The Fire Bombing of Dresden
Ingrid A. Rimland at Zundelsite - a graphic telling of the story of the fire-bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II, on February 13, 1945. Published on February 13, 1997.
A reminder that many of the allied commanders and soldiers should have had trials in Nuremberg, and been executed for crimes against humanity. But the "winners" of a war get to write history, and forgive themselves for their atrocities.
Fifty-two years ago today, the Allies decided to make of the city of Dresden a moonscape.
The holocaust unleashed on Dresden had no strategic or tactical advantage at all for the Americans or the British. Dresden was one of the most beautiful cities in Germany, dubbed the "Florence of the Elbe" because of its world-renowned collection of Baroque architecture. It was known as a showplace of culture. It had no military bases, no major communication centers or heavy industry. It had no air defense. In the last months of the war, it was known as "Die Lazarettstadt" - it had been declared a hospital town. It was also known as the "Fluechtlingsstadt" - the City of the Refugees.
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By then, the Allies knew the war was lost for Germany. No one in a decision-making capacity - civilian or military - believed that the German Reich could survive, much less rise to be a threat to the Allied military juggernaut.
In what can only be described as a premeditated institutional act of terror and deliberately planned mass murder, the decision was made by the British and US air force commanders at the prodding of the sadistic Churchill-Roosevelt-Morgenthau trio to exterminate these hapless people trapped utterly defenseless in Dresden.
In January of 1945, it was decided that several large cities in Eastern Germany that had escaped heavy bombing should now be subjected to "area bombing" to "wreak havoc" on German morale so as to pressure Germany to surrender sooner. Churchill himself wanted more than two cities a month razed - until none was left.
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When all was said and done, the column of smoke could be seen 50 miles away and stood 15,000 feet high. More than three-fifths of Dresden was destroyed by bombing raids lasting more than 14 hours. This Allied air raid left 24,866 homes destroyed, eleven square miles of prime real estate and irreplaceable cultural treasures devastated, 35,000 recognizable corpses available to be identified, and hundreds of thousands of unrecognizable ones.
How many? Nobody knows for sure. Most honest estimates range from 350,000 to 500,000 dead - many of whom were liquefied into a yellied mass that melted into the asphalt of the roads or were left in piles of ashes amid a city almost totally in ashes and ruins.
One newspaper account published in a German paper, Eidgenosse, (1-3-86) lists 480,000 dead.
No Words
There are so many acts of war that can leave one speechless - and perpetrated by all sides. Two years ago I managed to eek this little tidbit out: As If We Needed a Reminder.
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