The destruction of Dresden
Seventy-five years ago, the RAF and the USAAF reduced the historic city of Dresden to rubble, killing tens of thousands
When did the attack begin?
Just after 10pm on the night of 13 February 1945, RAF “pathfinder” bombers dropped magnesium flares known to the Germans as “Christmas trees” over Dresden to light up the target. Minutes later, more than 250 Lancaster heavy bombers released nearly a thousand tons of bombs onto the city in just 15 minutes. A second wave, of more than 500 Lancasters, came three hours later, dropping 1,800 tons of bombs. Over the next two days, the United States Army Air Force also mounted major attacks on Dresden – but in eyewitness accounts these pale into insignificance with the horror of the RAF’s raid.
Why was the RAF raid so horrific?
By this point in the War, RAF Bomber
Command had become very proficient at destroying German cities, by creating firestorms from the air. It had refined and scaled up the techniques first used by the Nazis on Rotterdam, London and Coventry. Bombers dropped a mixture of high explosives – such as large “blockbusters” capable of blowing up an entire city block – and incendiary bombs. The high explosives knocked down walls and ripped off roofs, exposing beams and improving airflow for the incendiaries. These would create hundreds of small fires which were designed to turn into one huge firestorm. Often, as in Dresden, a second wave would come several hours later, designed to hit as the emergency response was in full swing.
Why was Dresden targeted?
The city was, to some extent, a legitimate target. It was the capital of Saxony, Germany’s seventh largest city and a major industrial and transport hub. Its famous factories, such as the Zeiss Ikon optical works, had been turned over to war industries. It was also an important railway junction, with a large marshalling yard. Dresden was receiving vast numbers of refugees from the Eastern Front, which was at this point only 155 miles from the city, and sending out reinforcements to fight the Red Army. For this reason, the Soviet Union had specifically requested the city’s bombing.
What was the effect on the city?
Historic Dresden, known as “Florence on the Elbe” or “the jewel box”, on account of its baroque splendour, had only previously suffered minor raids. Now it was reduced to rubble. The RAF effectively incinerated the Altstadt, the medieval old town, and much of the historic city. Dresden was unprepared, with almost no dedicated air raid shelters. Much of the population sought shelter in cellars under the old apartment blocks, which were entirely inadequate as a vast firestorm formed and sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Thousands were suffocated, their bodies found mummified by the heat in the ruins.
What did survivors witness?
“The whole city started burning. It was an inferno,” remembered Roman Halter, a Polish Jew who was a 17year-old slave labourer there at the time. “One never saw such carnage.
Explosions. Buildings collapsing. People jumping from buildings. People running along being on fire, screaming.” It was like something “from hell, in medieval pictures”. The firestorm created a vacuum at ground level. People were slowly “sucked into a vortex and then, with a final whisk, lifted up into the sky with their hair and clothing alight”, remembered a British POW, Victor Gregg. Others died stuck in molten tarmac on the roads; or drowned or boiled alive having sought refuge in the city’s reservoir. Some 25,000 people out of a population of 600,000 died.
What was the reaction?
Joseph Goebbels wept at the news, and then added a zero to the death toll in his propaganda reports. “From horrific reality,” writes the historian Ian Kershaw, he created “an even more horrific – and long-lasting myth” (see box). Among the Allies, after initial jubilation there was disquiet, particularly when the Associated Press called it a “terror bombing”. Winston Churchill, who had pushed for the attack, wrote in a memo that “the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed”. He called the attack on Dresden “a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing”. After pressure from the RAF the memo was redrafted, but the raid brought into focus the truth about the bombing campaign.
What was the truth about that campaign?
Since 1942, the RAF, under Arthur “Bomber” Harris, had been committed to the “area bombing” of German cities to destroy industry by “de-housing” and demoralising the workforce. Dresden was only one of many attacks. Some, arguably, were worse. About 42,000 people were killed in Hamburg in July 1943. Essen, Berlin, Cologne, Darmstadt, Wessel and many others were devastated. Ten days after Dresden, Pforzheim was destroyed, killing 17,600 people. Between 300,000 and 600,000 German civilians were killed by Allied bombers. But in its suddenness, scale and one-sidedness – the RAF lost just six planes – Dresden stands out.
Was it justified?
By today’s standards, it was no doubt an atrocity. In Dresden, the RAF directly targeted civilians, destroying 14,000 homes. The raid probably did little to hasten the end of the War, which came only three months later. However, area bombing has to be seen in context. Britain’s own cities had been ravaged by the Nazis, and until D-Day, it had no other way to fight back in Europe. Area bombing was effective, though indiscriminate and horribly costly; 55,000 Bomber Command aircrew were killed during the War, 44% of the total. In early 1945, the Germans were still fighting hard. The cabinet had been advised that without continued bombing, the War could continue until late 1945. “I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany,” Harris wrote after Dresden, “as worth the bones of one British grenadier.”