Yea it was Hell. However, If you were able to take a poll across Europe and Russia in the early 40s. I doubt you would find many sympathetic to the German situation.

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My mothers parents survived the bombing of Dresden. They had as a young couple joined the luxembourgish resistance movement against the german occupation and narrowly escaped a concentration camp sentence because my grandfather was an agronomist and the Germans were short on people of his profession in 1942. So both were deported to Saxony (Dresden is the capital of that state) were they worked in their professions as long as the war went.
My grandmother was a childrens nurse working in a hospital that was crushed by allied bombs. She managed to flee the burning city with two little children on heir arms ( who weren´t hers and whose parents were never seen again) and has clear memories of allied planes shooting at the fleeing civilians driving many of them back in the firestorm where they perished.
My grandfather was working somewhere outside the city during these days and rushed with a group of prisoners and their german guards to help those caught in Dresden. He had like many others believed that the Allies wouldn´t bomb the city since its military and strategic importance was little and also it was packed with refugees. ( this is also why nobody exactly knows the death toll. Many of the refugees weren´t registered anywhere).
My grandfather never openly talked about what he saw in Dresden but i know that he had nightmares for the rest of his life in which piles of thousands of burnt bodies somewhere along the river Elbe played a role.
Luckily my grandparents were reunited later and returned to Luxembourg. They hated the Nazis from the bottoms of their hearts and they sincerely wished Germanys defeat but they always made clear that in their view nothing, not morals, not revenge or strategic plans could justify what was carried out in the sky over Dresden and many other german cities.
Just my five cents to the discussion

This is a moving story.

I had the opportunity to visit the Dresden Altmarkt during the Christmas Market. It was an extraordinary and terrible experience to stand in the midst of this large square where tens of thousands of bodies were piled and burned.

I found the best view from the tower of the Kreuzkirche. It allowed me to gain some perspective on the size of the Altmarkt and its relation to the rest of the city.

I agree with you about the bombing.

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"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

My mother survived the bombing. I visited there shortly after the Wall came down and saw, in addition to the sites downtown, where she lived. It was a typical German street (in WWII) with apartment blocks and when I visited, 45 years later, her building was still the only one standing for hundreds of yards around. I won't relate the stories she told me but it was horrific.

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Sarah Palin: Slice and Dice with a Smile on her Face.


Andy
Cynical Optimist

and

Navy Vet

The fire storm was no accident, or why do you believe did they throw fire bombs onto the very city centre which was full of wooden roofs? It was revenge for the terrible Nazi crimes and I have to agree with Donkey left.


But thats exactly what they did as far as I know thats what history experts say about it, they bombed a place with pretty little military significance to dust.

Maybe, but if I kill your brother, are you a good person if you shoot immediatly back and kill mine?



But enough of the ugly WWII, lets look into the future. The Frauenkirche is rebuilt again and crowned by the British made recontruction of the huge roof cross. Great symbolism.

Around the Frauenkirche the "Neumarkt" only two decades ago a rotten field in the very city center is being rebuilt. Just have a look at an up to date picture:





Keep in mind just 10 years ago nothing was there in this location except some meadow and a few rubbles of the Frauenkirche.

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Vienna Central-Cementery:
"Half the size of Zürich, but twice the fun"

Agreed.

The rebuilding of the Frauenkirche and the transformation of Dresden are among the most hopeful events in the word today. Many parts of Dresden are once again breathtakingly beautiful, but also, of course, the reconstruction goes on.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

The Neumarkt about 20 years ago:



That picture above pretty much says it all...

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Vienna Central-Cementery:
"Half the size of Zürich, but twice the fun"

I am not sure revenge was a motivator here, at least not for terrible Nazi crimes. I mean, this raid happening in Febuarary and the full extent of the Camps (for example) had to be realized. Auschwitz was captured barely a month before, and the western allies had yet to liberate an extermination camp.

This I cannot agree with. Forget the fact that Dresden produced components for artillery sighting equipment, it was also a major rail hub. With the Russians driving into Posen and Brandenburg towards Berlin, as well as the thrusts taking shape into Czechoslovakia, Dresden was a major hub on both the north-south axis with troops and supplies moving north to counter the thrusts into Germany proper, as well as the east-west axis with troops and supplies moving to counter the offensives into central Europe. Say what you want about the tactics used, in the end Dresden was a legit military target.

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

Yes, the argument can be made that it was a military target, certainly. In that case, bombing of specific targets would have addressed that.

But the center of the city was (and now is again) a jewelbox of Baroque and Rococo architecture with ancient, crowded streets and squares filled with people, and of no military importance whatever. It was turned into a literal tornado of fire. There was no conceivable reason for that. The railways are quite separate from that section of the city.

The Elbe itself became a river of sulphurous fire. There really is no way to defend that.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

I am not trying to condone the tactics used, but we also have to take into account the technology available at the time, and when the raids took place. IIRC, the bulk of the raids took place at night and were launched by the RAF. Making sure the correct target is hit is hard enough in broad daylight, but it is even harder at night.

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

This argument can be made to justify carpet-bombing that results in high levels of collateral damage. That is not, however, what Dresden represents.

Does everyone understand what "firestorm" means? It goes beyond the fact that a bunch of buildings were on fire. The Germans, like the British, had become accustomed to taking shelter underground during bombing raids. Barring a direct hit, one was relatively safe if one could reach an underground shelter, even if it was only a basement.

What happens in a firestorm, though, is that the fire consumes all the oxygen in the air, so that people in their shelters die from asphyxiation. The bombing of Dresden employed munitions and tactics designed to deliberately create a firestorm with exactly that result. This has nothing to do with the destruction of military targets even if such targets are present. It is an anti-personnel move, plain and simple. It is designed deliberately to slaughter as many civilians as possible.

That's what was done at Dresden.

I understand that you are not condoning the tactics.

The bombing was stretched out over two days, with much of the follow-up bombing done in daylight. The bombers knew that a firestorm would be created after the unintentional creation of the Hamburg firestorm in the summer of 1943: densely packed buildings, many made of wood, burned very easily and the ancient city street plan allowed the fire to jump from buiding to building across very narrow streets.

The overlay of cold air on a February night created a tunnel of fire as the heat of the fire drew the drafts of cold air in a self-perpetuating tornado that grew and sucked in more and more people and buidlings.

Harris was a psychopath. He knew what he was doing.

Visiting Dresden gave me a much better perspective on this. We drove in from the east and passed the ruins of the old railway station, and they really are ruins still. They are quite far from the city center.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

It was to a considerable part the reaction to what they experienced during the German Nazi occupation. At least thats my guess. That does not neessarily mean that the genocide on the jews played such a large role.

I can remember a documentary where they showed historians who analized that the military benefit of the way Dresden was bombed was pretty little and in no way worth the effort under strategical points of view.

But I am no expert on this. What I know is that the Germans themselves considered Dresden to be a very low priority target for bombings. Which can only mean that either the Germans were stupid, or the strategical importance could not be that high.

After all weren't mention worthy industry areals spared from the bombings? Some historians even call those bombings a war crime, I maybe disagree with this extreme view point, but many who don't go so far call it at least unnecessary.

After all, please explain me, what was the necessity of fire bombs? To destroy railway connections conventional bombs should do the same job. Its not just that they targeted military targets, its that they bombed the entire city to dust in an intensity that was higher than in many other cities. After all, I guess the military importance of Vienna was higher, but it did not suffer from such devastating raids.

And last but not least,why did allied planes open fire onto civilians in the streets of the already burning city?

You know its not only the why they bombed in this area, but also the how.

__________________
Vienna Central-Cementery:
"Half the size of Zürich, but twice the fun"

To ease up the discussion. Here a great up to date panorama, compare it with the picture above with the sheep:

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Vienna Central-Cementery:
"Half the size of Zürich, but twice the fun"

Thanks Slart.

Beautiful photo. I especially like the houses surrounding the Frauenkirche. I like that architecture.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1