Dresden Firestorm

[big bad john]

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Dresden Firestorm.  From "The Scotsman":

The Dresden Firestorm

By Caroline Gammell, PA Deputy Chief Reporter

On the evening of February 13, 1945, hundreds of RAF bombers set out for the eastern German city of Dresden.

Upon the instruction of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allies were ordered to carry out a firebomb attack.

Dresden, a city of 1.2 million people, was known for its culture and beautiful buildings and the Germans considered it to be out of reach of Allied attack.

As a result it was poorly defended and the damage wrought by the Bomber Command was catastrophic and sparked a controversy over the rights and wrongs of the raid.

The weather was fine as the bombers passed over the city just after 9.30pm, unleashing their deadly load on the city below.

The following day, yet more misery was brought when US bombers swooped in for a second attack.

Around 35,000 people are thought to have died, but some estimates put the figure into the several hundreds of thousands.

The city was laid to waste, fires raged for several days and piles of corpses lay in the streets.

Film footage showed buildings ablaze and people running for their lives. Tens of thousands of people were buried in the rubble.

The attack took place just 12 weeks before the end of the war, causing many to ask if the brutality and scale of the raid was justified.

It was claimed that Dresden was not a military target â “ it had not been attacked before that point in the war.

But British historian Frederick Taylor recently argued it was a strategic communications centre, providing aid to those German troops fighting the Soviets in the east.

â Å“Dresden was a Nazi stronghold even before Hitler took power,â ? he wrote in his book Dresden.

Indeed, the request to bomb Dresden initially came from the Soviet Union and was approved by the Allies.

Although the end of the war was so near, for those still fighting there was no real idea of how close the end really was.

With the Allied forces yet to cross the Rhine and the Germans still bombing London with V2 rockets, the British thought the war was anything but over by February 13, 1945.

 

[big bad john]

This is from the "Ottawa Citizen"   today:

Ashes to Ashes: Sixty years ago today, Allied bombers delivered a Lenten surprise to Dresden -- a firestorm that laid waste the cultural heart of Europe
 
Bill Twatio

The air offensive against Germany was born of desperation. In the summer of 1940, her armies driven from the Continent at Dunkirk, Britain stood alone and impotent, threatened by imminent invasion. A strategic review concluded that if it was to survive the present danger, the British army would have to reach a maximum strength of 60 divisions by 1942, but it would still be no match for the might of the Wehrmacht and a German war economy drawing on the resources of all of Europe.

A three-part strategy was drawn up to compensate for this military inferiority, consisting of a naval blockade, subversion, and a bombing campaign to destroy the German industrial base and the morale of the civilian population. Survival and stalemate were the best that Britain could hope for.

"When I look around to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path," Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Beaverbrook at the ministry of aircraft production on July 8, 1940. "We have no Continental army which can defeat the German military power. The blockade is broken and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw from. Should he be repulsed here or not try invasion, he will recoil eastward, and we have nothing to stop him.

"But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We must be able to overwhelm him by this means, without which I do not see a way through."

Expanding on the theme, he told the War Cabinet at the height of the Battle of Britain that "the Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the air. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory."

Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, was convinced that Germany could be defeated by a massive bombing campaign. Following America's entry into the war in December 1941, he recommended around-the-clock bombing by a combined force of at least 4,000 heavy, four-engined bombers. He calculated that such a campaign would render 25 million Germans homeless, breaking civilian morale and bringing war production to a complete halt.

Portal also believed an invasion of the continent would be unnecessary and that ground troops would only be required as an occupation force. "It is imperative," he informed Churchill, "if we hope to win the war, to abandon the disastrous policy of military intervention in the land campaigns of Europe, and to concentrate our air power against the enemy's weakest points."

William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's prime minister, was already convinced air power could win the war; a conviction that came to him in a dream in October, 1939.

A few days later, he eagerly embraced the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) proposed by Vincent Massey, Canada's High Commissioner to Britain, and his Australian counterpart, Stanley Bruce.

The United Kingdom government has informed us that participation in this air training scheme would provide far more effective assistance toward victory than any other form of military co-operation Canada can give," he told the nation in a radio address.

Privately, he hoped Canada could fight a war of limited liability in the air with few casualties. He signed the appropriate documents at midnight, Dec. 16, 1939, a bewitching hour for King, whose life was full of omens, portents and dreams.

At its peak, the BCATP operated 97 training schools with a staff of more than 100,000. Canada would become known as "The Aerodrome of Democracy" -- a phrase coined by Lester B. Pearson, First Secretary at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, for a speech by President Roosevelt -- training 131,533 aircrew and manning 48 squadrons overseas and 49 at home.

Close to 250,000 men and women served with the RCAF and thousands more would serve with the RAF. Flying Halifax and Lancaster bombers out of bases in Yorkshire, 6 Group RCAF was an integral part of Bomber Command.

A tour of duty with Bomber Command required 30 missions. Many Canadians would die before completing five, in a maelstrom of swirling searchlights, fighters and flak. More than 17,000 Canadian airmen never returned home, 9,919 of them bomber crews. Mackenzie King's dream of a limited-liability war turned into a nightmare in the skies over Europe.

THE BOMBER BARONS

Despite his earlier statements, Churchill never rationally believed that bombing alone would win the war. Circumstances had forced him to grasp desperate expedients. "It is very disputable whether bombing by itself will be a decisive factor in the present war," he later wrote to Portal. "The only plan is to persevere." And persevere he did.

So, too, did Portal, reiterating that "our sole means of winning the war will be an air attack on Germany ... We might attempt a landing, but our experience of fighting German mechanized armies gives no promise that we could succeed in such a land offensive in which our losses would be enormous and shipping decimated. Even if we succeeded in driving the German armies back to their own frontiers, it is most unlikely that we could overcome their defences and successfully invade Germany."

This view was shared by the American bomber barons, generals Henry (Hap) Arnold, Ira Eaker and Carl Spaatz. They would triumph at a war summit at Casablanca, with the Combined Chiefs of Staff issuing a directive on Jan. 21 1943 stating "your primary objective will be the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened." It was a process that was well underway.

The first raids had been carried out by daylight solely against military targets, and crews were under strict instructions to return to base with their bombs if a target could not be found.

"Indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations as such will never form part of our policy," the Chief of Air Staff stated emphatically on Dec. 7 1939, three months after the outbreak of war. When it was suggested the Ruhr be bombed, Britain's air minister, Sir Kingsley Wood, indignantly reminded the House of Commons that factories were private property

 

[Art Johnson]

ANOTHER TWIT HEARD FROM!!

"Upon the instruction of then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allies were ordered to carry out a firebomb attack."

US President Dwight Eisenhower? i know that FDR only had a couple of months to live at that time but Harry Truman took over from him and had the Atom Bomb dropped.

Where do they find these Deputy Senior Reporters?

 

[big bad john]

It is traditional in some countries to refer to an Officer by his last and highest rank.

 

[Art Johnson]

It is traditional in some countries to refer to an Officer by his last and highest rank.

Do you not think that in this particular instance that the reference is confusing?

 

[big bad john]

Usually they assume you know who they are talking about.  Something about different strokes for different folks.

 

[Art Johnson]

Who is they? General D.D. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force which meant that he was in charge of land forces not the Air Forces and Navies. You and our Deputy Senior Reporter need to read some history and find out who was on 1st base. At the time of the operation that we are speaking of was the Commander in Chief of US Forces.

 

[big bad john]

First off, I post the article and did not write it, so please do not slag me.  Did you not read Mikes' posting today?  Second the Commander in Chief of US Forces is their President.  Third, "they", in this instance is the accepted British academic form.  Different nationalities write in different manners.

I do not back generalizations, but having said that I will violate my own rule and make one:  IMHO British writers assume that you are knowledgeable on the "subject".  American writers assume you know nothing.  Again, it is a sweeping generalization and subject to flaws.

 

[Spr.Earl]

Yes Dresden is a blot for we what we stand for today and after the fact it was a War Crime what we did.
Dresden at the time was full of refugees from the East and had no military value what so ever.
I'll say no more,read and learn.

 

[big bad john]

Todays "The Scotsman"

Neo-Nazis mar Dresden's day

ALLAN HALL IN DRESDEN


NEO-NAZIS marched through Dresden in record numbers yesterday to blame Britain for a "bombing Holocaust" on the 60th anniversary of air raids that destroyed the Baroque city and killed more than 35,000 people.

It was estimated to be the biggest far-right demonstrations since the end of the Second World War, and came just a week before a vital regional election is held in west Germany.

The entire leadership of extreme-right parties in the country staged a mini Nuremberg Rally to bolster supporters ahead of the poll in Schleswig Holstein next Sunday.

If successful there, it will be a nightmare for the government: proof that the politics of the gutter can be transplanted from the depressed and bankrupt east to the wealthy west. Polls indicate that the biggest neo-Nazi party, the NPD, will gain seats in the state assembly.

Dresden, therefore, was a macabre political theatre for the far-right. What was to have been a day of solemn remembrance for the dead morphed into a showcase for the extreme.

Shaven-headed demonstrators came from all over Germany, carrying black flags, balloons and banners bearing slogans such as: "The bombing Holocaust from England cannot be denied."

Police estimates put the Nazi marchers at 5,000, while party organisers said between 6,000 and 7,000 attended, dwarfing the 4,700 who turned out in Hamburg in 1997 to protest about an exhibition implicating German soldiers in wartime atrocities.

Their first stop was a cemetery where representatives from the UK, Russia, Germany and the Jewish community in Germany and the United States laid wreaths to the civilian dead whose ashes are buried in mass graves.

A Dresden citizens' group was supposed to go next, but the far-right muscled in, laying wreaths claiming 350,000 "innocents" were killed in the attacks - codenamed Operation Thunderclap - and fighting with leftist counter-demonstrators on the fringes of the cemetery.

One banner at the site read: "The bombing Holocaust will not be suppressed!" Another: "Allied bomb terror - then as now. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and today Baghdad. No forgiveness, no forgetting."

The neo-Nazis deliberately use the word associated with the destruction of six million Jews under Hitler to provoke their enemies.

Outside the Semper Opera House in the centre of Dresden, the phalanxes of the far-right drew up to welcome the hierarchy of diverse extreme parties. There was Franz Schoenhueber, a former SS man who heads up the Republikaner Party.

Next to him stood Gerhard Frei of the German People's Union, Udo Voigt of the NPD, which scored spectacularly in gaining parliamentary seats in Saxony - the state incorporating Dresden - last September, and Holger Apfel, the local MP, who touched raw nerves by equating Dresden's fate with that of the true Holocaust victims.

Dresden, untouched by bombing just months before the end of the Second World War, was 85 per cent destroyed by two waves of British bombers on the night of 13 February 1945. United States planes blasted the city the next day.

The official death toll is put at about 35,000, but many survivors believe the actual number was higher as bodies - civilians mostly, fleeing from the advancing Red Army in the east - were reduced to ashes in the firestorm.

"Thousands of innocent people, including children and refugees, died in most terrible circumstances," Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said in a statement, issued before the commemoration ceremonies began.

Britain's ambassador to Germany, Sir Peter Torry, said likening the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust was "highly problematic" but played down the threat posed by the NPD.

"I would take the phenomenon seriously but not overrate it. The neo-Nazis got into Saxony's parliament but on a low turnout," he said.

No RAF crewmen took part in yesterday's services and acts of remembrance. The healing was left to the clergy instead. The Very Rev John Irvine, Dean of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by German bombers in the war, and the Rev Dr Oliver Schuegraf from Wurzburg, Germany, presented a cross of nails as a sign of reconciliation to the Bishop of Saxony.

 

[Infanteer]

This is one of those revisionist things that some disgruntled historians seem to enjoy picking on or something.

Dresden was a legitimate target because Total War is a complete societal clash.   Dresden was a legitimate target just as Canterbury was for the German's and Tokyo was for the Americans.   Even if the military utility of utterly pulverizing the city was not very strong, the fact that the object of Total War is to completely and totally wipe the enemies will to resist out (unconditional surrender), there is no reason to doubt that bombing was an integral part of wiping out the German war machine.   Was it brutal, sure - but war is hell and total war is...well...total hell.

"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy."
- William Tecumseh Sherman

 

[big bad john]

We have a tendency to glorify war.  War is not really very nice.  As someone who has been there, I do not like or want to glorify war.  But I have never associated with a better class of people as a whole than service people.  (Okay, Okay you know that I want to say Marines don't you...but I didn't!  lol)

I glorify the effort and self sacrifice given.  My Uncle Harold was a Mid Upper Gunner on a Lancaster.  A tough individual.  He spent the last 6 months of the war as a POW.  He never quite got over seeing the destruction that he had wrought.

We have to remember the good in war, but if we forget the bad then we will keep on going down that path.

thank you for reading my mini rant.

 

[baboon6]

I would recommend Max Hastings' book Bomber Command to anyone who is interested in this subject, it shows both sides (especially the bomber crews) at a human level, not just a dry operational history.

 

[DaveK]

Yes Dresden is a blot for we what we stand for today and after the fact it was a War Crime what we did.
Dresden at the time was full of refugees from the East and had no military value what so ever.
I'll say no more,read and learn.

You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with
all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war
against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable
catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I
can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in
spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for
without victory there is no survival."
- Winston Churchill
in his initial speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons (10 May 1940)

Keep the big picture in mind.

 

[pbi]

A few comments on this:

Dresden was not the only Allied case of this in NW Europe: I wrote a paper on Hamburg when I was in Staff School back in the 80's. IIRC the Hamburg Fire Raids targeted inhabited areas as well as port and industrial areas and were specifically planned to be 24/7, in order to make it impossible for the Hamburg Fire Brigade to fight the fires without very heavy casualties. (They tried anyway and took heavy losses in men and equipment). The result of the failure of fire fighting operations, coupled with wooden structures and a dry, hot weather were the conflagrations known as "fire storms" that sucked in buses and trucks and uprooted trees, and toasted people to ash in the shelters.

Was this worse than Coventry or Warsaw or Hiroshima? Probably not, since being burned alive is being burned alive.

Is there any proof that as an act of total war, this type of thing brought about the surrender of any nation more quickly than other means? My impression is that the jury is out today to a much greater extent than it was in the decades immediately following the War, in which it was IMHO almost a given that we "bombed them to the table". It is my opinion that in fact aerial bombardment of cities, especially "terror bombing" really achieved little in the big picture, except to convince the other side that their enemies were heartless savages.

I had a teacher in high school who was a bombardier on the Dresden raid: he had PTSD (back before we called it that) brought on, he said, to a great by the realization of what he had done. He stated that (30 years after...) he still woke up sweating and screaming. But, he said, he believed that the people (like him) who went to do it were "the best our country had to offer" and that "it was a war".

Can we justify this kind of thing? If we fighting to survive, we can justify anything, because if we don't survive nothing else matters. The Nazis and the Japanese chose a path that led to this sort of thing, because they made the mistake of thinking that it would never be used against them. Always a bad assumption.

Cheers.

 

[Long in the tooth]

Richard Overy discussed in "Why the Allies Won" how Japan and Germany were defeated after being on the verge of victory in 1942.  He concluded that there were four decisive campaigns: the war at sea, the crucial battles on the eastern front, the air war, and the vast amphibious assault on Europe.  All were necessary to defeat Germany.  Both tactical and strategic airpower were needed to defeat the armies in the field and productive capability at home.

But the question remains - were Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay exceeding the necessary force in the fire bombings as stated below?  An interesting fact - General LeMay started planning the most efficient way to destroy the wooden and paper buildings in Japan as early as 1934.  I think that most believe that civilian casualties should, normally be kept to the minimum.  But as others have pointed out, most civilians were employed somewhere as part of the 'military supply chain'.

On a philosophical plane, I believe that just as the state as the right to order me to go to battle, it also has the duty to minimize the chance that soldiers like me die.  In conclusion, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the German fire bombings are all justified if one - only one - allied soldier, sailor or airman was saved.  I know that won't win any hearts and minds.

 

[pbi]

But the question remains - were Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay exceeding the necessary force in the fire bombings as stated below?  An interesting fact - General LeMay started planning the most efficient way to destroy the wooden and paper buildings in Japan as early as 1934.  I think that most believe that civilian casualties should, normally be kept to the minimum.  But as others have pointed out, most civilians were employed somewhere as part of the 'military supply chain'.

I read an interesting US Army Air Corps study on fire bombing Japan (it is in the library at Army Staff College in Kingston). The USAAC specifically built wooden Japanese structures to study the effect of firebombing, and also did a detailed study of the Japanese fire service in order to determine its capabilities and limitations in fighting major fires and conflagrations. They clearly intended to start firestorms, and as we know once a firestorm begins it is humanly impossible to stop since no fire fighters or apparatus can get close enough to combat it without being destroyed themselves.
Still, one wonders how we would have defeated these mad regimes without resorting to the combination of methods mentioned in WOG's post. (oh-sorry-bad acronym....)

Cheers

 

[Infanteer]

Reading up on the last year of WWII, I again came across evidence that the bombing campaign by the Western Allies of Germany was more effective then history seems to allow it.  I remember reading in an article from a "Course Reader" of another troop who was doing something through the RMC.  The article mentioned how over 50% of German War Production went into interceptors to fight-off Allied Bomber raids.  Reading Hastings Armageddon today, he states that Germany after 1942 never had more the 20% of the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front - it was all kept back for home defence.

The article also pointed out the piece of the production pie that Flak used up.  The numbers lead me to believe that the Bombing Raids on the German Heartland, although shown not to seriously affect the German populace, were a major drain on German War Production.  I guess there may be solace in the fact that countless artillery rounds, panzerfausts, and Tiger tanks never made it to the battlefield because the factory space was spitting out prop-blades and aircraft engines.

 

[big bad john]

It was not very nice.  But sometimes "not very nice" is necessary and in fact works.  It has been said that the two main Arms that won the war were Artillery and Bombers.

 

[winchable]

Reading an article about "dresden" today there are two ends of the spectrum.

Those that call the attack on Dresden, "Another Holocaust"
and those that say that Dresden is a deserved punishment for following Hilter.

Most people fall in between eventually.

Total war, like you said.
My grandfather survived the London blitz, and based on stories he's told me, pictures I've seen, other survivors stories, the "London Blitz" exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London.....after listening to all of this, I say ..if Germany had the chance they would have done twice as much, and we would not have the luxury of openly discussing it today.
So, at the risk of sounding sick and remembering my background, T.F. Dresden talk to someone who sat through one of thousands of V2 Attacks that wasn't your neighbour doing that.