Vitaly Slovetsky, Free Press.

Is the largest bombing raid of World War II considered a war crime?

For several decades in Europe, calls have been heard to give the bombing ancient city Dresden has the status of a war crime and genocide of residents. Recently German writer, laureate Nobel Prize on literature, Gunther Grass and former editor of the British newspaper "The Times" Simon Jenkins again demanded that this be done.
They are supported by the American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who said that the bombing of many German cities was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could practice the practice of bombing.
The German historian York Friedrich noted in his book that the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity: "... it was absolutely unnecessary bombing in the military sense."
The death toll of the terrible bombing that took place from 13 to 15 February 1945 ranges from 25,000 to 30,000 (many sources claim more). The city was almost completely destroyed.
After the end of World War II, the ruins of residential buildings, palaces and churches were dismantled and taken out of the city. On the site of Dresden, a site was formed with marked boundaries of former streets and buildings.
The restoration of the center took about 40 years. The rest of the city was built up much faster.
To this day, the restoration of historic buildings on the Neumarkt square is underway.

The fiery tornado was drawing people in ...
Before the war, Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Tourist guides called it Florence on the Elbe. The famous Dresden Gallery, the world's second largest porcelain museum, the most beautiful palace ensemble Zwinger, an opera house that rivaled La Scala in acoustics, and many baroque churches were located here.
Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin often stayed in Dresden, and Sergei Rachmaninoff was preparing here for his world tour. The writer Fyodor Dostoevsky lived in the city for a long time, working on the novel "Demons". Here his daughter Lyubasha was born.
At the end of World War II locals were confident that Dresden would not be bombed. There were no military factories in it. It was rumored that after the war the Allies would make Dresden the capital of the new Germany.
There was practically no air defense here, so the air raid signal sounded just a few minutes before the start of the bombing.
At 22:03 on February 13, residents of the outskirts heard the roar of approaching aircraft. At 2213 hours 244 Lancaster heavy bombers from the British Royal Air Force dropped the first high-explosive bombs on the city.
In a matter of minutes, the city was engulfed in flames. The light from the giant fire could be seen 150 kilometers away.
One of the British Royal Air Force pilots later recalled: “The fantastic light around became brighter as we approached the target. At an altitude of 6,000 meters, we could discern in the unearthly bright radiance details of the terrain that had never been seen before; for the first time in many operations, I felt sorry for the people below. "
The bomber-navigator of one of the bombers testified: “I confess, I glanced down when the bombs were falling, and with my own eyes saw the shocking panorama of the city, blazing from one end to the other. Thick smoke was visible, blown away by the wind from Dresden. A panorama of a brightly sparkling city opened up. The first reaction was the thought, which shocked me, about the coincidence of the massacre taking place below with the warnings of the evangelists in the sermons before the war. "
The plan to bombard Dresden included the creation of a fiery tornado on its streets. Such a tornado appears when the scattered fires that have arisen are combined into one huge bonfire. The air above it heats up, its density decreases and it rises up.
British historian David Irving describes the fire tornado created in Dresden by the pilots of the British Royal Air Force: “... the resulting fire tornado, judging by the survey, consumed more than 75 percent of the territory of destruction ... Giant trees were uprooted or half broken. Crowds of fleeing people were suddenly caught up by a tornado, dragged through the streets and thrown directly into the fire; torn off roofs and furniture ... were thrown into the center of the blazing old part of the city.
The fire tornado reached its peak in the three-hour interval between the raids, precisely at the time when the inhabitants of the city, who had taken refuge in the underground corridors, should have fled to its outskirts.
A railroad worker hiding near Pochtovaya Square watched as a woman with a baby carriage was dragged through the streets and thrown into the flames. Other people fleeing along the railway embankment, which seemed to be the only escape route not covered with debris, described how railway cars in open sections of the track were blown away by a storm.
Asphalt melted on the streets, and people falling into it merged with the road surface.
The telephone operator of the Central Telegraph left such memories of the bombing of the city: “Some girls offered to go outside and run home. A staircase led from the basement of the telephone exchange building into a quadrangular courtyard under a glass roof. They wanted to get out through the main gate of the courtyard to Pochtovaya Square. I didn't like this idea; unexpectedly, just as 12 or 13 girls were running across the yard and fiddling with the gates, trying to open them, the red-hot roof collapsed, burying them all underneath.
In a gynecological clinic, after being hit by a bomb, 45 pregnant women were killed. On the Altmarkt square, several hundred people, who were looking for salvation in ancient wells, were boiled alive, and the water from the wells evaporated by half.
In the basements of the Central Station during the bombing there were approximately 2,000 refugees from Silesia and East Prussia... The authorities equipped the underground passages for their temporary residence long before the bombing of the city. The refugees were cared for by representatives of the Red Cross, the women's service units within the framework of the state labor service, and the employees of the National Socialist Social Security Service. In another city in Germany, the gathering of such a number of people in rooms decorated with flammable materials would not be allowed. But the Dresden authorities were confident that the city would not be bombed.
Refugees were also found on the stairs leading to the platforms and on the platforms themselves. Shortly before the British bombers' raid on the city, two trains with children arrived at the station from Königsbrück, which was being approached by the Red Army.
A refugee from Silesia recalled: “Thousands of people crowded in the square shoulder to shoulder ... Fire raged over them. The corpses of dead children were lying at the entrances to the station, they were already piled on top of each other and taken out of the station. "
According to the data of the head of the air defense of the Central Station, out of 2,000 refugees who were in the tunnel, 100 were burned to death, another 500 were suffocated in the smoke.

"It is impossible to count the number of victims in Dresden"
During the first attack on Dresden, the British Lancasters dropped 800 tons of bombs. Three hours later, 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs. The losses of the Royal Air Force during two raids amounted to 6 aircraft, 2 more aircraft crashed in France and 1 in Great Britain.
On February 14, 311 American bombers dropped 771 tons of bombs on the city. February, 15 american aviation dropped 466 tons of bombs. Some of the American P-51 fighters were ordered to attack targets moving along the roads in order to increase the chaos and destruction on the important transport network of the region.
The commander of the Dresden rescue squad recalled: “At the beginning of the second attack, many were still crowding in the tunnels and basements, waiting for the end of the fires ... Detonation hit the glass of the cellars. Some new, strange sound was mixed with the roar of explosions, which became more and more muffled. Something reminiscent of the hum of a waterfall was the howl of a tornado that began in the city.
Many who were in underground shelters instantly burned out as soon as the surrounding heat suddenly increased sharply. They either turned into ash, or melted ... "
The bodies of other victims, found in the basements, shriveled from the nightmarish heat to one meter in length.
British planes dropped canisters filled with a mixture of rubber and white phosphorus on the city. The canisters broke on the ground, the phosphorus ignited, the viscous mass fell on people's skin and stuck tightly. It was impossible to repay it ...
One of the residents of Dresden said: “The tram depot had a public lavatory made of corrugated iron. At the entrance, her face buried in a fur coat, lay a woman of about thirty, completely naked. A few yards from her lay two boys, about eight or ten years old. They lay, hugging each other tightly. They were also naked ... Everywhere, wherever the gaze reached, there were people suffocated from lack of oxygen. Apparently, they tore off all their clothes, trying to make it look like an oxygen mask ... ”.
After the raids, a three-mile column of yellow-brown smoke rose into the sky. A mass of ash floated, covering the ruins, towards Czechoslovakia.
In some places of the old city, such a heat was created that even a few days after the bombing it was impossible to enter the streets between the ruins of houses.
According to a report by the Dresden police, compiled after the raids, 12,000 buildings were burned down in the city, “... 24 banks, 26 insurance company buildings, 31 retail stores, 6470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading halls, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges ”.
On March 22, 1945, the municipal authorities of Dresden issued an official report, according to which the number of deaths recorded by that date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths in the bombing was expected to be about 25,000.
In 1953, in the work of German authors "Results of the Second World War," Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “The number of victims in Dresden cannot be counted. According to the Department of State, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual number of losses, of course, is much lower; but even 60-100 thousand civilians who died in the fire in one night alone can hardly fit into human consciousness. "
In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians, commissioned by the city of Dresden, concluded that approximately 25,000 people were killed in the bombing.

"And at the same time show the Russians ..."
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was proposed to bomb Dresden on January 26, 1945 by Air Force Minister Archibald Sinclair in response to his dispatch with the question: “What can be done to properly finish off the Germans when they retreat from Breslau (this city is located 200 kilometers from Dresden. "SP")? "
On February 8, Allied Expeditionary Force High Headquarters in Europe notified the British and US Air Forces that Dresden was included in the list of targets for bombing strikes. On the same day, the US military mission in Moscow sent an official notification to the Soviet side about the inclusion of Dresden in the list of targets.
The RAF memorandum, which the British pilots were consulted the night before the attack, stated: “Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany ... by far the largest enemy area still not bombed. In the middle of winter, with streams of refugees heading west and troops to be quartered somewhere, living quarters are in short supply as not only workers, refugees and troops need to be accommodated, but also government offices evacuated from other areas. At one time, widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center ... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most strongly, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time to show the Russians when they arrive in the city what they are capable of Royal Air Force ".
- If we talk about war crimes and genocide, many cities in Germany were bombed. The Americans and the British devised a plan: to mercilessly bomb the cities in order to break the spirit of the German civilian population in a short time. But the country lived and worked under bombs, says Vladimir Beshanov, author of books on the history of World War II. - I believe that not only the barbaric bombing of Dresden, but also the bombing of other German cities, as well as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should be recognized as war crimes.
In Dresden, residential buildings and architectural monuments were destroyed. Large marshalling yards almost no damage. The railway bridge over the Elbe and the military airfield located in the vicinity of the city remained intact.
After Dresden, the British managed to bomb the medieval cities of Bayreuth, Würzburg, Zoest, Rothenburg, Pforzheim and Waelm. In Pforzheim alone, where 60,000 people lived, a third of the inhabitants died.
It is not known what will come of the next attempt to give the monstrous event the status of a war crime. So far, every year on February 13, the inhabitants of Dresden commemorate their fellow citizens who died in a firestorm.

The bloody massacre in Dresden: burning women, ruins, children wandering among corpses in search of parents - the first act of genocide of the future NATO (PHOTOS)

14.02.2016 - 19:00

On the anniversary of the barbaric bombing of the US and British Air Forces of the German city of Dresden, reader of "Russian Spring" Luhansk resident Sergei Vasilevsky described in detail the nightmare of those days, relying on historical sources.

We have learned a lot about NATO and its satellites (I try not to use the word "sixes"). You don't have to tell us anything.

What I would like to recall once again is that shelling and bombing of residential areas is not a novelty. This is the original method of waging war and introducing "values" into enemy territory.

The existence of NATO can be judged by what NATO has been doing since its inception. And that's not all - NATO emerged as an alliance of states that had their own history at the time of its creation.

Therefore, in order to more fully understand the essence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is necessary to consider the history of the states that created the Organization. As the Gospel says, "a good tree does not bear bad fruit." What were the "roots" of NATO?

The fact that is considered in this article is the bombing of Dresden by the air forces of the United States and England on February 13-14, 1945. Due to the small size of the newspaper article, only some data will be provided, everyone can find more detailed information on one's own.

SITUATION AT THE START OF BOMBING:

From about the middle of 1944, the Allied Air Force, unable to cope with the task of destroying the military and transport potential of Germany, switched to massive bombing of the civilian population.

Essen in East Frisia became one of the illustrative episodes. On September 30, 1944, due to bad weather, American bombers were unable to reach their target - a military plant. On the way back, the pilots saw a city below them and, in order not to return with a bomb load, they decided to drop it on the city. The bombs hit the school, burying 120 children under the ruins - half of the children in the city.

Compare the emblem on the plane with the emblem on the trail. picture.

As one German fighter pilot recalled: “… At that time there was a popular anecdote: who can be considered a coward? Answer: a resident of Berlin who volunteered for the front ... "

By order of the commander-in-chief of British bombers, Arthur Harris, leaflets were dropped on German cities with the following content:

“Why are we doing this? Not out of a desire to take revenge, although we have not forgotten Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade (hereinafter referred to as Belgrade - S.V.), London, Plymouth, Coventry.

We are bombing Germany, city after city more and more, to make it impossible for you to continue the war. "

Roosevelt's phrase about the planned bombing of the civilian population of Germany: “... We must be cruel towards the Germans, I mean the Germans as a nation, and not just the Nazis.

Either we must castrate the German people, or treat them in such a way so that they do not give birth to offspring that can continue to behave as in the past ... ”.

Lancaster bomber drops bombs on civilians.

A phrase from the justification of the Dresden operation: “... The main purpose of such bombings is primarily directed against the morality of the ordinary population and serves psychological purposes. It is very important that the entire operation starts with this very purpose ... ”.

"CITY OF REFUGEES"

At the beginning of 1945, Dresden became a “city of refugees”, in which hospitals and evacuation points were concentrated. At the time of the bombing, there were up to 600,000 refugees in the city fleeing the alleged "atrocities" of the Soviet Army.

Dresden was practically not protected by anti-aircraft artillery and was covered by only one squadron of fighters (one cannot but take into account the lack of aviation fuel).

On February 13, 1945, 245 Lancaster bombers took off from British airfields, they carried out the first bombardment. At midnight, another 550 bombers rose and carried out a second bombing.

During two night raids on Dresden, 1,400 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,100 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped (2.5 kilotons is the terminology of the nuclear age).

When all the fires merged into one, a firestorm began. The air sucked into the funnel created a giant tornado that lifted people into the air and threw them into the fire.

The fires that engulfed the city were so intense that the asphalt melted and flowed through the streets. The people hiding underground were suffocating - the oxygen burned out in the fires. The heat reached such an intensity that human flesh melted, and a stain remained from the person.

When the tornado gained strength, the heat increased dramatically. Those who hid in shelters died relatively easily: they turned into ash or melted, soaking the ground for a meter and a half.

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Dresden bombing facts and myths

75 years ago, British and US aircraft dealt a devastating blow to Dresden. Its consequences are still felt today.

Tokyo, Rotterdam, Liverpool, Helsinki, London, Hamburg ... Civilian infrastructure outside the war zone has been targeted by targeted air strikes before. But it was during World War II that strategic bombing of cities took on an unprecedented scale. Massive air strikes were launched not only with the aim of destroying the enemy's military industry and arsenals in the city limits. The bombing was also an attempt to demoralize the civilian population and break their will to resist. Three months before the end of World War II, the turn came to Dresden, which until then had practically not been exposed to air strikes and imagined itself to be lucky, who was spared by the war.

Dresden: four aerial attacks and a firestorm

On February 13, 1945, at 21:45, an air raid signal alerted Dresden of an impending deadly threat. The night attack was carried out by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain. The bombers passed through the point above the stadium marked by the guidance planes, fanned out along predetermined trajectories, and dropped bombs on the city at predetermined intervals. First, land mines that destroyed roofs, exposing the wooden structures of buildings. Then the incendiary bombs. And again land mines. After 15 minutes, the air attack ended. The city was on fire. But that was only the beginning. Three hours later, British bombers reappeared in the sky. The historic center of Dresden, with its dense residential development and famous Baroque architecture, was engulfed in a tornado of fire.

German military historian Rolf-Dieter Müller considers the second RAF attack "especially treacherous". He chaired a commission convened in 2004 at the initiative of the city authorities of Dresden to conduct a scientific investigation into the bombing of the city. "At the time of the second attack, firefighters and residents were already trying to extinguish the burning houses. And then they were suddenly overtaken by a new air strike," the historian explains in the Focus weekly.

Detonating bombs, crumbling buildings and carpet fire flames with temperatures up to 1000 degrees left no chance of salvation. People were burned alive in the streets, suffocated in basements and underground tunnels leading from one house to another to move from a burning building to a safe place. On the night of February 13-14, all houses were on fire. The underground corridors, conceived as escape from the fire, have become a death trap for many thousands.

On February 14 and 15, Dresden was bombed by US Air Force planes in the daytime. The strikes were carried out mainly on industrial targets and transport facilities. But bombs also fell on what little remained of residential areas within the city.

A total of 4,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on the city during the four February raids on Dresden, involving some 1,300 British and American aircraft. The bombing raids in the city, according to a Dresden police report drawn up shortly after the raids, killed 25,000 people and burned down 12,000 buildings. The US Air Force documents say that 80 percent of city buildings have suffered varying degrees of destruction and 50 percent of residential buildings have been destroyed or severely damaged.

Symbolic Dresden

In terms of the scale of destruction and the number of victims, Dresden is far from the leader among the cities that became the target of strategic bombing during the Second World War. In Tokyo, in one day of bombing by American aircraft, 100 thousand people were killed. Cologne was bombed 262 times by the Allies. Pforzheim lost a fifth of its population and 98 percent of urban infrastructure in just 22 minutes. But it is Dresden that is associated in the collective consciousness, by the way, not only of the Germans, with the suffering of the civilian population during the war. It is Dresden that is cited as an example, when Germans are not spoken of as criminals, but as victims.

"Dresden is today perceived throughout the world as a symbol of the destructive power of modern air warfare, similar to Hiroshima," says Gorch Pieken, a leading researcher at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, in Foсus. Why is this so? Several factors played a role here, about which historians, politicians, publicists and demagogues of all stripes have argued and argue: the number of victims, the expediency of the bombing and its justification.

Manipulation of data on victims of bombing

It all started with Nazi propaganda. Immediately after the raids on Dresden, Goebbels attributed zero to the number of victims of the bombing. Thus was born the legend of hundreds of thousands of victims, which will allow future right and left demagogues to place Dresden on a par with Auschwitz and Hiroshima. In addition, in the Nazi propaganda, Dresden appeared as an "innocent city of culture", "Florence on the Elbe", which the Allies destroyed, despite the almost won war. Goebbels personally coined the term "Anglo-American air gangsters."

Subsequently, the rhetoric of the Nazis was almost literally repeated by communist propaganda to mobilize the masses against the "Western imperialists." British Holocaust denier David Irving, in turn, popularized the death toll of 135,000. Other estimates even went up to 500 thousand. In 2010, a commission of 13 German historians, commissioned by the city of Dresden, put an end to this myth-making. The commission checked all available documents and facts that could shed light on the death toll in Dresden, and issued a conclusion: a maximum of 25 thousand people. This is the same figure as the police report sent from Dresden to Berlin immediately after the raids.

Dresden stylization as an "innocent city of culture"

British historian Frederick Taylor notes in an interview with Spiegel Online: “The destruction of Dresden is of epic tragic quality. It was an amazingly beautiful city, a symbol of Baroque humanism and all the best in Germany. But it also had the worst of Nazi Germany. In this sense, it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy, showing the horrors of war in the 20th century and a symbol of destruction. "

In fact, one can hardly speak of the "innocence" of Dresden during the "Third Reich". In addition to the fact that it was one of the main bastions of the NSDAP, it was one of the key staging points in Germany, through which echelons with soldiers and equipment went. Dresden was also one of the leading military-industrial centers and a garrison city. The German historian Moritz Hoffmann recalls in this regard: "Dresden was an important military post with significant administrative structures. The city hosted an often forgotten 12,000 troops."

In the list of German cities to be destroyed by the British military command, Dresden was ranked 22nd out of 140. The British had not bombed the city before because of its inaccessibility for aircraft, like other East German cities. The Nazis also understood Dresden's attractiveness as a military target and its vulnerability from the very beginning of the war. Nevertheless, the historian Gorch Piken stresses, "many of the inhabitants of Dresden believed that with each new day of war they were closer to peace than to fighting. In fact, everything was the other way around."

Allied fear of "German Stalingrad"

Can we talk about the strategic necessity of the bombing of Dresden at the beginning of 1945, when the outcome of the war was already a foregone conclusion? According to Moritz Hoffmann, historians today have every reason to assert that Nazi Germany lost the war three years before Dresden, when the German offensive stopped near Moscow. But at the beginning of 1945, the Allies could not know what other "miracle weapon" the Nazis could bring to light. The "wunderfaff" rumors, as Moritz Hoffman notes, were loud words to bolster German morale, but they were also heard abroad. In addition, recalls a historian in Spiegel Online, four weeks before the bombing of Dresden, the Germans launched an offensive in the Ardennes that no one expected: "If the Allies really knew that Germany had no chance, then they could lay down their arms and just wait." ...

And then the situation looked somewhat different. The Wehrmacht at the beginning of 1945 won a respite and was able to send reinforcements to the Eastern Front, which could drag out the war for many more months. And the allies did not need "German Stalingrad" at all. Therefore, the decision to bomb Dresden was also dictated by the desire to help the Red Army. Churchill and Stalin had previously exchanged information about the bombing of German cities. At the Yalta conference with the participation of the leaders of the three countries of the anti-Hitler coalition - the USSR, the USA and the UK - Dresden was named by the British as a possible target of the upcoming raid. And he fully justified himself, says the German military historian Rolf-Dieter Müller. Not only because an important transport and administrative center was paralyzed. The strategy of suppressing morale, which the British called "moral bombing", also paid off. After Dresden, according to Rolf-Dieter Müller, German cities no longer offered resistance to the advancing Allied forces.

The tragic but not unique fate of Dresden

Dresden was not the first city to experience devastating bombing during World War II, nor the last. The bombing of Dresden was a tragedy. But not exceptional. And one of many. "Of course, the Allied aviation did not accomplish the feat there. But, as horrible as it sounds, it was a normal military act - as far as one can speak of normality in relation to this horrible war," summarizes the German historian Moritz Hoffmann. This opinion is shared by many historians today.

Is the bombing of Dresden a "war crime"? The curator of the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden, Jens Wehner, in an interview with the dpa news agency, in particular, says: “Dresden must be viewed in the context of the whole war. world war - both from the Germans and the Allies. "

The uniqueness of Dresden lies in the fact that its inhabitants really believed that culture would save them, and that the tragedy of Dresden was subsequently used for their own purposes by all and sundry, from the Nazis and communists to the current left and right radicals. "The handling of the Dresden bombing is a particularly clear example of how difficult it is to overcome the German past today," says Johannes Kiess, a sociologist at the University of Siegen in Focus.

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Well, for comparison - the material of the Air Force ...

75 years of the bombing of Dresden. Why was this city destroyed in 1945?

Toby Luckhurst BBC

"This fiery tornado is overwhelming ...Insanefear grips me, and I start repeating to myself onesimplethe phrase: "I do not wantaliveburn out. "I do not know how longOpeople I stepped over. I only know one thing: I must not burn out. "

On February 13, 1945, British aircraft struck Dresden. Within a few days, the British, along with their American allies, dropped 4,000 tons of bombs on the city.

The raging fire killed 25 thousand people, burned or suffocated from lack of oxygen in this devastated city.

Dresden was not an isolated case. The Allies dropped bombs on Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin, killing tens of thousands of people and burning large areas to the ground. Japanese cities such as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also bombed.

However, it was this bombing that became the most controversial act of the Allies during the Second World War. Questions were raised about the military significance of Dresden. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed doubts about the necessity of bombing immediately after the air attack.

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities just for the sake of intimidation, albeit under different pretexts, must be reconsidered," he wrote in a memo. "The destruction of Dresden remains a serious argument against Allied bombing."

This material contains shocking images

Dresden is the capital of Saxony. Before the war, this city was called Florence on the Elbe and the jewelry box - for the local climate and architecture.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Color photo of Dresden was taken in 1900, showing buildings destroyed by bombing

By February 1945, Dresden was only 250 km from the Eastern Front, where Nazi Germany was still holding the line against the advancing Soviet forces. The last months of the war passed.

Dresden was then a major industrial and transport hub. Many factories and factories located here produced ammunition, parts for aircraft and other equipment for the Nazi troops.

Troops, tanks and artillery passed through Dresden - both by land and railroad... Hundreds of thousands of German refugees fleeing the fighting also ended up in this city.

At that time, according to the command of the British Royal Air Force, Dresden remained the largest city in Germany, which had not yet been bombed.

The Allied Air Command decided that the air strike on Dresden could help the Allied Red Army by stopping the movement of Nazi troops and preventing the evacuation of the Germans from the east.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Aircraft dropped both high-explosive and incendiary bombs

During the five years of the war, British Air Force bombing raids on German cities became more frequent and more powerful. Aircraft dropped both high-explosive and incendiary bombs: the former blew up buildings, the latter set off fires, causing further destruction.

Previous air raids completely razed some cities in Germany. In 1943, hundreds of British bombers took part in the bombing of Hamburg, known as Operation Gomorrah.

Due to the dry, hot weather, this raid caused a firestorm of such intensity that the city was almost completely destroyed.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Most of Dresden was destroyed during the Allied bombing

The air strike on Dresden began on 13 February. About 800 bombers, led by targeting aircraft, which dropped signal flares, marking the site for an attack in the area of ​​the Ostragege sports stadium, reached Dresden that night.

In just 25 minutes, British aircraft dropped over 1,800 tons of bombs.

As was customary during the Second World War, American aviation followed the British in the daytime.

More than 520 US Air Force aircraft participated in these airstrikes over the course of two days. Their target was railway yards, but in fact they were striking a large part of the city center.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Tens of thousands of Dresden residents died from fire and carbon monoxide Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Many historic buildings were destroyed

The civilians of the city were seized with horror. Many, having heard the sounds of sirens, took refuge in shelters.

However, the first strike deprived the city of electricity, and people began to come to the surface just before the second wave of bombing began.

Many, saving from the fire, fell dead from lack of oxygen. An eyewitness to those events, Margaret Freyer, described a woman with a child who was fleeing: "She runs, falls, and her child, describing an arc, flies straight into the fire ... The woman remains lying on the ground, completely motionless."

American writer Kurt Vonnegut was then a prisoner of war, he survived the bombing of Dresden.

"Dresden turned into a continuous conflagration. The flame devoured all living things and, in general, everything that could burn," he wrote in his book Slaughterhouse Five.

He compares the bombed-out Dresden with the lunar landscape: "Dresden was like the Moon - only minerals. The stones were hot. There was death all around."

In total, during this operation, the British lost six bombers, three of them - as a result of the fact that they were accidentally hit by bombs dropped by their own. The Americans lost one plane.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dresden lay in ruins for several more years. Photo of 1946. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption It took years to clear the rubble Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Many districts of Dresden were not restored during the GDR years. Dresden Castle in 1969

Nazi Germany immediately took advantage of this bombing to launch a propaganda blow against the Allies. The Propaganda Ministry stated that there was no war industry in Dresden, that it was just a cultural center.

And despite the fact that the city authorities reported 25 thousand deaths (modern historians also agree with this figure), the Nazis claimed that 200 thousand civilians died in Dresden.

In Britain, Dresden was known as a tourist attraction, so many MPs and public figures questioned whether the airstrike was worth it.

However, American and British military strategists insisted that the operation was necessary, as were the bombings of other German cities, as they destroyed industrial infrastructure, transportation systems and the homes of workers employed at military installations.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Church of Our Lady, or Frauenkirche, having served as a war memorial for decades, was rebuilt with donations collected in the UK and the USA, photo 2004. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dresden grew out of the rubble, but traces of the same bombing are still visible in it, photo from 2015.

A 1953 American account of this historical episode states that the bombing destroyed or severely destroyed 23% of the city's industrial buildings and at least 50% of the housing stock.

Nonetheless, the report said, Dresden was "a legitimate military target," and this airstrike was no different from "the accepted bombing policy."

Disputes over allied air operations and specifically the bombing of Dresden are still ongoing. Historians ask the question: did they really prevent the Nazis from their offensive, or did they just cause the death of civilians, especially senseless towards the end of the war?

In this case, unlike landing operations such as the Normandy landings - it is more difficult to understand how much it helped the Allies to win the war.

Some argue that this is a clear moral miscalculation by the Allies, if not a war crime. Others, however, say the bombing was a necessary part of the war to destroy Nazi Germany.

This piece of history has been adopted by various conspiracy theorists, extreme rightists and extremists, including those who deny the Holocaust. They cite the data of the victims in their Nazi interpretation and mark the bombing of Dresden as a tragic date.

75 years have passed, but this event still causes a lot of emotion and controversy.

Bombing of Dresden

Ruined Dresden. Photo from German archives, 1945

The burnt corpses of the deceased residents. Photo from German archives, February 1945

Bombing of Dresden(it. Luftangriffe auf Dresden, eng. Bombing of Dresden) - a series of bombings of the German city of Dresden, carried out by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain and the United States Air Force on February 13-15, 1945 during the Second World War. As a result of the bombing, about a quarter industrial enterprises the city and about half of the remaining buildings (urban infrastructure and residential buildings) were destroyed or seriously damaged. According to the US Air Force, traffic through the city was paralyzed for several weeks. Estimates of the death toll ranged from 25,000 in official German wartime reports to 200,000 and even 500,000. In 2008, a commission of German historians, commissioned by the city of Dresden, estimated the death toll in the range from 18 to 25 thousand people. On March 17, 2010, the official report of the commission, which has been working since 2004, was presented. According to the report, the bombing of Dresden by Allied aircraft in February 1945 killed 25,000 people. The official report of the commission was posted on the Internet.

The question of whether the bombing of Dresden was caused by military necessity is still controversial. The bombing of Berlin and Leipzig was coordinated with the Soviet side; according to the explanation of the Anglo-American allies, Dresden, as an important transport center, was bombed by them in order to make it impossible for traffic to bypass these cities. According to the American Air Force, which carried out the bombing, the importance of disabling the transport hubs of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden is confirmed by the fact that it was near Leipzig, in Torgau, that the advance units of the Soviet and American troops met on April 25, cutting the territory of Nazi Germany in two. Other researchers call the bombing unjustified, considering that Dresden was of low military importance, and the destruction and civilian casualties were extremely disproportionate to the military results achieved. According to a number of historians, the bombing of Dresden and other German cities retreating to the Soviet zone of influence was aimed at not providing assistance Soviet troops, but exclusively political goals: a demonstration of military power to intimidate the Soviet leadership in connection with the planned Operation Unthinkable. According to the historian John Fuller, to block communications, it was enough to continuously bomb the exits from the city, instead of bombing Dresden itself.

The bombing of Dresden was used by Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes, while the death toll was inflated by Goebbels to 200 thousand people, and the bombing itself seemed absolutely unjustified. In the USSR, an estimate of the victims was accepted at 135 thousand people.

Causes

On December 16, 1944, German forces on the Western Front launched an offensive in the Ardennes, the goal of which was to defeat the Anglo-American forces in Belgium and the Netherlands and free German units for the Eastern Front. In just 8 days, the Wehrmacht offensive in the Ardennes as a strategic operation ended in complete failure. By December 24, German troops advanced 90 km, but their offensive was exhausted before reaching the Meuse River, when American troops launched a counteroffensive, attacked from the flanks and stopped the German offensive, and the Wehrmacht, which was defeated in the Ardennes, finally lost strategic initiative on the Western Front and began to retreat. To facilitate their retreat, on January 1, 1945, the Germans launched a local counteroffensive, conducted by small forces, this time in Strasbourg in the Alsace region, in order to divert allied forces. These local counterattacks could no longer change the strategic situation on the Western Front; moreover, the Wehrmacht was experiencing a critical shortage of fuel caused by the strategic bombing of the Allied aircraft, which destroyed the German oil refining industry. By early January 1945, the position of the Wehrmacht on the Western Front, especially in the Ardennes, had become hopeless.

In connection with these events, on January 12-13, the Red Army launched an offensive in Poland and East Prussia. On January 25, in a new report, British intelligence noted that “the success of the current Russian offensive is likely to have a decisive impact on the duration of the war. We consider it expedient to urgently consider the issue of assistance that the strategic aviation of Great Britain and the United States can provide to the Russians in the next few weeks. " In the evening of the same day, Winston Churchill, having familiarized himself with the report, addressed the Minister of the Air Force, Archibald Sinclair (Eng. Archibald sinclair ) a dispatch, asking what can be done to "properly polish the Germans when they retreat from Breslau" (200 km east of Dresden).

On January 26, Sinclair noted in his reply that “the best use of strategic aviation appears to be the bombing of German oil factories; German units retreating from Breslau should be bombed with front-line aviation (from low altitudes), not strategic (from high altitudes) ”; noting, however, that "under favorable weather conditions, the bombing of major cities in eastern Germany such as Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz can be considered." Churchill expressed displeasure with the restrained tone of the answer and demanded that the possibility of bombing Berlin and other major cities in eastern Germany be considered. Sinclair forwarded Churchill's wish to develop specific plans for strikes on the cities of eastern Germany to Air Force Chief of Staff Charles Portal (eng. Charles Portal ), who in turn redirected it to his deputy, Norman Bottomley (eng. Norman bottomomley ).

On January 27, Bottomley sent the RAF Bomber Chief Arthur Harris to bomb Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz as soon as weather conditions permit. Sinclair reported to Churchill about the measures taken, noting that "a sudden massive bombardment will not only cause disorder in the evacuation from the east, but also make it difficult to transfer troops from the west." On January 28, Churchill, after reviewing Sinclair's response, did not comment further.

The RAF Memorandum, which the British pilots were consulted on the night before the attack (13 February), reported that:

Bombing

The tonnage of bombs dropped by the Allies on the 7 largest cities in Germany, including Dresden, is shown in the table below.

Moreover, as the table below shows, by February 1945, the city was practically not bombed.

The operation was to begin with an air raid by the US Air Force 8th Air Force on February 13, but poor weather conditions over Europe prevented the participation of American aircraft. In this regard, the first blow was struck by British aircraft.

On the evening of February 13, 796 Avro Lancaster and 9 De Havilland Mosquito aircraft took off in two waves and dropped 1,478 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs. The first attack was carried out by the 5th RAF Group, which used its own targeting methods and tactics. Targeting planes marked the stadium Ostragehege as a starting point. All bombers passed through this point, fanning out along predetermined trajectories and dropping bombs after a certain time. The first bombs were dropped at 22:14 CET by all bombers except one, which dropped at 22:22. At this point, clouds covered the ground, and the attack, during which 244 Lancaster dropped 800 tons of bombs, was a moderate success. The bombed area was fan-shaped 1.25 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

Three hours later, a second attack took place, carried out by the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th groups of the British Air Force, the latter providing guidance using standard methods. The weather had improved by that time, and 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs between 01:21 and 01:45. ...

After that, the US Air Force carried out two more bombing raids. On March 2, 406 B-17 bombers dropped 940 tons of high-explosive and 141 tons of incendiary bombs. On April 17, 580 B-17 bombers dropped 1,554 tons of high-explosive and 165 tons of incendiary bombs.

The bombing was carried out according to the methods adopted at that time: first, high-explosive bombs were dropped to destroy roofs and expose the wooden structures of buildings, then incendiary bombs, and again high-explosive bombs to hinder the work of fire services. As a result of the bombing, a fire tornado was formed, the temperature in which reached 1500 ° C.

Destruction and sacrifice

Type of destruction. Photo from German archives, 1945

According to a report by the Dresden police, compiled shortly after the raids, 12,000 buildings in the city were burned down. The report said that “24 banks, 26 buildings of insurance companies, 31 retail stores, 6,470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading halls, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, were destroyed. 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges. " In addition, the destruction of military targets was reported: the command post in the palace Taschenberg, 19 military hospitals and many minor military service buildings. Nearly 200 factories suffered damage, of which 136 suffered severe damage (including several Zeiss optics factories), 28 moderate damage and 35 minor damage.

The US Air Force documents state: “British estimates ... conclude that 23% of industrial buildings and 56% of non-industrial buildings (excluding residential) were seriously damaged. From the total residential buildings 78 thousand are considered destroyed, 27.7 thousand are considered unfit for habitation, but amenable to repair, 64.5 thousand - received minor damage and amenable to repair. This later estimate shows that 80% of city buildings suffered varying degrees of destruction and 50% of residential buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged. the Elbe River - vital for the transfer of troops - remained inaccessible to movement for several weeks after the raid. "

The exact death toll is unknown. Estimates are difficult to make due to the fact that the city's population, which in 1939 numbered 642 thousand people, increased at the time of the raids due to the arrival of at least 200 thousand refugees and several thousand soldiers. The fate of some refugees is unknown, because they could be burned beyond recognition or leave the city without notifying the authorities.

Currently, a number of historians estimate the number of victims in the range of 25-30 thousand people. In the opinion of the US Air Force, these estimates would suggest that the losses during the Dresden bombings were similar to those during the bombings of other German cities. Higher numbers were reported by other sources, the credibility of which has been questioned.

A chronology of claims from various sources about the death toll is given below.

On March 22, 1945, an official report was issued by the municipal authorities of the city of Dresden Tagesbefehl no. 47(also known as TV-47), according to which the number of deaths recorded by that date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths in the bombing was expected to be about 25 thousand people.

In 1953, in the work of German authors "Results of the Second World War," Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “The number of victims in Dresden cannot be counted. According to the State Department, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual number of casualties is, of course, much less; but even 60-100 thousand civilians who died in the fire in one night alone can hardly fit into human consciousness. "

In 1964, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Ira Iker ( English) also estimated the number of victims at 135 thousand dead.

In 1970, the American magazine Time estimated the number of victims from 35 to 135 thousand people.

In 1977, the Soviet military encyclopedia cited the death toll at 135,000.

In 2000, according to the decision of the British court, the figures given by Irving for the number of deaths in the bombing of Dresden (135 thousand people) were called unreasonably high. The judge found no reason to doubt that the death toll differs from the 25-30 thousand people indicated in official German documents.

In 2005, in an article on the official website of the British Air Force, it was noted that, according to the accepted estimates, the death toll was at least 40 thousand people, and possibly exceeded 50 thousand.

In the encyclopedias "Columbia" ( English) and Encarta provide data on the death toll from 35 thousand to 135 thousand people.

In 2006, the Russian historian Boris Sokolov noted that the death toll as a result of the bombing of Dresden by allied aviation in February 1945 ranges from 25 thousand to 250 thousand people. In the same year, in the book of the Russian journalist A. Alyabyev, it was noted that the death toll, according to various sources, ranged from 60 to 245 thousand people.

In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians, commissioned by the city of Dresden, estimated the death toll in the range from 18 to 25 thousand people. Other estimates of the number of victims, reaching 500 thousand people, were called by the commission exaggerated or based on dubious sources. The commission was created by state authorities after the right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany, having won seats in the Saxon parliament in the 2004 elections, began publicly comparing the bombing of German cities with the Holocaust, citing figures of up to 1 million victims.

The tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was less than during the bombing of other cities. However, favorable weather conditions, timber-framed buildings, passageways connecting the basements of adjacent houses, and the city's unpreparedness for the consequences of air raids contributed to the fact that the results of the bombing were more devastating. In late 2004, a British Air Force pilot who took part in the raids told the BBC that another factor was the weak barrage of air defense forces, which allowed them to hit targets with high accuracy. According to the authors of the Dresden Drama documentary, the incendiary bombs dropped on Dresden contained napalm.

According to the American Air Force, which carried out the bombing, in the post-war period the bombing of Dresden was used by "the communists for anti-Western propaganda."

The total number of victims of the Allied bombing among the civilian population of Germany is estimated in the range of 305-600 thousand people. The question of whether these bombings contributed to the early end of the war is debatable.

Anglo-American aviation losses

The losses of the Royal Air Force during the two raids on Dresden on February 13-14, 1945 amounted to 6 aircraft, in addition, 2 aircraft crashed in France and 1 in England.

The available sources give details of the loss of 8 aircraft (including five British, one Australian, one Canadian, one Polish):

American aircraft irretrievably lost 8 B-17 bombers and 4 P-51 fighters during the raid on Dresden and additional targets.

Eyewitness accounts

Dresden resident Margaret Freyer recalled:

“In the firestorm, groans and cries for help were heard. Everything around has turned into a continuous hell. I see a woman - she is still in front of my eyes. In her hands is a package. This is a child. She runs, falls, and the baby, describing an arc, disappears into the flame. Suddenly, two people appear right in front of me. They scream, wave their hands, and suddenly, to my horror, I see how, one after another, these people fall to the ground (today I know that the unfortunates have become victims of a lack of oxygen). They lose consciousness and turn to ash. Insane fear grips me, and I keep repeating: “I don’t want to be burned alive!” I don’t know how many more people got in my way. I only know one thing: I must not burn out. "

Dancer and dance teacher Gret Palucca founded a modern dance school in Dresden in 1925 and has lived in Dresden since that time:

“Then I went through something terrible. I lived in the city center, in the house where I lived, almost everyone died, including because they were afraid to leave. After all, we were in the basement, about sixty-three people, and there I said to myself - no, you can die here, since this was not a real bomb shelter. Then I ran straight into the fire and jumped over the wall. Me and another schoolgirl, we were the only ones who came out. Then I experienced something terrible, and then in Grossen Garten (a park within the city limits) I experienced an even greater horror, and it took me two years to overcome it. At night, if I saw those pictures in a dream, I always started screaming. "

According to the memoirs of a radio operator of the British Air Force, who participated in the raid on Dresden:

“At that time, I was struck by the thought of the women and children below. We seemed to be flying for hours over the sea of ​​fire raging below - from above it looked like an ominous red glow with a thin layer of haze above it. I remember I said to the other crew members: “My God, these poor fellows downstairs.” It was completely unreasonable. And this is impossible to justify. "

Reaction

The destroyed opera house. Photo from German archives, 1945

On February 16, a press release was issued, where the German side stated that there were no military industry enterprises in Dresden, it was the location of cultural values ​​and hospitals. On February 25, a new document was released with photographs of two burned children and with the headline "Dresden - a massacre of refugees", which stated that the number of victims was not one hundred, but two hundred thousand people. March 4th in the weekly newspaper Das reich an article was published devoted exclusively to the destruction of cultural and historical values.

Historian Frederick Taylor notes that German propaganda was successful, not only establishing a position in neutral countries, but also reaching the British House of Commons, where Richard Stokes ( English) operated on the reports of the German news agency.

Churchill, who had previously supported the bombing, distanced himself from them. On March 28, in a draft memorandum sent by telegram to General Hastings Ismay, he said: “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the bombing of German cities, carried out under various pretexts for the sake of increasing terror, should be reconsidered. Otherwise, we will gain control of a completely ruined state. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious pretext against Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that henceforth military objectives should be determined more strictly in our own interests than in the interests of the enemy. The Foreign Minister informed me of this issue and I believe that it is necessary to focus more carefully on military targets such as oil and communications immediately outside the war zone, rather than on overt acts of terror and senseless, albeit spectacular, destruction. "

After reviewing the contents of Churchill's telegram, on March 29, Arthur Harris sent a response to the Air Department, where he said that the bombing was strategically justified and "all the remaining German cities are not worth the life of one British grenadier." After protests by the military, Churchill wrote on April 1 new text in a relaxed form.

The question of attribution to war crimes

Square Altmarkt before destruction. Photo taken in 1881, Library of Congress

Opinions vary as to whether bombing should be classified as a war crime.

American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens expressed the opinion that the bombing of many German residential neighborhoods, which served as human targets, was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could practice bombing practices. In his opinion, the Allies burned down German cities in 1944-1945 only because they were able to do so.

In his book, the German historian Joerg Friedrich ( English) noted that, in his opinion, the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity. In 2005, Friedrich noted that "it was absolutely unnecessary in the military sense of the bombing", "an act of unjustified terror, mass destruction of people and terrorizing refugees." German historian Joachim Fest also believes that the bombing of Dresden was unnecessary from a military point of view.

Representatives of the right-wing parties at a demonstration on February 13, 2005. The inscription on the banner "Never again terror bombing!"

Nationalist politicians in Germany use the expression Bombenholocaust("Bombing holocaust") in relation to the bombing of German cities by the Allies. Holger Apfel, a member of the German National Democratic Party, called the bombings "a cold-blooded industrial mass extermination of the Germans."

The question of classifying the bombing of Dresden as war crimes does not make sense without considering, together with the facts of the bombings, cities such as Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn, Pforzheim, which had no military significance, committed according to an identical scheme, and also almost completely destroyed. These and many other cities were bombed after the bombing of Dresden.

Reflection in culture

Memory

On February 13, 2010, on the Day of Remembrance of those killed in the bombing, from 5,000 to 6,700 neo-Nazis (3,000 fewer than expected), planning to demonstrate in Altstadt, the historic center of Dresden, were blocked on the opposite bank of the Elbe by left-wing demonstrators. According to the Morgen Post and Sächsische Zeitung newspapers, 20,000 to 25,000 city residents and visitors took to the streets of Dresden to confront the ultra-right. The "living chain" stretching around the historic center of the city, where the Dresden synagogue is located, consisted, according to various sources, from 10 to 15 thousand people. To maintain order, the Ministry of the Interior of Saxony (as well as other federal states) sent about seven and a half thousand police officers (originally planned six thousand) with armored vehicles and helicopters.

Some facts

The area of ​​the zone of total destruction in Dresden was 4 times the area of ​​the zone of total destruction in Nagasaki. The population before the raid was 629,713 people (excluding refugees), after - 369,000 people.

Notes (edit)

1. German historians have established the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden (March 18, 2010). Archived
2. Official report on the victims of the bombing, published on 17.03.2010 (German) (PDF). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012.
3. Historical Analysis of the 14-15 February 1945 Bombings of Dresden(English). USAF Historical Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University... Retrieved March 14, 2009.
4. “The history of the raid by Gotz Bergander, first published in 1977 ..., provided the most balanced account of the attack, but Bergander, though he thought there were grounds for regarding the city as a completely legitimate bombing target, found the means used were "Bizarrely out of proportion" to any expected gain. " Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A. (eds.) Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden... - Pimlico, 2006 .-- S. 126 .-- ISBN 1-8441-3928-X
5. Shepova N. Bomb Germany out of the war. Military-industrial courier, No. 21 (137) (June 07-13, 2006). Archived
6. Fuller J.F.Ch. World War II 1939-1945 Strategic and tactical overview. - M .: Foreign Literature, 1956.
7. "Following the deliberate leaking oa TB-47 by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, a third Swedish paper, Svenska Dagbladet, wrote on 25 February 1945 that… according to the information compiled a few days after the destruction the figure is closer to 200,000 than to 100,000" Richard J. Evans(((title))) = Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial... - Verso, 2002 .-- S. 165 .-- 326 p. - ISBN 1859844170
8. Soviet military encyclopedia. - T. 3. - P. 260.
9. Taylor, p. 181: “The degree of success achieved by the present Russian offensive is likely to have a decisive effect on the length of the war. We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end, quoted from the report Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive "prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee of Great Britain on January 25, 1945
10. Taylor, p. 181
11. Taylor, p. 184-185
12. Taylor, p. 185. Churchill's answer: “I asked whether Berlin, and now doubt other large cities in East Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. I am glad that this is „under consideration“. Pray report to me tomorrow what is to be done. "
13. Taylor, p. 186
14. Taylor, p. 217-220
15. Addison (2006), p. 27.28
16. Ross (2003), p. 180. See also Longmate (1983) p. 333.
17. RAF: Bomber Command: Dresden, February 1945 ((on English language)). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 14, 2009.
18. Götz Bergander.= Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen. - Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1977.
19. Richard J. Evans.= The Bombing of Dresden in 1945: Misstatement of circumstances: low-level strafing in Dresden.
20. Taylor, p. 497-8.
21. Taylor, p. 408-409
22. Taylor, p. 262-4. The number of refugees is unknown, but some historians estimate it at 200,000 on the first night of the bombing.
23. "Following the deliberate leaking oa TB-47 by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, a third Swedish paper, Svenska Dagbladet, wrote on 25 February 1945 that… according to the information compiled a few days after the destruction the figure is closer to 200,000 than to 100,000" Richard J. Evans.= Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial. - Verso, 2002 .-- S. 165 .-- 326 p. - ISBN 1859844170
24. p. 75, Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A., Pimlico, 2006
25. Taylor, p. 424
26. Another report, issued on April 3, cited the number of deaths counted at 22,096 - See p. 75, Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A., Pimlico, 2006
27. Rumpf G. Air war in Germany // = Results of World War II. Conclusions of the vanquished. - M., SPb .: AST, Polygon, 1988.
28. Foreword to the original edition of David Irving "s famous bestseller: The Destruction of Dresden. Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
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45. 463 SQUADRON RAAF WORLD WAR 2 FATALITIES
46. List of fatalities in the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II, p. 248.
47. KNIGHTS, P / O John Kingsley; Air Force Association of Canada
48. Loss information on Pathfinder Squadron RAF website
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56. Taylor, p. 421.
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58. Longmate, p. 344.
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60. Taylor, p. 431.
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The end of World War II was approaching. Hitler and Goebbels cheerfully proclaimed the words of endurance and resilience, while the Wehrmacht was less and less able to deter Allied attacks. The Luftwaffe was less and less able to protect the German population from Allied bombs, so the bombing returned to the country, which at the beginning of the war devastated the enemy cities. On the night of February 13-14, Dresden was practically destroyed to the ground.

Ruins of Dresden

Stefan Fritz is a priest of the restored Church of St. Mary in Dresden: the bell that sounds every mass is the bell of peace, it bears the name of the prophet Isaiah and it bears the inscription: "... and hammer their swords into plowshares" (book of the prophet Isaiah 2: 2-4 ).

Since February 1, 2005, the upper platform directly under the golden cross on the tower has been open to visitors. Those who stand here have a beautiful view of the old and new part of Dresden, which was the target of the bombing on February 13 and 14, 1945.

The date of the raid was determined by weather conditions. On the night of February 13, meteorologists predicted a clear sky over Dresden. British Bomber Command informed Soviet Army, the front line of which ran 150 kilometers from the capital of Saxony. In the afternoon of February 13, 245 Lancaster aircraft of the fifth bomber squadron took off from British airfields for a night raid. No resistance was expected. The city was darkened, there was no street lighting, but some cinemas and cafes were still open - it was carnival day. At 21.40, an air raid began, and twenty minutes later the first bombs fell on the city.

Goetz Bergander, the historian and chronicler of those events, was seventeen years old at the time and he lived with his parents in Friedrichstadt, an area located west of the old part of the city. He recalls: “The first to appear over Dresden were the so-called 'illuminator' planes. They were high-flying bombers, parachuting in bright white and green illumination bombs. They illuminated the city so that the bombers flying behind them could very well see the city lying below and could descend at a peak up to 300 m above the ground, dropping bombs directly at their intended targets.

After the targets were illuminated and mapped out by the lead bomber circling over Dresden, at 22.11 the order was given to attack. The carpet bombing has begun.

The strategy behind it had been developed in great detail three years earlier. On February 14, 1942, a directive on the so-called "moral carpet bombing" was issued to British aviation, in which essentially the destruction of populated areas was declared a primary goal. This decision was rebuffed by British politicians: "Of course, the Germans started all this, but we must not become worse than them." But these considerations did not in any way affect the increased intensity of air raids. The first goal of the new strategy was Hanseatic city Lubeck, which was destroyed on Palm Sunday 1942.

From August to October, Arthur Harris, the commander-in-chief of the British bombers, ordered the dropping of 4 million leaflets from the planes with the following content:

“Why are we doing this? Not out of a desire to take revenge, although we have not forgotten Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, London, Plymouth, Coventry. We are bombing Germany, city after city, more and more to make it impossible for you to continue the war. This is our goal. We will pursue you mercilessly, city after city: Lubeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and the list will grow longer. If you want to allow yourself to be plunged into the abyss along with the Nazis, that is your business ... In Cologne, Ruhr, Rostock, Lübeck or Emden, they may believe that with our bombing we have already achieved everything we wanted, but we have a different opinion. What you have experienced before will be incomparable with what is still ahead, as soon as our production of bombers gains strength, and the Americans double or quadruple our power. "

At midnight from February 13 to February 14, 1945, a column of 550 Lancaster bombers, stretching for 200 km, moved for the second raid on Dresden. This time, the target was easy to find.

Bergander: “The crews reported that already at a distance of 150 km, a red glow was visible, becoming more and more. These were the fires that their planes were approaching. "

Dresden, 1945

During two night raids on Dresden, 1,400 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,100 tons of incendiary bombs fell. This combination caused a fiery tornado devastating everything in its path, burning the city and people. The basements could not provide shelter as before, since the heat and lack of oxygen left no chance for life. Those who still could fled from the city center to the outskirts, or at least to the banks of the Elbe or to the Grossen Garten, a park with an area of ​​about 2 square meters. kilometers.

Dancer and dance teacher Gret Palucca founded a modern dance school in Dresden in 1925 and has lived in Dresden since that time: “Then I experienced something terrible. I lived in the city center, in the house where I lived, almost everyone died, including because they were afraid to leave. After all, we were in the basement, about sixty-three people, and there I said to myself - no, you can die here, since it was not a real bomb shelter. Then I ran straight into the fire and jumped over the wall. Me and another schoolgirl, we were the only ones who came out. Then I experienced something terrible, and then in Grossen Garten I experienced an even greater horror, and it took me two years to overcome it. At night, if in a dream I saw those pictures, I always started screaming. "

Wolfgang Fleischer, Museum historian military history Bundeswehr in Dresden: “The Grossen Garten, which stretched all the way to the city center, suffered on the night of February 13-14. The inhabitants of Dresden were looking for salvation from the fiery tornado in it and the adjacent zoo. The British ace-bomber, circling over the target, saw that a large area directly near the city center was not burning, like all other parts of it, and called in a new column of bombers, which turned this part of the city into fire. Numerous residents of Dresden who sought refuge in the Grossen Garten were killed by high-explosive bombs. And the animals that escaped from the zoo, after their cages were destroyed, - as the newspapers later wrote about this, - wandered around the Grossen Garten. "

Dresden after the bombing

The third raid took place on the afternoon of February 14th. They are associated with still painful memories of carpet bombing of people who tried to hide in the Grossen Garten and on the banks of the Elbe. The reports of the witnesses contradict the opinions of historians. 35,000 people died in the Dresden fire. (edited by other sources 135,000 people) It remained incomprehensible for the inhabitants of the city: in a few hours their city was turned into a heap of ruins and ceased to exist. Then no one knew that this could happen in an instant. The shock experienced then left its mark on biographies, messages and oral stories that were passed on by parents to children and grandchildren.

The last phase of the war required more huge amount victims. In this final phase, Dresden was neither the first nor the last German city which was destroyed by carpet bombing. The proliferation of this strategy raised doubts among British politicians. In 1984, the famous physicist Freeman Dyson, who worked at the bomb research center during World War II, admitted: name. But I didn't have the courage to do it. "

O. Fritz: “I also remember very well what was in the minds of the inhabitants of Dresden - it was a completely unnecessary, senseless raid, it was a city-museum that did not expect anything like this for itself. This is fully confirmed by the memories of the victims at that time. "

St. Mary's Church

The inhabitants of Dresden have long been proud of their city of art with its baroque castle, famous art gallery, art industry museum, church of St. Mary, choir and opera, world famous technical university... They expected a softer fate for their magnificent city. But the deadly war unleashed by Germany did not guarantee this. In the memories of the older generation about the personally endured suffering, the bitterness of this unfulfilled hope and the death of the victims they saw is still mixed.

The restored today Church of St. Mary with the burnt fragments of the former building included in its walls is both a reminder and, at the same time, a symbol of reconciliation.

O. Fritz: “I think our memories should be aimed at making room for historical truth. We must appreciate that sixty years after the end of the war, we are living in a re-created city, that the greatest efforts were made for this. We are not in the state in which we were after the bombing and with the peoples with whom Germany previously waged war, we live in European neighborhood and friendship. And this is the greatest blessing that we do not want to lose. The temple we are in is crowned with a cross donated from the British people. "

Translation from German: Natalia Pyatnitsina
Material revision: priest Alexander Ilyashenko

Note from the editor:

As a result of the Anglo-American Air Force of the total bombing of Germany and Japan, civilians were killed, cities were destroyed, historical and cultural values ​​disappeared from destruction and in the flames of fires.

“The war was distinguished by two main features: it was surprisingly mobile and unprecedentedly brutal. The first feature was due to the development of science and industry, the second - to the decline of religion and the emergence of what, in the absence of a generally accepted name, can be called "cadocracy" (from cadocracy - the power of the uneducated crowd, rabble). The age of extraordinary people has passed, and in its place came the age of rabble. The gentleman - a direct descendant of an idealized Christian knight, a model for many generations - has been supplanted by a rude, uneducated person. The peoples of the United States and England were taught that they were waging a war "in the name of justice, humanity and Christianity." In reality, however, the Allies returned "to the methods of war that the civilized nations had long ago thrown away."

In the flames of fires, people were burned alive. As a result of the barbaric bombing in Dresden, 135 thousand people were killed, mostly, of course, Germans, but there were also prisoners of war among the dead: Russians, British, Americans. (J. F.S. Fuller II World War 1939-1945 Publisher Foreign literature... Moscow, 1956, p. 529)

In specially designated areas of the southern suburb of Dresden in the 2nd half of the 19th century. numerous foreigners settled. Since, at the same time, they did not integrate into the evangelical confession of Dresden, but retained their faith, between 1869 and 1884. four foreign churches were erected. The Anglican, American and Scottish Presbyterian churches were destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Only the Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1872-1874, has survived. for the Russian mission in the principality of Saxony ".

And what about Dresden ??? Well, that's what everyone is rushing about with Dresden ???
Allies bombed EVERYTHING in a row all the cities
Hamburg - 37,554 people, died as a result of that grandiose Allied operation in late July - early August 1943. Out of every thousand people in the population then an average of 22.1 people died. 25,965 people, or almost 70% of those killed, lived in the centrally located district of Grossbezirk Mitte. The casualty ratio in the area was 59.6 per thousand inhabitants. In the Grossbezirk Mitte area, the death toll of women was 45% higher than that of men. And the number of people killed in residential buildings in Grossbezirk Mitte was even higher compared to the average for the central regions. The losses here amounted to 18,500 people, that is, more than half of the officially registered total death toll.
For example, in the Hammerbrook area, the average losses were 361.5 people per thousand, that is, one in three died in the flames of fires. In the other two districts, these figures are respectively 267.2 and 160 people per thousand inhabitants.
The death toll in the Allied bombing in Hamburg exceeds the death toll in the whole state of Bavaria. But even this figure of 37,554 does not reflect the exact number of victims. After several years of research, it became clear that at least 17,372 more people should be added here.

What happened during the massive incendiary air strikes was beyond all previous practice of urban services and populations.
While firefighters and civil defense officials tried to fight the first fires and excavate the first victims from the ruins, having every chance to save people, a second powerful blow struck the densely built residential areas of the eastern part of the city. Pockets of numerous fires arose, which soon expanded into a fiery sea, flooding entire neighborhoods, destroying everything and everyone in its path.
The third and fourth wave of bombers completed the destructive work. The fire fell on those areas of the city that had spared the previous bombing. At the same time, two neighboring small towns of Elmshorn and Wedel, where the stream of refugees from Hamburg flocked, were bombed. These operations, carried out by the Royal Air Force under cover of night, were clearly terrorist raids. In the daytime, US Air Force bombers attacked military and industrial facilities in the dock area, primarily shipyards where warships and submarines were built. The Americans used mainly high-explosive bombs.
Bold attempts to fight the fire in the city itself, which in the early stages of the bombing were undertaken by fire brigades with the help of civil defense forces and the population, were soon suppressed by more and more streams of incendiary bombs that fell on the rooftops and then from the rooftops. New fires immediately broke out everywhere. Finally, due to an acute shortage of water, the fire extinguishing work was completely paralyzed. Some idea of ​​the intensity of the air raids can be given by the fact that 65 incendiary bombs, four containers of phosphorus and one high-explosive bomb were dropped on one of the areas measuring about 75 by 45 meters. The British dropped 155 incendiary bombs on one of the medium-sized factories. These figures reflect not only the extent of the catastrophe that the city had to endure. They give an approximate ratio between the weight of incendiary and high-explosive bombs dropped on Hamburg.
The city's water supply system received 847 direct hits from high-explosive bombs, and very soon the water supply system was no longer able to provide even the basic needs of the population. This made the work of the city fire brigades much more difficult. The firefighters received so many calls that they were simply unable to handle them. The city government counted on getting outside help, but what could be done when fires simultaneously engulfed 16,000 buildings and city blocks heated up to terrifying temperatures (over 800 degrees Celsius), when the flames were engulfed not individual houses, but entire areas? The heat led to the fact that the flames engulfed more and more buildings, and this happened so quickly that hundreds of men, women and children trying to escape were burned to death right in the streets and squares.
In many places, the burning ruins exuded such heat that even after the flames were knocked down, it took several days before one could simply try to get into these streets. In the areas of fire, only 30 hours after the end of the raids, it was possible to see at least something in natural light. Before that, dense clouds of black smoke mixed with dust completely obscured even the cloudless sky.

In the same way, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are good, but there was Tokyo, where ami also worked with mines and lighters in the Yap huts made of paper and wood, and where the losses were greater than in X and N.

And the MOST IMPORTANT thing - the bombing of Murmansk and Stalingrad - where is the regret and worries about the killed civilians ???
The Germans just got a response - and yes, Guernica, conceived by Speerle was the first - so "I will repay"