So while watching sabaton history video on firestorm ,I remarked the comment on dresden being that it has somewhat no military value and full refugee, the problem I have with this one is that dresden was a logistical center and had miltary value(it had quite a bit of factory producing good for nazi germany war effort)
“In reality there were a total of 110 factories and workshops and 50,000 workers supporting the Nazi war machine as stated by a US Air Force Historical Division report that was declassified in 1978. These factories were including, but not limited to, aircraft part factories, AA and field gun factories and not to mention barracks and a munitions depot. Colonel Harold E Cook, a POW in the city, said “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” Speaking of trains Dresden was a vital railway junction which was, of course, supporting the German military by transporting war material to the Russian front. This now infamous notion was fabricated by, you guessed it, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and is still believed in to this very day.”
from https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ci7kfy/the_dresden_bombing/ to me ,this hsould be take into account when saying “dresden doesn’t have military significance” ,also another problem with this one is that it’s verry often being use by Wehraboo/nazi apologist when they try to do argue in bad faith
The bombing of Dresden is a difficult subject. Unexploded bombs are still regularly found during at construction sites even to this day. I live in this city. I agree with you that the city was a legitimate target at the time. But one can ask oneself whether it was really necessary. At the time of the bombing it was already clear that Germany would lose the war. The bombing did not shorten the war. Human lives and cultural assets were unnecessarily destroyed. I heard somewhere that ammunition was used that was atypical for city bombing, such as Bunker busters. It seems as if the Allies wanted to empty their amno depots here too. Why did they focus on the old town and civil city center, when they wanted to hit industrial targets? Was it an act of revenge? Some old people claim even to this day that they were shot at by fighter planes with on-board weapons on the banks of the Elbe. I once heard such a story by myself. These statements have not yet been confirmed. Until To date, no projectiles from the on-board weapons have been found on the Elbe. As already written, it is difficult subject. There is a saying: “He who sows the wind will reap the storm.” Germany has started bombing civil cities. I am happy that the reconciliation between the former opponents is well advanced these days. The cross on the newly built Frauenkirche is e.g. by a goldsmith from England, who is the son of a former bomber pilot. Greetings from Dresden.
wasn’t the end of the war in may though rather than february? the wehrmacht and waffen SS were still fighting and to me ,dresden stil count as a valid military target considering the factory and logistical center in it ,yes civilian died (and it was horrible ,I wouldn’t like to die in a firestorm) but I still think that the military value of the city should be taken into account when talking about it
It can have all the military significance in the world but it won’t matter if the bombs are being dropped on cultural civilian centers and not on the military factories (which SHOULD be the main target).
Also, what did this bombing accomplish that made it so necessary? It didn’t shorten the war or reduce morale. If anything, it probably made the Germans more motivated to fight. It was a Nazi propaganda gold mine.
Terror bombings should be condoned no matter the side.
"On 27 January Bottomley sent Harris the JIC report and asked him to prepare attacks on Berlin, as well as the three principal Saxon cities, Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. He then drafted a paper for the chiefs of staff meeting, due to convene in Malta on 31 January, which effectively summarized the grounds of the bombing:
Evacuation Areas: Evacuees from German and German-Occupied Provinces to the East of Berlin are streaming westward through Berlin itself and through Leipzig, Dresden and other cities in the East of Germany. The administrative problems involved in receiving the refugees and re-distributing them are likely to be immense. The strain on the administration and upon the communications must be considerably increased by the need for handling military reinforcements on their way to the Eastern Front. A series of heavy attacks by day and night upon these administrative and control centres is likely to create considerable delays in the deployment of troops at the Front and may well result in establishing a state of chaos … It is for these reasons that instructions have been issued for heavy scale attacks to be delivered on these centres at the earliest possible moment."
To build on your point, over the years, I’ve heard the root controversy over the Dresden raid boil down to this question: Did the allies really have the ‘luxury’ of offering mercy to the pending vanquished by not bombing Dresden? and I echo your feelings about the horrible toll to the city.
To answer the luxury question: Absolutely they could afford it. Particularly the Western Allies. The Germans were only fiercely opposing the Soviets, while mostly offering small resistance in the West. In the last days of the war, German units were rushing to surrender to the Western Allies and the higher up Nazis even believed that they would join forces in the future to fight the USSR.
In other words, once the Battle of the Bulge was over, the Allies literally could’ve sat in their foxholes and do nothing, and the Germans would’ve still come and surrender to them.
Thanks for the reply but I think a lot of the arguments are invalid from a 13th Feb viewpoint.
“At the time of the bombing it was already clear that Germany would lose the war”
That was obvious to anyone with selfthinking willingness or capability AFTER Germany lost the battle of Normandy and the defeat of Army Group center. Rundsted said so as well. Instead of giving up like in 1918 stepped up the mass murder and kept filling its ovens.
Also Germans kept fighting like fanatics all the way untill the end and Dresden was only 2 weeks after the formal end of the Battle of the Bulge and the Allies hadn’t crossed the Rhine yet.
“The bombing did not shorten the war”
Can you prove this statement? I know even the Tagesschau claimed this but how to prove this? Are you a 100% sure the war still would have ended on the 8th May?
In my view the results of a single action are hard to calculate, but the raid on Dresden had the intention to shorten the war and the messing up of logistics meant that probably less forces could have been sent to Berlin. Mind you 13 Jan to 8th May is almost 3 months so a lot happened. The losses at Dresden could very well have shortened the war.
" Human lives and cultural assets were unnecessarily destroyed."
LIke you said it was a valid target and 93 Jewish lives including the writer Klempener were saved. Also many POW/other prisoners “profited” from the bombing as they had to help clean up and hence found some food in the rubble which prevented them from starving. ( I personally knew people who shared these memories). PS the writer Klempener has become a cultural asset as well, frankly human lives to me are more important that buildings which can and have been rebuilt.
Yes it was a horrible war and the root cause of the what happened there was Germany willingly rejecting its first change at Democracy. Like a German historian once told me Hitler and his friends didn’t jump out of a UFO to take over (my Germans is not good enough to write this in German ad verbatim.
“I heard somewhere that ammunition was used that was atypical for city bombing, such as Bunker busters. It seems as if the Allies wanted to empty their amno depots here too”
This is another myth. The Allies still need tons of bombs if it only was for the war against Japan. Note: The A-Bomb was still in development and it was feared that the war against Japan would last for many years.
You probably Helgoland the fantastic tourist destination. Its U-boat pens were bombed in April 1945 (after Dresden) and after the war the (and that was really stupid) the British wanted to destroy the island and ended up with 2 Helgolands ;-). So it wasn’t offloading ammo on Germans.
“Some old people claim even to this day that they were shot at by fighter planes with on-board weapons on the banks of the Elbe. I once heard such a story by myself. These statements have not yet been confirmed”
The historian Frederick Taylor investigated this and the Air Force mission reports said something else (US Planes did have gun cameras). So it is much more likely that these are unreliable witness reports or people who are just intentionally lying.
I know postwar West Germany did have issues with “Sinngebung” or “gleichschaltung” but history showed the *at least the West" Germans were treated very well by the occupying forces so the whole idea that it was just genocide against the Germans is dubious. Even the Germans in East Germany were treated infinitely better than how the Germans had treated the Soviet citizens.
Sadly Dresden has become on of those “shrines” for (Neo-?)Nazis which congregate now and then and spread easily debunked myths. A discussion about the morality of the bombing is ok we should really check whether these arguments make sense. The Germans in 2020 are not responsible for what happened in the forties, erbschuld is nonsense but there is no need to spread incorrect info for whatever reasons.
Intentionality matters. Was the Allied intention collective punishment or hitting a logistical hub? (I have no idea what the answer is, I don’t know much about this topic.)
I would like to add a few more sentences on the topic. Chewbacca wants to refute some of my statements in his last post.These points were my personal opinion and I’m sticking with them.
How am I supposed to prove that the war would have been different if there had been no bombing? That’s impossible! Unfortunately, it is true that the fate of Dresden is being abused by right-wing extremists. For most people, it’s just history. It has been many years that reconciliation took place.
The necessity of the bombing can, however, be discussed. In my eyes it was a tragedy and was completely unnecessary.
The first attack on Dresden took place on the evening of February 13th and not as claimed here on January 13th. It was carnival time. Some children wore costumes. There were reports on approaching bomber streams. But from the German side, Dresden was not expected as target. There was no air defense by the Luftwaffe or anti-aircraft Flak fire.
To this day, the bombing night is commemorated every year in Dresden. All the church bells in the city are ringing. People form a human chain around the old town as a symbol of humanity, peace and tolerance.
In some places you can still see scars from the bombing in the city. Here photos of the ruins of the churches “Zionskirche” and the “Trinitatiskirche”.
I think acknowledging that the Allies were at fault would actually HAMPER the far-right dorks. Most of their ideology is based on (often childlike) outrage: this is UNFAIR! they CHEATED! the election was STOLEN… oops got carried away.
If we can just admit that the Allies were at fault, then the far right would have nothing to be outraged over and they will drop the Dresden bombing like a bad habit. They won’t stop being neo-nazi dorks, of course, they will find something else to be outraged about, but hey… what can you do?
First bombing is a horrible weapon system, that is not in dispute. Dresden was on many of the places that suffered from bombing or war crimes . I totally believe in the new friendship, inviting Germans for reconciliation and we both are not responsible. We don’t need to defend regimes which have been destroyed long since.
My problem with your arguments is that they even with a cursory knowledge of WW2 are simply incorrect making a large number of them which incidently are copy-paste from the ones the extreme right makes doesn’t help your case.
“How am I supposed to prove that the war would have been different if there had been no bombing? That’s impossible”
I agree and said it was improvable. Well you stated". The bombing did not shorten the war". That means you imply you can prove it. So is your position now that you don’t know what the effect of the bombing was on the end date of the war?
You come up with new non-arguments:
“There was no air defense by the Luftwaffe or anti-aircraft Flak fire.” So had the bombing been ok had there been Flak? Again this is a non-argument.
This fits again in the “defenseless happy place luge”. But Dresden and its Marshalling yards and production facilities were seen as vital. While the Carnaval you mention might have been going on, Klempener, Prison camps and many Jews suffered and were in the process of being exterminated. Oh and Klempener was about to be sent to Auschwitz. Simply why do you think he should have died or do you keep that out of the moral equation? Would it be ok to have massive other troops sent East to fight and kill Russians. Not fighting Nazi Germany has moral implications as well.
Now to the reconciliation, we are both for it. But I find this statement contradicting
" It seems as if the Allies wanted to empty their amno depots here too."
To me: Besides untrue this is a vicious accusation against the Allies. It implies that Allies were just killing Germans to get rid of left-over ammo without any context. If you state arguments that the Commonwealth and United States Army Air Force just went bombing to empty ammo depots that is like just outrageously untrue.
Had the Allies been as evil as you imply here they could have killed Millions of Germans after 8th May 1945 in order to get rid of ammo easily. Wait, after World War 2 the Allies massively helped Germany with the Marshall plan. With all respects I simply don’t see how these vicious attacks on the Allies fit your reconciliation.
Feel free to stick to the opinion that “the bombing was to get rid of ammo” if you want !
Do you really think that is true? See the other Nazi arguments post here (the just wanted to get rid of ammunition". The tactic of agreeing with them and hope they go away never worked. They don’t care about argument and don’t even think why they have an argument are impervious to those anyway. So I agree with you the are Dorks but they created their own fake reality and won’t leave their loyalty (or kadaverdizipline) to a regime which was destroyed 75 plus years ago. I don’t will ever drop it and continue to be outraged at Klempener who survived and published his memoires.
As for the bombing campaign including Dresden a very good argument can be made that the bombing was aimed at military targets, Marshalling yards, there were factories e.g. It did hamper transport to Berlin. It stopped trains with Jews from going to Auschwitz as well as troop movements, should they have died instead? Or is the moral outrage one-sided.
Yes the bombing was horrible but the Allies still had to win the war and stopping after the battle of the Bulge and not bombing and thus letting Dachau and other deathcanps complete there horrendous work was not an option
" It didn’t shorten the war"
Can you prove this? The bombing campaign WAS aimed at shortening the war by destroying targets on the ground AND forcing out the Luftwaffe in order to destroy it and gain Air Supremacy. Dieppe was a good example were the Allies didn’t have Air Superiority. Oh and it prevented another “we actually won World War 1” myth.
Well over a Million people died in Auschwitz and the British Air Ministry had the Prime goal of ending the ware quickly. They were not sitting behind their laptops like we, they and there families were in mortal peril as London was even hit by V2s in March. Besides they knew there had been an assassination attempt on Hitler and maybe the Germans would have given up like in WW1. Historians are expert at predicting the “past futures of decision makers”.
“The Department held that the most effective aid for the victims of persecution would be a quick Allied victory over the Third Reich and the other Axis countries, and that this was the goal towards which all available means should be used. The British Air Ministry held similar views.
Source:” News / Museum / Auschwitz-Birkenau"
I know the morals changed over time, in the nineties we also had Rwanda and Yugoslavia, in both cases there could have been done more but politicians were too busy visiting the “never again” monuments.
I agree that it would not solve the issue. Like I said, they will just move on to the next source of outrage (probably mask or something). What I dislike about the Dresden issue is that a lot of the Allied justifications seem to come as a response to random edgelords, and rejects all arguments against it out of mere association.
At the end of the day, these self-proclaimed neo-nazies don’t matter. They are a vocal minority that, 50 years from now, people would point as random trivia about how stupid the people of 2020. It’s similar to something I remember seeing in a history text book: about people destroying factory machines during the Industrial revolution because the machines were stealing their jobs. I’m sure that these people were a major nuisance for their contemporaries but, in the bigger picture, it is just ‘Lol, look at these dumb people’.
I also think there is a misreading of cause-and-effect in certain elements:
It is true that military targets were hit, but that was a result of literally everything else in proximity also being hit. It’s similar to blowing up your house to get rid of the one cockroach in the basement.
We also know that the Allies had a habit of dropping incendiary bombs in the first wave and then, when all the firemen start putting out the fire, they send out the second wave to cause max damage. In effect, this is directly targeting firemen and first responding medical personnel.
The deportation trains are an interesting case, however, there is a major cause-and-effect issue. Were the Allies aware that there was a train for Aushwitz passing through Dresden? Did HQ even know about the concentration camps at this time? It is a positive for sure, but I question if it was intended or just a fortunate coincidence.
This part, however, I can confidently call BS on. During early 1944, the Allies conducted a terror bombing campaign against Sofia. After a very devastating bombing, the Bulgarian government offered to surrender and switch sides. Churchill personally rejected this idea and even ordered further bombings against civilian targets (during Orthodox Easter no less). Given that, as a result, Bulgaria did not switch sides until September, it is fair to say that this did absolutely nothing to shorten the war.
Well everything has military value hasn’t it? Saying otherwise might have been a poor choice of words, but my understanding from the video is that those attacks explicitly targeted civilian population, so the point was that it was a war crime, which was dismissed post-war with the most of them for the winning side.
How that can be used as a justification for neo-nazi ideology or a holocaust denial argument, I have no idea and I really don’t care. Retards be retards, I suppose.
Well, I am pretty tired of discussing one single event over and over again.
I think it is misleading just to concentrate on the necessity of the Dresden bombing. For the british it was just another raid on another town. One important reason for the devastating results was the near total absence of AA- Guns and of bomb-shelters (except of literally two for the Nazi-Commander of the city).
The bombing-campaign as a whole had indeed a significant impact on the war. It kept about 10.000 AA-Guns and about a third of Luftwaffe-fighters in the Reich and therefore away from the front, and generally used enormes resources in buliding, raw materials and logistics.
But most of all, it showed every single german what this war was all about and that it would be lost, even two years before the first allied soldier entered the Reich. Compared to the stab-in-the-back-legend (Dolchstosslegende) from WWI this Was probably the best reason for Germany to never again try to conquer the World ( we even let our army totally underequipped These days). So, even as a ggerman who lived in Dresden for several years, the bombing campaign was worth it, as a part of the military effort of the Allies.
And for all who make this fuss about the 27.000 victims: this was the average of every two days victims the first half a year of invading the Soviet Union, if we take only those killed by the Einsatzgruppen or killed or starved POW, eg people who are deliberately murdered.
And this is just one part of german crimes.
I agree with you that Dresden was an important hub and had at least some military value. On the other hand it also was one of Germany’s most beautiful and historically and architecturally important cities. I actually visited in 1986, still being behind the Iron Curtain.
Bomber Harris was more adamant on cruelly punishing the Germans and breaking their will to fight on by that time, rather than gaining military advantage. Especially because it mostly would help the Red Army.
