In the bombing of Dresden, according to various sources, from 20 to 350,000 people died. Isn't it true that there is a very big difference between 20 and 350 thousand people. Almost in order. Where did these numbers come from? Immediately after the bombing, the German authorities announced 350,000 dead citizens, and 500,000 together with refugees. The first commission on Dresden was carried out jointly by the Soviet-American services, immediately in 1945. The conclusions of the joint commission (USSR allies) were an order of magnitude smaller - between 22,700 - 25,000 people were killed, and 6 thousand died later. In the GDR sources, the figure of 145,000 thousand subsequently surfaced (I don’t know where it came from, maybe someone will tell you, it was first voiced by Wilhelm Pick, the second president of the GDR. She also migrated to the History of the Second World War published in the USSR and became universally recognized by us.)

Article in Die Welt newspaper
http://www.welt.de/kultur/article726910/Wie_viele_Menschen_starben_im_Dresdner_Feuersturm.html

How many people died in the Dresden firestorm.

Now, 62 years after the Anglo-American bombing of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945, the Mayor of Dresden has appointed a commission to determine the exact number of victims of this tragedy. On the next anniversary of the air raids, the interim conclusions of this commission were published. Eleven professors, members of the commission came to the conclusion that, with an accuracy of 20%, the number of deaths during the bombing could be around 25,000 people. Our report of the results generated a flood of letters from readers. According to most of them, according to eyewitness accounts of survivors of the air war against German cities, the death toll in Dresden was much higher. The Chairman of the Commission is Rolf-Dieter Müller. Our correspondent Sven Felix Kelerhoff is talking to him.
Welt Online: - Professor Müller, many witnesses of the air war against German cities react angrily to the interim results of your commission. According to them, in Dresden, a six-figure number of people died.
Rolf-Dieter Müller: We take the suggestion that there may have been hundreds of thousands of victims very seriously. Much of our research is designed to answer the question of whether evidence can be found that supports this assumption. So far, there is no proof so far of this thesis, but we have encountered an incredible number of forged documents and statements by various witnesses that are clearly false. No one has ever seen or even hundreds of thousands of victims, let alone take them into account. There is only rumors and speculation going on.
Welt Online: - Just eyewitnesses paint a different picture.
I understand the witnesses who experienced this terrible catastrophe in childhood and who still remember that horror and exaggerate this number in accordance with their childhood impressions, while others look at it soberly and exaggerate the number of victims consciously. I have no sympathy for those who shamelessly manipulate the dead so that Dresden has the reputation of the most terrible war crime of all time.
Welt Online: Skeptics think that tens of thousands of people burned without a trace in a fiery hurricane.
Müller: Even in "ideal" crematorium conditions, people don't burn out completely. Archaeologists are finding evidence of human life even after thousands of years in burned settlements. During extensive excavations in Dresden's Old Town over the past 15 years, no more air raid victims have been found. The first result was the following study: The Freital Mining Academy examined bricks from the cellars of the city center and the first result indicates that the temperatures at which human bodies turn to ashes were far from being reached in the center of the fiery hurricane. People then hid in basements. From numerous excavation reports, we know that most of the victims did not die from the fire itself. They suffocated, which is observed in today's fire disasters. In addition, photographs that were taken after the bombing of Dresden confirm that only individual burnt corpses were visible on the streets.

Welt Online: Your commission owns a method for establishing a correlation between the tonnage of bombs dropped on the one hand and the number of victims on the other. Such calculations may be seen by cynical survivors and relatives of bombing victims.

Müller: We are result-oriented and must take into account what work the Allies have done to destroy the center of Dresden, how many firebombs, for example, have been used and what destruction they have caused in other cases comparable to this. We must not forget that other German cities were bombarded much harder than Dresden and were destroyed even more than Dresden. I admire the love of Dresdeners for their hometown, other cities cannot be compared here. My city of Braunschweig was also heavily bombed. My parents struggled with these losses.

Welt Online: A further criticized method is to examine all possible registrations. Against this, many witnesses object that in 1945, not every death was recorded.
Müller: That is of course correct. Historically grown society does not allow anonymous disposal of the dead. Under the Nazi government, this only happened to the victims of the policy of terror and extermination. But the people who belonged to the victims of the bombings did not disappear without a trace. But I was surprised by the labor involved in registering the dead and excavating the victims and burying them then, at the beginning of 1945, in this catastrophe. With the exception of individual cases, there were always relatives or neighbors who were engaged in the search. If they remained without results, then their certificates of missing persons turned into certificates of death. We systematically develop these processes. Otherwise, experts state that in the whole of Germany between 1937 and 1945 there were 150,000 civilians missing. They can't all be killed in Dresden.
Welt Online: Particularly emotional sections of the discussion include the memories of many witnesses about low-flying bombers on February 14, 1945. Shooting from cannons and machine guns. How does your commission deal with it?
Müller: The issue of low-flying bombers does not play a big role in the number of casualties in Dresden. But the city council of Dresden still gave us the task of a new study of the facts. Therefore, we asked all witnesses who can testify in the case to record their observations and memories. With this we complete an important partial project. Oral History deals with the detailed questioning of witnesses and the documentation of their memories. In this way we make our contribution to the fact that hundreds of life histories will be preserved for posterity.

Welt Online: Are Oral History Methods Enough to Clarify the Situation?
Müller: In relation to alleged attacks from low altitude, the evidence is contradictory. Therefore, we choose especially reliable and accurate indications in order to search suspected areas with the help of the sapper service. If these attacks took place, then this summer we will find the appropriate ammunition, bullets and shells from their airborne weapons. And although on-board documents do not say that there were such attacks, and the likelihood of these attacks is extremely small, we still try to verify the statements of witnesses.
Welt Online: How do you explain the huge interest around the bombing of Dresden even now, 62 years later?
Müller: one can understand that the shock of the unprincipled destruction of the center of Dresden with its famous cultural monuments has not yet been overcome, and also the injured pride of the inhabitants. But immediately after the bombings, Nazi propaganda drew its last success from this: the world prestige of the cultural city was well used for propaganda against the Allies. Then the GDR and the countries of the Eastern bloc joined this. Today, both right-wing and left-wing radicals propagate. Everyone needs sacrifice, but they don't deserve it.

PS
Of course, even 20,000 is a huge number of civilian victims, comparable to and exceeding, for example, the number of soldiers of the 33rd army of Efremov who died near Vyazma in 1942.

The end of World War II was nearing. Hitler and Goebbels cheerfully proclaimed words of endurance and resilience, while the Wehrmacht was less and less able to deter the Allied attacks. The Luftwaffe was less and less able to protect the German population from Allied bombs, as the bombing returned to the country, which at the beginning of the war devastated the cities of opponents. On the night of February 13-14, Dresden was practically destroyed to the ground.

Ruins of Dresden

Stefan Fritz - priest of the restored church of St. Mary in Dresden: the bell that sounds every mass is the bell of peace, it bears the name of the prophet Isaiah and has an inscription on it: "... and they will beat their swords into plowshares" (the book of the prophet Isaiah 2: 2-4 ).

Since February 1, 2005, the upper platform directly under the golden cross on the tower has been open to visitors. Whoever stands here has a beautiful view of the old and new part of Dresden, which on February 13 and 14, 1945 became the target of bombings.

The date of the raid was determined by weather conditions. On the night of February 13, meteorologists predicted clear skies over Dresden. The command of the British bomber aviation informed the Soviet Army, whose front line was 150 kilometers from the capital of Saxony. On the afternoon of February 13, 245 Lancaster aircraft of the fifth bomber squadron took off from British airfields for a night raid. Resistance was not expected. The city was darkened, there was no street lighting, but some cinemas and cafes were still open - it was the day of the carnival. At 21.40, an air raid began, and twenty minutes later the first bombs fell on the city.

Götz Bergander, the historian and chronicler of those events, was at that time seventeen years old and he lived with his parents in Friedrichstadt, an area located west of the old part of the city. He recalls: “The so-called “illuminator” aircraft were the first to appear over Dresden. They were high-flying bombers that parachuted with brightly glowing white and green illuminating aircraft bombs. They illuminated the city so that the bombers flying behind them could see the city below very well and could descend at a peak up to 300 m above the ground, dropping bombs directly at the intended targets.

After the targets were illuminated and marked, the lead bomber circling over Dresden was ordered to attack at 22.11. Carpet bombing has begun.

The strategy behind it had been developed in great detail three years earlier. On February 14, 1942, a so-called "moral carpet-bombing" directive was issued to the British Air Force, in which the destruction of populated areas was essentially declared a paramount objective. This decision provoked a rebuff from British politicians: "Of course, the Germans started it all, but we must not become worse than them." But these considerations had no effect on the increased intensity of air raids. The first target of the new strategy was the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, which was destroyed on Palm Sunday 1942.

From August to October, the commander-in-chief of the British bombers, Arthur Harris, ordered 4 million leaflets to be dropped from aircraft with the following content:

Why are we doing this? Not out of a desire for revenge, although we have not forgotten Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, London, Plymouth, Coventry. We are bombing Germany, city after city, stronger and stronger, to make it impossible for you to continue the war. This is our goal. We will pursue you relentlessly, city after city: Lübeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and the list will be longer. If you want to allow yourself to be plunged into the abyss along with the Nazis, that's up to you ... In Cologne, Ruhr, Rostock, Lübeck or Emden, they may believe that with our bombing we have already achieved everything we wanted, but we have a different opinion. What you have experienced so far will be incomparable to what is yet to come, once our bomber production has gained momentum and the Americans have doubled or quadrupled our power."

At midnight from February 13 to February 14, 1945, a column of 550 Lancaster bombers moved for a second raid on Dresden, stretching for 200 km. This time, the target could be found easily.

Bergander: “The crews reported that already at a distance of 150 km a red glow was visible, which became more and more. These were fires that their planes were approaching."

Dresden, 1945

During two night raids, 1,400 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,100 tons of incendiary bombs fell on Dresden. This combination caused a fiery tornado that devastated everything in its path, burning the city and people. The cellars could not provide shelter as before, as the heat and lack of oxygen left no chance for life. Those who still could fled from the city center to the outskirts, or at least to the banks of the Elbe or to the Grossen Garten - a park with an area of ​​​​about 2 square meters. kilometers.

The dancer and dance teacher Grete Palucca founded a modern dance school in Dresden in 1925 and has since lived in Dresden: “Then I experienced something terrible. I lived in the center of the city, in the house where I lived, almost everyone died, including because they were afraid to go out. After all, we were in the basement, about sixty-three people, and there I said to myself - no, you can die here, because it was not a real bomb shelter. Then I ran straight into the fire and jumped over the wall. Me and another schoolgirl, we were the only ones who got out. Then I experienced something terrible, and then in Grossen Garten I experienced an even greater horror, and it took me two years to overcome it. At night, if in a dream I saw those pictures, I always started screaming.

Wolfgang Fleischer, historian at the Museum of Military History of the Bundeswehr in Dresden: “The Grossen Garten, which extended all the way to the city center, was damaged on the night of February 13th to 14th. The inhabitants of Dresden sought salvation from the fiery tornado in it and the zoo adjacent to it. An English ace bomber, circling over the target, saw that a large area immediately near the city center was not on fire, like all its other parts, and called in a new column of bombers, which turned this part of the city into flames. Numerous residents of Dresden who sought refuge in the Grossen Garten were killed by high-explosive bombs. And the animals that escaped from the zoo after their cages were destroyed - as the newspapers later wrote about it - wandered around the Grossen Garten.

Dresden after the bombing

The third raid took place on the afternoon of February 14th. Still painful memories of carpet bombings of people who tried to hide in the Grossen Garten and on the banks of the Elbe are associated with them. The reports of witnesses contradict the opinions of historians. 35,000 people died in the Dresden fire. (edited by other sources 135.000 people) For the inhabitants of the city, it remained incomprehensible: in a few hours their city was turned into a pile of ruins and ceased to exist. Then no one knew that this could happen in an instant. The shock experienced then left its mark in biographies, messages and oral stories, which were passed on by parents to children and grandchildren.

The last phase of the war demanded an even greater number of casualties. In this last phase, Dresden was neither the first nor the last German city to be destroyed by carpet bombing. The spread of this strategy has raised the doubts that British politicians had. In 1984, noted physicist Freeman Dyson, who worked during World War II at a bomb research center, admitted: name. But I didn't have the courage to do so."

O. Fritz: “I also remember very well what was in the minds of the inhabitants of Dresden - it was a completely unnecessary, meaningless raid, it was a city-museum that did not expect anything like this for itself. This is fully confirmed by the memories of the victims at that time.”

Church of St. Mary

The inhabitants of Dresden have long been proud of their city of art with its baroque castle, the famous art gallery, the museum of the art industry, the church of St. Mary, the choir and opera, the world famous technical university. They expected a milder fate for their magnificent city. But the deadly war unleashed by Germany did not guarantee this to them. In the memories of the older generation about the sufferings personally endured, the bitterness from this unfulfilled hope and the death of the victims they saw are still mixed.

The church of St. Mary, restored today, with burnt fragments of the former building included in its walls, is both a reminder and, at the same time, a symbol of reconciliation.

O. Fritz: “I think our memories should be aimed at giving place to historical truth. We must appreciate that, sixty years after the end of the war, we live in a recreated city, that the greatest efforts have been made for this. We are not in the state we were in after the bombings, and with the peoples with whom Germany used to wage war, we live in European neighborhood and friendship. And this is the greatest blessing that we do not want to lose. The temple we are in is surmounted by a cross given as a gift from the British people.”

Translation from German: Natalia Pyatnitsyna
Editorial material: priest Alexander Ilyashenko

Note from the editor:

As a result of the Anglo-American Air Force total bombardment of Germany and Japan, civilians were killed, cities were destroyed, historical and cultural values ​​\u200b\u200bvanished from destruction and in the flames of fires.

“The war was distinguished by two main features: it was surprisingly mobile and unprecedentedly cruel. The first feature was due to the development of science and industry, the second - the decline of religion and the emergence of what, for lack of a generally accepted name, can be called "cadocracy" (from cadocracy - the power of an uneducated crowd, mob). The age of outstanding people has passed, and instead of it the age of the mob has come. The gentleman - a direct descendant of the idealized Christian knight, a model for many generations - is supplanted by a rude, uneducated person. The peoples of the United States and England were inspired that they were waging war "in the name of justice, humanity and Christianity." In reality, however, the Allies returned "to methods of war which civilized nations have long since cast aside".

In the fires, people were burned alive. As a result of the barbaric bombing in Dresden, 135,000 people died, mostly Germans, of course, but among the dead were prisoners of war: Russians, British, Americans. (J.F.S. Fuller World War II 1939-1945. Foreign Literature Publishing House. Moscow, 1956, p. 529)

In specially designated quarters of the southern suburbs of Dresden in the 2nd half of the 19th century. settled numerous foreigners. Since at the same time they did not integrate into the Evangelical denomination of Dresden, but retained their religion, between 1869 and 1884. four foreign churches were erected. The Anglican, American and Scottish Presbyterian churches were destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Only the Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1872-1874, has survived. for the Russian Mission in the Principality of Saxony.

Aviation of the Western Allies launched a series of bombing attacks on the capital of Saxony, the city of Dresden, which was almost completely destroyed as a result.

The Dresden raid was part of an Anglo-American strategic bombing program launched after the US and British heads of state met in Casablanca in January 1943.

Dresden is the seventh largest city in pre-war Germany with a population of 647 thousand people. Due to the abundance of historical and cultural monuments, it was often called "Florence on the Elbe". There were no significant military installations there.

By February 1945, the city was full of wounded and refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. Together with them in Dresden, there were estimated to be up to a million, and according to some sources, up to 1.3 million people.

The date of the raid on Dresden was determined by the weather: a clear sky was expected over the city.

During the first raid in the evening, 244 British Lancaster heavy bombers dropped 507 tons of explosive and 374 tons of incendiary bombs. During the second raid at night, which lasted half an hour and was twice as powerful as the first, 965 tons of high-explosive and over 800 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city by 529 aircraft.

On the morning of February 14, 311 American B-17s bombed the city. They dropped more than 780 tons of bombs into the sea of ​​fire raging below them. On the afternoon of February 15, 210 American B-17s completed the rout by dropping another 462 tons of bombs on the city.

It was the most devastating bombing strike in Europe in all the years of World War II.

The area of ​​the zone of continuous destruction in Dresden was four times larger than that in Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing by the Americans on August 9, 1945.

In most of the urban development, destruction exceeded 75-80%. Among the irreplaceable cultural losses are the ancient Frauenkirche, Hofkirche, the famous Opera and the world-famous Zwinger architectural and palace ensemble. At the same time, the damage caused to industrial enterprises turned out to be insignificant. The railway network also suffered little. The marshalling yards and even one bridge over the Elbe were not damaged, and traffic through the Dresden junction resumed a few days later.

Determining the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden is complicated by the fact that at that time there were several dozen military hospitals and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the city. Many were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings or burned in a fiery tornado.

The death toll is estimated in various sources from 25-50 thousand to 135 thousand people or more. According to an analysis prepared by the US Air Force History Department, 25,000 people died, according to official figures from the British Royal Air Force History Department - more than 50 thousand people.

Subsequently, the Western Allies claimed that the raid on Dresden was a response to the request of the Soviet command to strike at the city's railway junction, allegedly made at the Yalta Conference of 1945.

As evidenced by the declassified minutes of the Yalta Conference, demonstrated in the documentary film directed by Alexei Denisov "Dresden. Chronicle of the Tragedy" (2006), the USSR never asked the Anglo-American allies during World War II to bomb Dresden. What the Soviet command really asked for was to strike at the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig due to the fact that the Germans had already transferred about 20 divisions from the western front to the eastern one and were going to transfer about 30 more. It was this request that was delivered in writing like Roosevelt and Churchill.

From the point of view of domestic historians, the bombing of Dresden pursued, rather, a political goal. They attribute the bombardment of the Saxon capital to the desire of the Western Allies to demonstrate their air power to the advancing Red Army.

After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, on the site of Dresden there was only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that were here. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the rest of the parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Bombing of Dresden

Destroyed Dresden. Photo from German archives, 1945

The charred corpses of the dead inhabitants. Photo from the German archives, February 1945

Bombing of Dresden(German Luftangriff auf Dresden, English Bombing of Dresden) - a series of bombings of the German city of Dresden, carried out by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain and the United States Air Force on February 13-15, 1945 during World War II. As a result of the bombing, about a quarter of the city's industrial enterprises and about half of the remaining buildings (urban infrastructure and residential buildings) were destroyed or seriously damaged. According to the US Air Force, traffic through the city was paralyzed for several weeks. Estimates of the number of dead varied from 25,000 in official German wartime reports to 200,000 and even 500,000. In 2008, a commission of German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden estimated the death toll at between 18,000 and 25,000. On March 17, 2010, the official report of the commission, which has been operating since 2004, was presented. According to the report, the bombing of Dresden by Allied aircraft in February 1945 killed 25,000 people. The official report of the commission was made publicly available on the Internet.

Whether the bombing of Dresden was due to military necessity is still a matter of controversy. The bombing of Berlin and Leipzig was agreed with the Soviet side; according to the explanation of the Anglo-American allies, Dresden, as an important transport center, was bombed by them in order to make it impossible for traffic to bypass these cities. According to the US Air Force, which carried out the bombing, the significance of disabling the transport hubs of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden is confirmed by the fact that it was near Leipzig, in Torgau, on April 25 that the advanced units of the Soviet and American troops met, cutting the territory of Nazi Germany in two. Other researchers call the bombing unjustified, believing that Dresden was of low military importance, and the destruction and civilian casualties were highly disproportionate to the military results achieved. According to a number of historians, the bombing of Dresden and other German cities retreating to the Soviet zone of influence was not aimed at helping the Soviet troops, but exclusively for political purposes: a demonstration of military power to intimidate the Soviet leadership in connection with the planned Operation Unthinkable. According to the historian John Fuller, it was enough to continuously bomb the exits of the city to block communications, instead of bombarding Dresden itself.

The bombing of Dresden was used by Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes, while the death toll was inflated by Goebbels to 200 thousand people, and the bombing itself seemed completely unjustified. In the USSR, an estimate of the victims was 135 thousand people.

The reasons

On December 16, 1944, German troops on the Western Front launched an offensive in the Ardennes, the purpose of which was to defeat the Anglo-American forces in Belgium and the Netherlands and free up German units for the Eastern Front. In just 8 days, the Wehrmacht offensive in the Ardennes as a strategic operation ended in complete failure. By December 24, the German troops advanced 90 km, but their offensive fizzled out before reaching the Meuse River, when the American troops launched a counteroffensive, attacked from the flanks and stopped the German advance, and the Wehrmacht, defeated in the Ardennes, finally lost the strategic initiative on the Western Front and started to recede. To facilitate their retreat, on January 1, 1945, the Germans launched a local counter-offensive, carried out by small forces, this time in Strasbourg in the Alsace region, in order to divert the Allied forces. These local counterattacks could no longer change the strategic situation on the Western Front, moreover, the Wehrmacht was experiencing a critical shortage of fuel caused by strategic bombing by Allied aircraft, which destroyed the German oil refining industry. By the beginning of January 1945, the position of the Wehrmacht on the Western Front, especially in the Ardennes, became hopeless.

In connection with these events, on January 12-13, the Red Army launched an offensive in Poland and East Prussia. On January 25, in a new report, British intelligence noted that “the success of the current Russian offensive will apparently have a decisive influence on the duration of the war. We consider it expedient to urgently consider the issue of assistance that can be provided to the Russians by the strategic aviation of Great Britain and the United States over the next few weeks. In the evening of the same day, Winston Churchill, having read the report, addressed the Secretary of the Air Force Archibald Sinclair (Eng. Archibald Sinclair ) a dispatch asking what can be done to “how the Germans should be treated during their retreat from Breslau” (200 km east of Dresden).

On January 26, Sinclair noted in his response that “the best use of strategic air power seems to be the bombing of German oil plants; German units retreating from Breslau must be bombed by front-line aircraft (from low altitudes), and not by strategic ones (from high altitudes)”; noting, however, that " under favorable weather conditions, one can consider the bombing of large cities in eastern Germany, such as Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz" . Churchill expressed dissatisfaction with the restrained tone of the response and demanded that the possibility of bombing Berlin and other major cities in East Germany be considered. Churchill's wish for concrete plans for strikes against the cities of eastern Germany, Sinclair forwarded to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Charles Portal (Eng. Charles Portal ), who in turn forwarded it to his second in command, Norman Bottomley. Norman Bottomley ).

On 27 January, Bottomley sent the Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, orders to bomb Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, as soon as weather conditions allowed. Sinclair reported to Churchill on the measures taken, noting that "a sudden massive bombardment will not only disturb the evacuation from the east, but will also make it difficult to transfer troops from the west." On January 28, Churchill, having read Sinclair's reply, made no further comments.

An RAF memorandum which was made known to British pilots the night before the attack (13 February) stated that:

Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany... by far the largest enemy area still un-bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, housing is in short supply as workers, refugees, and troops need to be accommodated, as well as government offices evacuated from other areas. Once widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where they feel it most, behind a partially collapsed front... and at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what the Royal Air Force is capable of. .

bombing

The tonnage of bombs dropped by the Allies on the 7 largest cities in Germany, including Dresden, is shown in the table below.

Moreover, as the table below shows, by February 1945, the city was practically not bombed.

the date Target Who spent Participated aircraft Tonnage of bombs dropped
high-explosive incendiary Total
07.10.1944 Sort Facility USAF 30 72,5 72,5
16.01.1945 Sort Facility USAF 133 279,8 41,6 321,4
14.02.1945 Through city squares Royal Air Force 772 1477,7 1181,6 2659,3
14.02.1945 Sort Facility USAF 316 487,7 294,3 782,0
15.02.1945 Sort Facility USAF 211 465,6 465,6
02.03.1945 Sort Facility USAF 406 940,3 140,5 1080,8
17.04.1945 Sort Facility USAF 572 1526,4 164,5 1690,9
17.04.1945 industrial zones USAF 8 28,0 28,0

The operation was to begin with an air raid by the US 8th Air Force on February 13, but bad weather over Europe prevented the participation of American aircraft. In this regard, the first blow was delivered by British aircraft.

On the evening of February 13, 796 Avro Lancasters and 9 De Havilland Mosquitos took off in two waves and dropped 1,478 tons of high-explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs. The first attack was carried out by the 5th RAF Group, which used its own targeting methods and tactics. Guidance planes marked the stadium Ostragehege as a starting point. All bombers passed through this point, fanning out along predetermined trajectories and dropping bombs after a certain time. The first bombs were dropped at 22:14 CET by all but one bomber, which dropped the bombs at 22:22. At this point, clouds were covering the ground, and the attack, during which 244 Lancasters dropped 800 tons of bombs, was a moderate success. The bombed zone was fan-shaped, 1.25 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

Three hours later, a second attack took place, carried out by the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th RAF Groups, the latter providing guidance by standard methods. The weather had improved by then, and 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs between 01:21 and 01:45. .

After that, the US Air Force carried out two more bombing raids. On March 2, 406 B-17 bombers dropped 940 tons of explosive and 141 tons of incendiary bombs. On April 17, 580 B-17 bombers dropped 1,554 tons of high explosive and 165 tons of incendiary bombs.

The bombing was carried out according to the methods adopted at that time: first high-explosive bombs were dropped to destroy the roofs and expose the wooden structures of buildings, then firebombs, and again high-explosive bombs to hamper the work of firefighting services. As a result of the bombing, a fiery tornado was formed, the temperature in which reached 1500 ° C.

Destruction and casualties

Type of destruction. Photo from German archives, 1945

According to a Dresden police report compiled shortly after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city. The report stated that "24 banks, 26 insurance company buildings, 31 trading shops, 6470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges. In addition, the destruction of military targets was reported: the command post in the palace Taschenberg, 19 military hospitals and many smaller military service buildings. Nearly 200 factories were damaged, of which 136 suffered major damage (including several Zeiss optics factories), 28 moderate damage and 35 minor damage.

The US Air Force documents say: “British estimates ... conclude that 23% of industrial buildings and 56% of non-industrial buildings (not counting residential buildings) were seriously damaged. Of the total number of residential buildings, 78,000 are considered destroyed, 27,700 are considered unfit for habitation, but repairable, 64,500 are considered slightly damaged and repairable. This later assessment shows that 80% of the city's buildings suffered damage of varying degrees and 50% of residential buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged", "heavy damage was caused as a result of raids on the city's railway infrastructure, which completely paralyzed communications", "railway bridges over the Elbe River - vital for the movement of troops - remained inaccessible to movement for several weeks after the raid.

The exact number of deaths is unknown. Estimates are difficult to make due to the fact that the population of the city, which in 1939 numbered 642 thousand people, increased at the time of the raids due to the arrival of at least 200 thousand refugees and several thousand soldiers. The fate of some refugees is unknown because they could have been burned beyond recognition or left the city without informing the authorities.

Currently, a number of historians estimate the number of victims in the range of 25-30 thousand people. According to the American Air Force, from these estimates it would be clear that the losses during the bombing of Dresden are similar to the losses during the bombing of other German cities. Higher figures were reported by other sources, the reliability of which was questioned.

A chronology of claims by various sources on the number of deaths is given below.

On March 22, 1945, an official report was issued by the municipal authorities of the city of Dresden Tagesbefehl no. 47(also known as TV-47), according to which the number of deaths recorded by this date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths during the bombing was expected to be about 25 thousand people.

In 1953, in the work of German authors “Results of the Second World War”, Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “It is impossible to calculate the number of victims in Dresden. According to the State Department, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual number of casualties is, of course, much less; but even 60-100 thousand civilians who died in the fire in one night can hardly fit in the human mind.

In 1964, US Air Force Lieutenant General Ira Eaker ( English) also estimated the number of victims at 135,000 dead .

In 1970, the American magazine Time estimated the number of victims from 35,000 to 135,000 people.

In 1977, the Soviet Military Encyclopedia listed the death toll at 135,000.

In 2000, according to the decision of the British court, the figures given by Irving for the number of deaths in the bombing of Dresden (135 thousand people) were called unreasonably high. The judge found no reason to doubt that the death toll differs from the 25-30 thousand people indicated in official German documents.

In 2005, an article on the official website of the British Air Force noted that, according to accepted estimates, the death toll was at least 40 thousand people, and possibly more than 50 thousand.

In the encyclopedias "Columbia" ( English) and Encarta provides data on the death toll from 35 thousand to 135 thousand people.

In 2006, Russian historian Boris Sokolov noted that the death toll from the bombing of Dresden by Allied aircraft in February 1945 ranged from 25,000 to 250,000 people. In the same year, in the book of the Russian journalist A. Alyabyev, it was noted that the number of deaths, according to various sources, ranged from 60 to 245 thousand people.

In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden estimated the death toll to be between 18,000 and 25,000. Other estimates of the number of victims, reaching up to 500 thousand people, were called by the commission exaggerated or based on dubious sources. The commission was created by state bodies after the right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany, having won seats in the Saxon parliament in the 2004 elections, began publicly comparing the bombing of German cities with the Holocaust, citing figures of up to 1 million victims.

The tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was less than in the bombing of other cities. However, favorable weather conditions, buildings with wooden structures, passages connecting the basements of adjacent houses, as well as the unpreparedness of the city for the consequences of air raids, contributed to the fact that the results of the bombing were more destructive. In late 2004, an RAF pilot who took part in the raids told the BBC that another factor was the weak barrage of air defense forces, which made it possible to hit targets with high accuracy. According to the authors of the Dresden Drama documentary, the firebombs dropped on Dresden contained napalm.

According to the US Air Force, which carried out the bombing, in the post-war period, the bombing of Dresden was used "by the communists for anti-Western propaganda."

The total number of victims of the Allied bombing among the civilian population of Germany is estimated at 305-600 thousand people. Whether these bombings contributed to a speedy end to the war is debatable.

Losses of Anglo-American aviation

The losses of the Royal Air Force during two raids on Dresden on February 13-14, 1945 amounted to 6 aircraft, in addition, 2 aircraft crashed in France and 1 in England.

Available sources provide details of the loss of 8 aircraft (including five British, one Australian, one Canadian, one Polish):

During the raid on Dresden and additional targets, American aviation irrevocably lost 8 B-17 bombers and 4 P-51 fighters.

eyewitness accounts

Dresden resident Margaret Freyer recalled:

“Moans and cries for help were heard in the firestorm. Everything around turned into a continuous hell. I see a woman - she is still before my eyes. In her hands is a bundle. This is a child. She runs, falls, and the baby, having described an arc, disappears in a flame. Suddenly, two people appear right in front of me. They shout, wave their hands, and suddenly, to my horror, I see how one by one these people fall to the ground (today I know that the unfortunate ones became victims of lack of oxygen). They lose consciousness and turn to ash. Crazy fear seizes me, and I keep repeating: “I don’t want to burn alive!” I don’t know how many other people got in my way. I know only one thing: I must not burn.

The dancer and dance teacher Grete Palucca founded a modern dance school in Dresden in 1925 and has since lived in Dresden:

“Then I experienced something terrible. I lived in the center of the city, in the house where I lived, almost everyone died, including because they were afraid to go out. After all, we were in the basement, about sixty-three people, and there I said to myself - no, you can die here, because it was not a real bomb shelter. Then I ran straight into the fire and jumped over the wall. Me and another schoolgirl, we were the only ones who got out. Then I experienced something terrible, and then in the Grossen Garten (a park within the city) I experienced an even greater horror, and it took me two years to overcome it. At night, if in a dream I saw those pictures, I always started screaming.

According to the memoirs of a radio operator of the British Air Force, who participated in the raid on Dresden:

“At the time, I was struck by the thought of the women and children below. It seemed that we flew for hours over the sea of ​​fire that raged below - from above it looked like an ominous red glow with a thin layer of haze above it. I remember I said to the other crew members, “My God, those poor fellows are downstairs.” It was completely unreasonable. And it can't be justified."

Reaction

Ruined opera house. Photo from German archives, 1945

On February 16, a press release was issued, where the German side stated that there were no military industries in Dresden, it was the location of cultural property and hospitals. On February 25, a new document was released with photographs of two burnt children and with the title "Dresden - a massacre of refugees", which stated that the number of victims was not one hundred, but two hundred thousand people. March 4 in the weekly newspaper Das Reich published an article devoted exclusively to the destruction of cultural and historical values.

Historian Frederick Taylor notes that German propaganda was successful, not only forming a position in neutral countries, but also reaching the British House of Commons, where Richard Stokes ( English) operated on the reports of the German news agency.

Churchill, who had previously supported the bombing, distanced himself from them. On March 28, in a draft memorandum sent by telegram to General Hastings Ismay, he said: “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the bombing of German cities, carried out under various pretexts for the sake of increasing terror, should be reconsidered. Otherwise, we will get a completely ruined state under our control. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious pretext against Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that henceforth military objectives should be determined more strictly in our own interests than in the interests of the enemy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs informed me of this problem and I believe that it is necessary to focus more carefully on such military targets as oil and communications immediately behind the war zone, rather than on clear acts of terror and senseless, albeit impressive, destruction.

After reviewing the contents of Churchill's telegram, on March 29, Arthur Harris sent a reply to the Air Ministry, where he stated that the bombing was strategically justified and "all the remaining German cities are not worth the life of one British grenadier." After protests from the military, on April 1, Churchill wrote a new text in a relaxed form.

The issue of war crimes

Square Altmarkt before destruction. Photo taken in 1881., Library of Congress

There are different opinions as to whether the bombing should be considered a war crime.

The American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens expressed the opinion that the bombing of many German residential areas that served as human targets was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could work out the practice of bombing. In his opinion, the Allies burned German cities in 1944-1945 only because they were able to do it.

In his book, the German historian Jörg Friedrich ( English) noted that, in his opinion, the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity. In 2005, Friedrich noted that "it was an absolutely unnecessary bombing in the military sense", "an act of unjustified terror, mass destruction of people and terrorization of refugees" . The German historian Joachim Fest also believes that the bombing of Dresden was not militarily necessary.

Representatives of right-wing parties at a demonstration on February 13, 2005. The inscription on the banner "Never again bombing terror!"

Nationalist politicians in Germany use the expression bombenholocaust("bomb holocaust") in relation to the bombing of German cities by the allies. The leader of the National Democratic Party of Germany, Holger Apfel, called the bombings "a cold-bloodedly planned industrial-mass destruction of the Germans."

The question of classifying the bombing of Dresden as a war crime does not make sense without considering, together with the facts of the bombing of cities such as Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn, Pforzheim, which had no military significance, committed according to an identical scheme, and also almost completely destroyed. The bombing of these and many other cities was carried out after the bombing of Dresden.

Reflection in culture

Memory

On February 13, 2010, on the Day of Remembrance for those killed in the bombing, between 5,000 and 6,700 neo-Nazis (3,000 fewer than expected) who planned to demonstrate in Altstadt - the historical center of Dresden, were blocked on the opposite bank of the Elbe by left-wing demonstrators. According to the Morgen Post and Sächsische Zeitung newspapers, between 20,000 and 25,000 residents and visitors took to the streets of Dresden to oppose the far right. The “human chain”, which stretched around the historic center of the city, where the Dresden synagogue is located, consisted, according to various sources, of 10 to 15 thousand people. To maintain order, the Ministry of the Interior of Saxony (as well as other federal lands) deployed about seven and a half thousand policemen (initially it was planned to six thousand) with armored vehicles and helicopters.

Some facts

The area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in Dresden was 4 times the area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in Nagasaki. The population before the raid was 629,713 people (excluding refugees), after - 369,000 people.

Notes

  1. German historians have established the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden (March 18, 2010). Archived
  2. Official report on the victims of the bombing, published 03/17/2010 (German) (PDF). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012.
  3. Historical Analysis of the 14-15 February 1945 Bombings of Dresden(English) . USAF Historical Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University. Retrieved March 14, 2009.
  4. “The history of the raid by Gotz Bergander, first published in 1977…, provided the most balanced account of the attack, but Bergander, though he thought there were grounds for regarding the city as a completely legitimate bombing target, found the means used were "bizarrely out of proportion" to any expected gain." Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A. (eds.) Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden. - Pimlico, 2006. - p. 126. - ISBN 1-8441-3928-X
  5. Shepova N. Bomb Germany out of the war. Military Industrial Courier, No. 21 (137) (June 07-13, 2006). Archived
  6. Fuller J.F.C. World War II 1939-1945 Strategic and Tactical Review. - M .: Foreign Literature, 1956.
  7. “Following the deliberate leaking oa TB-47 by Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, a third Swedish paper, Svenska Dagbladet, wrote on 25 February 1945 that… according to the information compiled a few days after the destruction the figure is closer to 200,000 than to 100,000” Richard J Evans(((title))) = Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial. - Verso, 2002. - S. 165. - 326 p. - ISBN 1859844170
  8. Soviet military encyclopedia. - T. 3. - S. 260.
  9. Taylor, p. 181: "The degree of success achieved by the present Russian offensive is likely to have a decisive effect on the length of the war. We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end”, quoted from the report “Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive" prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee of Great Britain on January 25, 1945
  10. Taylor, p. 181
  11. Taylor, p. 184-185
  12. Taylor, p. 185. Churchill's reply: “I asked whether Berlin, and now doubt other large cities in East Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. I am glad that this is "under consideration". Pray report to me tomorrow what is to be done.
  13. Taylor, p. 186
  14. Taylor, p. 217-220
  15. Addison (2006), p. 27.28
  16. Ross (2003), p. 180. See also Longmate (1983) p. 333.
  17. RAF: Bomber Command: Dresden, February 1945 ((in English)). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 14, 2009.
  18. Gotz Bergander.= Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen. - Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1977.
  19. Richard J. Evans.= The Bombing of Dresden in 1945: Misstatement of circumstances: low-level strafing in Dresden.
  20. Taylor, p. 497-8.
  21. Taylor, p. 408-409
  22. Taylor, p. 262-4. The number of refugees is unknown, but some historians put it at 200,000 on the first night of the bombing.
  23. "Following the deliberate leaking oa TB-47 by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, a third Swedish paper, Svenska Dagbladet, wrote on 25 February 1945 that … according to the information compiled a few days after the destruction the figure is closer to 200,000 than to 100,000" Richard J. Evans.= Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial. - Verso, 2002. - S. 165. - 326 p. - ISBN 1859844170
  24. p. 75, Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A., Pimlico, 2006
  25. Taylor, p. 424
  26. Another report, prepared on 3 April, put the number of dead bodies at 22,096 - See p. 75, Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A., Pimlico, 2006
  27. Rumpf G. Air war in Germany // = Results of the Second World War. Conclusions of the vanquished. - M., St. Petersburg: AST, Polygon, 1988.
  28. Foreword to the original edition of David Irving's famous bestseller: The Destruction of Dresden (English). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  29. Maksimov M. War without rules // Around the world, No. 12 (2771), December 2004 (eng.) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  30. Dresden Rebuilt // Time, Feb. 23, 1970 (English) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  31. cm.
  32. World War II: Arthur Harris // BBC Russian Service, April 21, 2005 (Russian). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
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  35. Alyabiev A. Chronicle of the air war. Strategy and tactics. 1939-1945 - M .: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006.
  36. Sven Felix Kellerhoff Bombardement 1945: Zahl der Dresden-Toten viel niedriger als vermutet // Die Welt, 1. Oktober 2008 (Georgian) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
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  39. Cleaver H. German says ruling Dresden was a holocaust // The Telegraph , 12 Apr 2005 (English) . Retrieved March 15, 2009.
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  42. 550 Squadron Photos. F/O Allen & Crew
  43. The Merlin. Dumfries & Galloway Aviation Museum Newsletter, Easter 2008, p. 2.
  44. , With. 125.
  45. 463 SQUADRON RAAF WORLD WAR 2 FATALITIES
  46. List of dead members of the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II, p. 248.
  47. KNIGHTS, P/O John Kingsley; Air Force Association of Canada
  48. Lost information on the Pathfinder Squadron RAF website
  49. Lost Bombers Fiskerton Airfield Database - PD232
  50. Crash du Avro Lancaster - type B.I - s/n PB686 KO-D
  51. WWII 8th AAF COMBAT CHRONOLOGY: JANUARY 1945 THROUGH AUGUST 1945
  52. Kantor Yu. Pepel on the Elbe // Vremya Novostei, No. 26, February 16, 2009
  53. Peter Kirsten. The Bombing of Dresden - Memories of Hell (Translated from German by Natalia Pyatnitsyna) (Russian) (December 22, 2006). Archived
  54. Roy Akehurst. Bombing of Dresden. Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2009.
  55. Taylor, p. 420-6.
  56. Taylor, p. 421.
  57. Taylor, p. 413.
  58. Longmate, p. 344.
  59. Longmate, p. 345.
  60. Taylor, p. 431.
  61. British Bombing Strategy in World War Two, Detlef Siebert, 2001-08-01, BBC History . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  62. Taylor, p. 430.
  63. Taylor, p. 432.
  64. Dresden: Time to Say We're Sorry by Simon Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal February 14, 1995, originally published The Times and The Spectator
  65. Gregory H Stanton. How can we prevent genocide? (unavailable link - story) Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  66. Christopher Hitchens. Was Dresden a war crime? // National Post, September 6, 2006 (eng.) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  67. February 13 will mark exactly 60 years since the powerful bombing of the city of Dresden by British aircraft // Radio Liberty, February 11, 2005
  68. Historian Joachim Fest: A Senseless and Devastating Strike // Repubblica, February 9, 2005] (English) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  69. The German prosecutor's office recognized the bombing of Dresden as the Holocaust // Lenta.ru, 2005/04/12] (English). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  70. Sergei Berets. Dresden. Afterword to Yalta" // BBC, February 13, 2005 (Russian). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  71. Sergei Sumlenny. Year of burned children // Expert, July 28, 2008 (Russian) (July 28, 2009). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
  72. Gleb Borisov. Kurt is alive // ​​Country. Ru, April 12, 2007 (Russian) . Archived
  73. Vladimir Kikilo. Kurt Vonnegut knew what was worth living for // Echo of the Planet, 2006 (Russian) . Archived from the original on February 17, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
  74. David Crossland. German Film Recalls Dresden Bombing // Spiegel Online (English) (02/13/2006). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2009.
  75. Secret protocols of the Yalta conference. They didn't ask to bomb Dresden // RIA Novosti, May 9, 2006 RTR Dresden - Chronicle of the Tragedy (Russian) (May 2006). - documentary. Retrieved 31 January 2009.
  76. Olaf Sundermeyer (Der Spiegel, 13. Februar 2010): Bomben-Gedenken in Dresden: Neonazis scheitern mit Propagandamarsch
  77. Morgen Post. 25,000 zeigen Gesicht gegen Rechts(German)
  78. "Sachsische Zeitung", Dresden hallt zusammen gegen Rechts. February 15, 2010 (German)
  79. Dresden-Lexikon, Population development

Literature

  • Dresden Bombing 1945 //