked in and the greater the firestorm became. World War II Destruction of Dresden: The Misappropriation of a Tragedy The point that America knew Stalin's history is meaningless in this context. 134, 227-228. A pile of bodies awaits cremation after the firebombing of Dresden, February 1945. Images of Dresdens skeletal, burned-out buildings have become synonymous with the ravages of war. Ethically, the German's were killing people in concentration camps in order to achieve ethnic cleansing. [26] Snke Neitzel also estimates that approximately 20,000 out of a total population of 65,000 died in the raid at Pforzheim. This strategy was very popular with Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, 1st Baronet, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, RAF Bomber Command. Browse 586 bombing of dresden in world war ii photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more photos and images. Center of German art and culture caused a tremendous backlash and protest by British and other leaders. Several persons were near the entrance, others at the flight of steps and many others further back in the cellar. Don't start fucking wars. Many conflicting estimates have been made concerning the number of deaths during the raids of Dresden on February 13-14, 1945. Just for the record, Shostakovich dedicated his 8th String Quartet to the innocent victims of Dresden. Bodies in the street after the Allied bombing. I do believe that this is most likely a case of spitting into the wind. The effort actually undertaken to recover bodies was considerable, but there was no evidence that it reached the levels required to remove this number. The city was not a military target. Should May 8 be a public holiday celebrating Germany's WWII surrender? Even the built-up areas did not have the congestion of Berlin and Munich. When the British RAF attacked Dresden that night, all the residents and refugees in Dresden could do was take refuge in their cellars. I thought I had made it quite clear, but apparently not. By John Wear | Inconvenient History, Vol. Meanwhile, in the city center, hundreds of neo-Nazis gathered to the sound of Wagner to . That Klemperer survived was pure luck. The people are now out of shelter as the buildings homes transportation all everything has been raised flat so the people I assume it was not a military base this was a civilian city? The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. The alliance between the US and USSR is a great deal more sinister than that. She came to Germany as a Fulbright scholar in 1996, and previously worked for The Associated Press in Frankfurt, Vienna and the Balkans. Beginning on the night of February 13, 1945, more than 1,200 heavy bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city in four successive raids. The British were fully aware that mass death and destruction could result from the bombing of Germanys cities. The air raids killed 25,000 people. It concluded in 2008 that closer to 25,000 people were killed in the attack. The smoldering outskirts of Dresden during the attack. Women form a human chain to carry bricks used in the reconstruction of Dresden after allied bombing destroyed the city in February 1945. . She also won a championship on the U.S. Just Stop Oil protestors briefly disrupt Ashes cricket test between England and Australia, Mbapp and France teammates Maignan, Kound express criticism after police kill teenager. [29] This would, however, account for only a portion of the percentage difference in the death tolls. And remember, only Germans and Japs and Russians in Ukraine have EVER committed war crimes because we stand for Freedom, Democracy and the rule of Law, see especially, OUR RULE of OUR LAWS.