“Where the enemy will feel it most”: how the British and Americans bombed Dresden for three days and almost destroyed the city

A few weeks before the end of World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill prepared a memorandum for the chiefs of staff, in which he wrote: “It seems to me that the time has come to reconsider the question of the bombing of German cities, carried out under various pretexts, but with only one purpose - for the sake of bullying. Otherwise, completely devastated land will fall under our control ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious argument against the Allied bombing. ”

Regarding the bombing of Dresden, the opinions of historians and officials still differ. Was the city a legitimate goal, or was it "an act of unjustified terror, the mass destruction of people"?

Allied air operations

The bombing of German cities by the forces of the allied forces was conducted continuously from the very beginning of the war. In the early months, the British Royal Air Force limited itself to dropping leaflets and attacking naval targets. But after the failure in Dunkirk, when hundreds of thousands of soldiers were evacuated and almost all heavy weapons and equipment were abandoned, bombers remained almost the only means by which London fought the Nazis in continental Europe.

• © Wikimedia Commons

The British Air Force bombers could not hit specific military targets, such as airfields or weapons factories. The 1941 investigation revealed that only one in five planes was able to drop their bombs at least five miles from the target. Therefore, the use of bombers could be effective only if it was aimed at large targets, such as cities. In February 1942, the Air Force was instructed to shift its focus to "the moral state of the enemy’s civilian population." After that, targeted military bombardment was no longer carried out on military or industrial sites, but on churches and other central points of cities. Bombers now also carried incendiary bombs.

A week after the directive was issued, Marshal Arthur Harris was appointed the new commander of the Bomber Aviation Corps. Harris was convinced that the air force could ensure victory in modern warfare, and began to bomb large cities. In 1943, as a result of Operation Gomorrah, 800 British Air Force aircraft dropped 8,344 tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs into the residential neighborhoods of Hamburg. As a result, about 45 thousand civilians were killed. The magnitude of the destruction further convinced Harris that concentrated bombing of cities could end the war.

• © Imperial War Museum / Wikipedia

In 1944-1945, the bombing of cities increased with the development of hostilities. The Luftwaffe gradually lost its power in the skies of Europe.

On February 3, 1945, the Allies made the largest air raid on Berlin, which killed almost 3 thousand people.

#NarkomInDel45 The Allies report a massive air raid on Berlin. The operation involved 40 groups of “Flying Fortresses” and “Liberators”, each of 38 aircraft. The compound was covered by about 1,000 Mustang fighters.

# SovInformBuro45 An armada of American and British heavy bombers dropped last night on the center of Berlin up to 2,500 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs, a TASS correspondent reports from London.

Within a few months from the beginning of 1945, the planes of the allied countries dropped about 471 thousand tons of bombs on Germany.

How bombed Dresden

Early in the morning of February 13, 1945, British intelligence, experienced pilots, technicians, and meteorologists gathered at an air base near London. They discussed the operation to bombard Dresden, which was supposed to begin on February 13 with a strike from the 8th Air Force of the United States Air Force.

• Altmarkt to destruction. 1881 photo
• © Library of Congress / Wikipedia

The US Air Force joined the Allied strategic bombing campaign in the summer of 1942. They were committed to “accurate” daytime bombing. However, on February 13, 1945, bad weather conditions in Europe prevented the participation of American aircraft.

At the meeting, meteorologists announced that the situation in the sky over East Saxony would be favorable for bombing closer to the night. By nine in the morning, Marshal Harris had already received permission to bomb Dresden in the evening.

The British Air Force memorandum, with which the British pilots were familiarized before the attack, reported: “Dresden is Germany’s seventh largest city ... At the moment, the largest enemy area that has not yet been bombed. In the middle of winter, with flows of refugees heading west and troops who need to be housed somewhere, housing is in short supply, as not only workers, refugees and troops are required to be accommodated, but also government agencies evacuated from other areas. Widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden developed into a large industrial center ... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most, behind a partially collapsed front ... And at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what the British Air Force is capable of. ”

At 21:45, an air alert alerted Dresden of the attack. The first wave of bombers totaled 796 Avro Lancaster aircraft and nine De Havilland Mosquito. They flew out in two waves, passing through a point marked above the stadium marked by homing planes and fanning, dropping bombs.

At first, these were high-explosive bombs, which were supposed to destroy roofs and expose the wooden structures of buildings, then incendiary bombs were used, and then high-explosive bombs again - to impede fire fighting efforts.

The first attack lasted 15 minutes - and the whole city was on fire. Three hours later, another 524 Lancaster aircraft appeared in the sky. They had to fly higher, at an altitude of 6000 m, as high turbulence formed due to hot air.

“The heat was so intense that you couldn't get close to the windows,” recalled Arnulf Baring, an eyewitness who was 13 at the time, in an interview with Die Welt.

• © Deutsches Bundesarchiv / Wikipedia

As a result of the bombing, a fiery tornado formed, the temperature in which reached 1500 ° C. Dresden burned all night.

On February 14, 311 American bombers bombed the city. “Flying Fortresses” dropped 771 tons of bombs, with railroad facilities as their target. On February 15, US aviation dropped 466 tons of bombs.

As a result of air raids on Dresden, according to the US Air Force report, approximately 80% of city buildings were damaged to varying degrees; about 50% of residential buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged.

Estimates of the death toll in Dresden ranged from 25 thousand in the official German police reports of the war to 200 and even 500 thousand voiced by German propaganda.

• The ruins of the city of Dresden
• RIA News
• © George Homzor

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. According to the official report of the commission submitted on March 17, 2010, as a result of the bombing of Dresden by Allied aircraft in February 1945, 25 thousand people were killed.

Goals

The purpose of the air strikes was to demoralize the population and the remnants of Hitler’s troops. At the beginning of the war, Churchill began to think about the need to deliver “absolutely destructive attacks by our heaviest bombers in the homeland of Nazism.” When the German Air Force dropped several bombs on London on the night of August 24, 1940, the British Prime Minister demanded a return raid on Berlin.

• Winston Churchill inspects the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. Photograph of 1941
• © Imperial War Museums / Wikipedia

But still, the Allies needed to somehow justify such a massive attack. The historian Anthony Bivor in his book “World War II” writes that the “official” purpose of the offensive was to cause an avalanche of refugees that would interfere with the movement of German troops towards the Soviet troops in the east.

February 4, on the first day of the Yalta Conference, the USSR raised the question of the need to complicate the transfer of German troops to the eastern front by air strikes on Berlin and Leipzig. Charles Portal, chief of staff of the British Air Force, asked me to send him a list of targets that should be discussed with the USSR. This list included oil refineries, tank and aircraft factories, as well as Berlin and Dresden. However, in official documents there is no direct mention of Dresden by the Soviet side, therefore, the allegations that the USSR demanded the bombing of Dresden are disputed.

• The ruins of the famous Dresden art gallery
• RIA News
• © Elizabeth Mikulina

Dresden was not the only city that at the end of the war underwent such a massive attack. In addition to Dresden, mention should be made of Pforzheim, where 17,600 people were killed, and Wurzburg with four thousand dead with a population of 107 thousand people.

Can the bombing of Dresden be considered a war crime?

“Dresden must be seen in the context of the entire war. If Dresden was a war crime, then many other aerial bombardments of World War II were a war crime, both from the Germans and the allies, ”said Jens Vener, curator of the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, in an interview with dpa news agency.

Dresden was not only a cultural gem, but also one of the key transshipment points in Germany, through which there were trains with soldiers and equipment, one of the leading military-industrial centers and a garrison city.

“Dresden was an important military point with significant administrative structures. 12 thousand troops were stationed in the city, which is often forgotten, ”German historian Moritz Hoffman told German television station DW.

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