Up to 25,000 died in Dresden's WWII bombing - report

[Warden]

Up to 25,000 people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II - fewer than often estimated, an official German report has concluded.

See BBC News report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8574157.stm

 

[dhermann1]

Still, a hideous holocaust. The wooden buildings, combined with incendiary bombs, combined to create a fire storm. A friend of mine, who I used to work with, was there. (An amazing life, he led.) He said that people were going into shelters that had wooden roofs. He said he told them not to do that, and to run to the river. That's what he did, and that's how he survived.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Rethought that article and something doesn't make sense about it... Dresden was considered the worst firebombing in Europe and is remembered with horror and infamy. So, why was Dresden so bad if only 25,000 were killed? Hamburg was firebombed, and Hamburg had (according to wikipedia) at least 45,000 causalities! Could something be wrong with the report?

 

[kampkatz]

Like AD, I too read , and was told, that Hamburg suffered the greater loss of life.

 

[LordBest]

Dresden was considered to be the most beautiful city in northern Europe and had neglible military significance, unlike Hamburg which was a major port. The architecture and art galleries were some of the finest in the world at that time. The bombing of Dresden is thus widely regarded as an act of brutal vandalism as opposed to a military necessity.
People some times try to counter this by saying the demoralising effect of the bombing helped end the war early. My primary school German teacher lived through the bombing and said it had the opposite effect and enraged the local population, but as Dresden had no military significance it made no difference.
The really awful consequence* is that today the bombing of Dresden is used by neo-Nazi groups to paint the Allies as just as violent and barbaric as the Nazis.

Rethought that article and something doesn't make sense about it... Dresden was considered the worst firebombing in Europe and is remembered with horror and infamy. So, why was Dresden so bad if only 25,000 were killed? Hamburg was firebombed, and Hamburg had (according to wikipedia) at least 45,000 causalities! Could something be wrong with the report?

*Aside from all the dead people and ruined buildings (which have been or will be rebuilt in an enlightened policy of city wide restoration), of course.

 

[Prof Branestawm]

The really awful consequence* is that today the bombing of Dresden is used by neo-Nazi groups to paint the Allies as just as violent and barbaric as the Nazis.

Indeed. Grossly inflated figures based on forgeries have been used for many years by holocaust-deniers to imply some equivalence between the Dresden bombing and the Holocaust, as has the allegation that Dresden was in no sense a military target - which though great destruction was wrought on non-military areas, it was. According to Evan's report, the figure of between 20 000 and 35 000 dead is justified by Dresden's registers, and 35 000 was estimated as the death toll by the city's mayor at the time.

For a key example, see http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/5.2 and succeeding documents. Because of these associations, as well as the unique mechanisms and death toll of the Nazi's persecution of Jews, I'd be very reuluctant to use the term 'holocaust' to refer to the Dresden bombing.

 

[Jabos]

Somewhat off topic but:

I have a friend that is a court reporter. He was a child living in Hamburg in the war. He won't talk much about the war but did tell me that after the bombing he was walking on the street and suddenly Hitler drove by in his open car viewing the destruction. I wish he would tell me more but I think perhaps he was in the Hitler Youth and keeps that part of his past a secret. Still, weird to know a guy that saw Hitler in person.

Pardon the interruption . . .

 

[Edgar Brooks]

I recommend "Dresden," by Frederick Taylor, which, as a paperback, has over 550 pages. The main reason for the falsified figures is Josef Goebbels (no surprise, there,) who simply added a "0" to all of the figures. Post-war, the Communist East Germans continued to use them, so as to denigrate the Allied cause. Only now is it possible to see the true figures, which have been held in archives for over 70 years.
Edgar

 

[Silver Dollar]

When you start comparing who did the worst to who, things will definitely get blown out of proportion. I was in the U.S. Air Force for 20 years and the one thing I learned was that sometimes it''s hard to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. I'm not an anti war activist or anything like that, but I do feel that if war can be avoided, then that's the direction to go. until it becomes the only option left. Sometimes you have to do bad things to stop some worse things from happening. Human nature will raise it's head from time to time

 

[JoshK]

This is a direct quote from the book introduction written in 1942:
"one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich"

From the memoir of a POW in the city of Dresden:
"I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians."

This one case case where things aren't as black and white as they seem and probably is one of the countless shades of gray in between.

-Josh

 

[LordBest]

Quite, but the industrial areas of the city were not bombed, the old city centre was. Not a case of misfire or poor intelligence, it was a carefully considered decision. There was also considerable debate at the time whether Dresdens industrial capacity was actually playing any significant part in the war. Had the industrial sectors been bombed, we would not be having this debate now, therein lies the point.

This is a direct quote from the book introduction written in 1942:
"one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich"

From the memoir of a POW in the city of Dresden:
"I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians."

This one case case where things aren't as black and white as they seem and probably is one of the countless shades of gray in between.

-Josh

 

[Doublegun]

Still, a hideous holocaust. The wooden buildings, combined with incendiary bombs, combined to create a fire storm. A friend of mine, who I used to work with, was there. (An amazing life, he led.) He said that people were going into shelters that had wooden roofs. He said he told them not to do that, and to run to the river. That's what he did, and that's how he survived.

Sorry but what happened to the 6,000,000,000 victims of the Nazi government was a "hideous holocaust" not the bombing of Dresden.

 

[LordBest]

That was a holocaust, a holocaust being an act of massive destruction and/or loss of life, particularly when it involves fire (for example, Nuclear Holocaust), as it is derived from the greek 'Holokauston' which is roughly translated as 'burnt whole'. The term was first used to denote the slaughter of Jewish populations as early as the twelfth century, but was concurrently used to describe any largescale act of slaughter or destruction
We refer to it as 'the' holocaust simply because it is one of the worst, and certainly the best known, in the modern consciousness. The fire bombing of any city which results in massive destruction can be aptly described as a holocaust.
This is not to say that the fire bombing of Dresden (or any other city) is in any way comparable to the heinous crimes commited against the eleven to seventeen million Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, Romani etc, of course they are not.
To argue that only 'the Holocaust' warrant the term holocaust would be akin to arguing that only one particularly horrific crime warrants being called a Crime, others are merely murder, arson or what have you.

Sorry but what happened to the 6,000,000,000 victims of the Nazi government was a "hideous holocaust" not the bombing of Dresden.