why was the bombing of dresden so controversialespn conference usa football teams 2023

Then theyll unite in one giant area conflagration. Gring has the right idea, said Hitler. After the war, German and Soviet authorities considered leveling the Dresden ruins to make way for new construction. WebAnswer (1 of 8): It was a show of force, whose aim was to impress the Soviets. ever since the deliberate mass bombing of civilians in the second world war, and as a direct response to it, the international community has outlawed the practice. "But there were too many corpses to bury. The first wave of Lancasters, British four-engined heavy bombers, appeared over Dresden on the night of Tuesday, February 13, 1945, around 10 p.m. After five hours of flight these 240 Royal Air Force (RAF) planes encountered practically no opposition in the skies and no anti-aircraft fire from below. WebDespite the bombing of Dresden ultimately not succeeding in many of its major objectives, with the rail yards remaining mostly untouched, it was still necessary to bomb it. The woman remains lying on the ground, completely still". Despite postwar claims that Dresdenhad no military significance, it was in fact a rail center important to the Third Reichs faltering war effort in the East. In school, the girl and her classmates were shown graphic photos from death camps. Having never previously been attacked in the war, the city offered increased value for terror bombing against an inexperienced population. Her father, a Methodist minister who had been drafted, was killed a month before Germanys surrender. Dresden had no defenses. The firebombing of Dresden would prove the exception to this rule, and many of the generals and airmen of Britain and the United States have since been criticized by some as being no better than the Nazi war criminals. We know of at least one case where an American POW was executed, purportedly for looting. Allied arguments centre around the existence of a local air defence system and additional ground defences the Germans were constructing in anticipation of Soviet advances. Are you the owner of the domain and want to get started? Recovered bodies from the firestorm that consumed Dresden; many suffocated in air raid shelters. But the Allies' firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also war crimes and as Leo Kuper and Eric Markusen have argued, also acts of genocide. In the days that followed, they and their US allies would drop nearly 4,000 tons of bombs in the assault. "The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany" (SOA), HMSO (1961) vol 3 pp. [9] British historian Frederick Taylor wrote of the attacks: "The destruction of Dresden has an epically tragic quality to it. RAF bomber raids on German cities had increased in size and power after more than five years of war. [2] An estimated 22,700[3] to 35,000[4] people were killed. So instead the Nazis sent in troops with flamethrowers.All these civilians remains were burned to ashes., In a new introduction to the 1976 reprint of the novel, Vonnegut wrote, The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. In that sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th century warfare and a symbol of destruction".[137]. Around 78,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged but readily repairable. [103], On 16 February, the Propaganda Ministry issued a press release that claimed that Dresden had no war industries; it was a city of culture. While theres near-universal consensus that the Allies fought a good war against an evil foe, Dresden like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Tokyo remains controversial. The destruction also encompassed 640 shops, 64 warehouses, 39 schools, 31 stores, 31 large hotels, 26 public houses/bars, 26 insurance buildings, 24 banks, 19 postal facilities, 19 hospitals and private clinics including auxiliary, overflow hospitals, 18 cinemas, 11 churches and 6 chapels, 5 consulates, 4 tram facilities, 3 theatres, 2 market halls, the zoo, the waterworks, and 5 other cultural buildings. A British charity, the Dresden Trust, was formed in 1993 to raise funds in response to the call for help, raising 600,000 from 2,000 people and 100 companies and trusts in Britain. A number of fires are still burning fiercely in the vicinity of the central goods depot and railroad marshalling yards south of the Elbe River. A few days later, their sanctuary was shattered. [32] This allowed Sinclair to inform Churchill on 27 January of the Air Staff's agreement that, "subject to the overriding claims" on other targets under the Pointblank Directive, strikes against communications in these cities to disrupt civilian evacuation from the east and troop movement from the west would be made. [168] In 2010, several demonstrations by organisations opposing the far-right blocked a demonstration of far-right organisations. What they were looking for was a big built-up area which they could burn, and that Dresden possessed in full measure. The basket with our twins covered with wet cloths was snatched up out of my mothers hands, and we were pushed upstairs by the people behind us. In March 1945, Churchill himself sent a memo intended for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff: It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Explosion after explosion. Lovers of art could devote days to collections of Renaissance and Baroque paintings in the Semper Gallery, including works by Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck. Long wanting to target it, he intended to totally eliminate Dresden's capacity to aid the Wehrmacht. American culture taught her more about the dark shadow the Holocaust casts over the Jewish community, including several of her clients. The idea, she said, was to kill as many civilians as possible.. Close on their tails was a group of DeHavilland Mosquitoes that dropped 1,000-pound bombs to mark the aiming points for the rest of the raiders. The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945, Citizens and Soldiers. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy. Allied prisoners held in Dresden during the bombing, such as British rifleman Victor Gregg and the American Kurt Vonnegut, whose postwar novelSlaugherhouse Fivevividly conveyed the resulting carnage, condemned the attacks. This approach was designed to catch German emergency response teams exposed and increase casualties.. Insane fear grips me and from then on I repeat one simple sentence to myself continuously: I dont want to burn to death. I do not know how many people I fell over. They scream and gesticulate with their hands, and thento my utter horror and amazementI see how one after the other they simply seem to let themselves drop to the ground. The raid achieved the military objective, without excessive loss of civilian life. Fire brigades rushed into the heart of the burning city, working without success to contain the fires that were now devouring block after block of apartments, shops, churches, and historic structures. Nazi Germany immediately used the bombing to attack the Allies. Between approximately 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. the Lancasters inundated a city already aflame. Once the bombing stopped, Anita emerged from the cellar after but could not find her parents. Dresden was also a key rail hub, with lines running to Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Breslau, Leipzig, and Hamburg. At noon the following day, Ash Wednesday, more than 300 B-17 Flying Fortresses from the United States Eighth Air Force struck Dresden. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. History records that Germany would surrender in May 1945 and Japan in August 1945. British historian Antony Beevor wrote that Dresden was considered relatively safe, having been spared previous RAF night attacks, and that at the time of the raids there were up to 300,000 refugees in the area seeking sanctuary from the advancing Red Army from the Eastern Front. In the case of Dresden, as in many other similar attacks, the hour break in between the RAF raids was a deliberate ploy to attack the fire fighters, medical teams, and military units. ), Harris continued, The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. Soon Dresden was engulfed in the kind of hellish firestorm that had destroyed Hamburg in July 1943 and killed 41,800 people. The city itself was a silent, dead, burned-out shell. Seventy years ago, in the final stages of World War II, a German city of Baroque architecture and art was turned into a flaming caldron. The bombs also set in motion waves of high-pressure air. [149] Two-thirds of the remaining population reportedly fled the city after the raids.[150]. Until the attack, Dresden, Germany's seventh largest city with 600,000 inhabitants, had largely escaped the mass destruction inflicted on other urban centers. WebThe 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 "[137] Similarly, British philosopher A. C. Grayling has described RAF area bombardment as an "immoral act" and "moral crime" because "destroying everything contravenes every moral and humanitarian principle debated in connection with the just conduct of war", though Grayling insisted that it "is not strictly correct to describe area bombing as a 'war crime'."[158]. The RAF reported that 78,000 dwellings had been totally destroyed, with another 27,700 left uninhabitable and a further 64,500 damaged but repairable. After the war, and again after German reunification, great efforts were made to rebuild some of Dresden's former landmarks, such as the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper (the Saxony state opera house) and the Zwinger Palace (the latter two were rebuilt before reunification). The USAFHD report states that Dresden was protected by anti-aircraft defences, antiaircraft guns, and searchlights, under the Combined Dresden (Corps Area IV) and Berlin (Corps Area III) Air Service Commands. I do not know how many people I fell over. It also said there were barracks, hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot. The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do. [9], The second of the five points addresses the prohibition in the Hague Conventions, of "attack or bombardment" of "undefended" towns. The main bomber force, consisting of 254 Lancasters, would arrive next with a mixed load of 500 tons of high-explosive bombs and 375 tons of incendiaries. He described the city after the attack as "like the moon now, nothing but minerals. People running from the fire could feel its heat through their backs, burning their lungs. Miller also points out a forgotten fact, that 70 percent of the victims actually suffocated from carbon monoxide discharged by combustion. Gregg said that about 10:30 pm on the night of February 13, The air raid sirens started their mournful wailing and because this happened every night, no notice was taken. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. Read about our approach to external linking. These were controversial missions, noted Tom Reifer, an associate professor of sociology at the University of San Diego. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Here comes the moral dilemma, Miller said. The Germans put him and other POWs to work gathering bodies for mass burial. "Dresden was one big flame. Not even four when the war ended, Maria was surrounded by death. [40][48], In the raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted. As the Allied forces closed in on the Third Reich in 1945, such targets became more feasible because of the air superiority and improved navigation techniques of the Anglo-American bomber force. [102] Goebbels is reported to have wept with rage for twenty minutes after he heard the news of the catastrophe, before launching into a bitter attack on Hermann Gring, the commander of the Luftwaffe: "If I had the power I would drag this cowardly good-for-nothing, this Reich marshal, before a court. Was Operation Thunderclapthe 1945 air raid on the German citya military necessity or an Allied war crime? The absence of specific international humanitarian law does not mean that the laws of war did not cover aerial warfare, but the existing laws remained open to interpretation. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In northeastern Germany, the Red Army had captured East Prussia and reached the Oder River, less than 50 miles from Berlin, and was bulldozing its way toward the German capital.. Far more than any other military action that preceded the actual occupation of Germany itself, these attacks left the German people with a solid lesson in the disadvantages of war. This had ground breaking results because it demonstrated a broad support for the aims of the initiative and a widespread appreciation for historical Dresden. Inicia hoy un curso con Certificacin Universitaria y consigue nuevas oportunidades laborales. At this point in the war, the citizens of the capital of the German state of Saxony were beginning to think that they were living a charmed life. grills where thousands of the victims were cremated., In the aftermath of the attacks, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, attempting to gain sympathy from the international community, stated that Dresden was only a historic city of culture and that it held no war industries. [9], On 13 February 1945, bad weather over Europe prevented any USAAF operations, and it was left to RAF Bomber Command to carry out the first raid. An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack gave some reasoning for the raid: Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. (, This page was last edited on 23 June 2023, at 12:45. Was the UK's wartime bombing strategy justified? [8] Two United States Air Force reports, published in 1953 and again in 1954, defended the operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which they noted was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort. The aircrews, though, had no advance word of when peace would arrive. This group consisted of 550 heavy bombers, more than twice the size of the first wave. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, The National WWII Museum connects two instances of remorse for Nazi criminality by leading German politicians. He also noted that, in areas farther from the town center, he and his team found adults shriveled to three feet in length. The burned-out remains of the heart of Dresden, 1945. Steinhoff, Johannes, Peter Pechel, and Dennis Showalter. Horrific photo of a German corpse found in the ruins still wearing a Nazi armband. In July 1943, hundreds of RAF bombers took part in a mission against Hamburg, named Operation Gomorrah. [164][bettersourceneeded], A revisionist story, persisting into the 21st century, was that the bombing was done, at least in part, to give the Soviets a signal demonstration a warning of the destructive power of the Allied bomber forces (the Soviets were expected to occupy Dresden presently).[165][166]. [85] Some 10,000 fled to the great open space of the Grosse Garten, the magnificent royal park of Dresden, nearly 1.5 square miles (3.9km2) in all. On the morning of 14 February 431 United States Army Air Force bombers of the Eighth Air Force's 1st Bombardment Division were scheduled to bomb Dresden near midday, and the 457 aircraft of 3rd Bombardment Division were to follow to bomb Chemnitz, while the 375 bombers of the 2nd Bombardment Division would bomb a synthetic oil plant in Magdeburg. The bombs forced everyone to seek shelter, while the incendiaries started fires. Frederick Taylor told Der Spiegel, "I personally find the attack on Dresden horrific. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. The Allies were aware of the effects of firebombing, as British cities had been subject to them during the Blitz. Since no official estimate had been developed, the numbers were speculative, but newspapers such as the Stockholm Svenska Morgonbladet used phrases such as "privately from Berlin", to explain where they had obtained the figures. According to him, 600,000 civilians died during the allied bombing of German cities, including 72,000 children. [88] As a result, most people took shelter in cellars, but one of the air raid precautions the city had taken was to remove thick cellar walls between rows of buildings and replace them with thin partitions that could be knocked through in an emergency. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind., In his postwar memoir, Bomber Command, Harris wrote, I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Seven hundred and twenty-two heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force and 527 of the USAAF would drop more than 3,900 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices as part of the planned bombing of Dresden. [105] Frederick Taylor states that "there is good reason to believe that later in March copies ofor extracts from[an official police report] were leaked to the neutral press by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry doctored with an extra zero to increase [the total dead from the raid] to 202,040". In March and April, nearly 1,000 U.S. Eighth Air Force planes would return and drop more than 2,700 tons of bombs on Dresden before Germany surrendered. Acceso 24 horas al da para que aprendas a tu propio ritmo y en espaol. In early 1945, the handwriting was on the wall: Nazi Germany was doomed. Soon, the five foot five airman would make US military aviation history. [11] Critics of the bombing have asserted that Dresden was a cultural landmark with little strategic significance, and that the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and were not proportionate to the military gains. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of prominent Dresdeners formed an international appeal known as the "Call from Dresden" to request help in rebuilding the Lutheran Frauenkirche, the destruction of which had over the years become a symbol of the bombing. Warning! Bergander has left us this unforgettable statement: There was an indescribable roar in the airthe fire. There would be four separate raids commencing on February 13. The largest, beneath the main railway station, housed 6,000 refugees. If you hit a marshaling yard you are going to kill a lot of civilians.. He then added in an offhand remark that the raid also helped destroy "what is left of German morale". Although its historic center still stood intact, the city didnot escapethe impact of the ongoing collapse of the German war effort on the Eastern Front in January and February 1945. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Suddenly, I saw people again, right in front of me. [58][59], The Lancasters crossed into France near the Somme, then into Germany just north of Cologne. A first-generation American of Lebanese descent, James Jabara was intent on being a fighter pilot. These academic arguments, while passionate, tend to be impersonal. It was Stokes's questions in the House of Commons that were in large part responsible for the shift in British opinion against this type of raid. In 1956, Dresden entered a twin-town relationship with Coventry. As family lore or academic history, Dresden is a thorny subject with multiple interpretations and few easy answers. His enquiry reflected the importance that the Soviet Union attached to an attack on the city, following intelligence reports that Germany was moving large numbers of troops towards the Breslau Front. [27] The Soviet Army continued its push towards the Reich despite severe losses, which they sought to minimize in the final phase of the war. Much has been made in the historical record of the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany in early March of 1945. Of what use will their fire department be once that really starts?. The inquiry declared the elimination of the German ability to reinforce a counter-attack against Marshal Ivan Konev's extended line or, alternatively, to retreat and regroup using Dresden as a base of operations, were important military objectives. But its agony was not yet over. Today Dresden has experienced a renaissance and returned to life as one of Germanys most important citiesa center of education and technological advancement. Due to uncooperative weather, the Americans could not bomb Dresden during daylight hours on February 13. It was the allied plan to bomb the Germans into submission, to break their moral and try and end the war quicker. The results were published in 2010 and stated that between 22,700[3] and 25,000 people[101] had been killed. Exact figures are unknown, but reliable estimates were calculated based on train arrivals, foot traffic, and the extent to which emergency accommodation had to be organised. We saw the burning street, the falling ruins, and the terrible firestorm. The thundering fire reminded me of the biblical catastrophes that I had heard about in my education in the humanities. The smell permeated everything. [c][61] The 'Master Bomber' Wing Commander Maurice Smith, flying in a Mosquito, gave the order to the Lancasters: "Controller to Plate Rack Force: Come in and bomb glow of red target indicators as planned. In January, the advancing Soviets had uncovered the death factory at Auschwitz in Poland. But she also wrestles with shame and guilt for being born under Hitlers rule. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. Scores of factories provided munitions, aircraft parts and other supplies for the Nazi war effort. [79], On 15 February, the 1st Bombardment Division's primary targetthe Bhlen synthetic oil plant near Leipzigwas obscured by clouds, so its groups diverted to their secondary target, Dresden. A British paratrooper, Victor Gregg, who had been taken prisoner at Arnhem, Holland, was a POW at Dresden, and he said, The people of Dresden believed that as long as the Luftwaffe kept away from Oxford, Dresden would be spared.. At the Arcadia Conference, held in Washington, DC, from December 24, 1941 to January 14, 1942, the Western Allies agreed to a Germany First policy to govern global strategy, but the question where to engage Germany, and when, remained unsettled. At 21:39 the Reich Air Defence Leadership issued an enemy aircraft warning for Dresden, although at that point it was thought Leipzig might be the target. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. By now, the thousands of fires from the burning city could be seen more than 60mi (97km) away on the ground, and 500mi (800km) away in the air, with smoke rising to 15,000ft (4,600m). 4.24 17 ratings3 reviews *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts In the middle of February 1945, the Allies were steadily advancing against the Germans from both east and west, with British and American forces having repulsed the German offensive during the Battle of the Bulge and the Soviet Unions Red Army pushing from the east. I remember the orange flames and I remember the bodies.. A recent check of the churchs archives had yielded a packet of letters from the 1950s. El curso de Electricidad me permiti sumar un nuevo oficio para poder desempearme en la industria del mantenimiento. Witness the deadly strategic bombing of Hamburg and Dresden by the Allies in World War II, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/event/bombing-of-Dresden, The National WWII Museum - Apocalypse in Dresden, February 1945, World War II Database - Bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Other Cities, History Learning Site - The Bombing of Dresden, Warfare History Network - Recalling the devastation of Dresden. Taylor, Frederick. WebIn the context of this destruction, and because the raids occurred when Nazi Germany's collapse was all but certain, they were immediately controversial. Updates? On 23 February 1945, the Allies bombed Pforzheim and caused an estimated 20,000 civilian fatalities. She runs, she falls, and the child flies in an arc into the fire. It had been decided that the raid would be a double strike, in which a second wave of bombers would attack three hours after the first, just as the rescue teams were trying to put out the fires. If, however it is also a startling one, this is probably less the result of widespread understanding of the nuance of international law and more because in the popular mind 'war criminal', like 'paedophile' or 'terrorist', has developed into a moral rather than a legal categorisation". The US lost one. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945. The Coventry Blitz: 'Hysteria, terror and neurosis', When the UK was bombed eight months in a row. [9], As far as Dresden being a militarily significant industrial centre, an official 1942 guide described the German city as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich," and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops that supplied materiel to the military. Only two-and-a-half hours passed before the populace confronted a second wave of Lancasters. Allied prisoners of war were forced to help extract bodies from the rubble. En FUNDAES Instituto de Capacitacin ofrecemos cursos cortos con gran salida laboral.

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