The Dresden Bombing and Aftermath

[Ernie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_o ... rld_War_II

https://www.codastory.com/rewriting-his ... -its-past/

Dresden is a symbol of bombing innocents in order to win a war. Many other cities in Europe experienced something similar, but Dresden was one of the worst.

Read and discuss.

[barnhart]

It seems from the articles that the far right use this event to minimize or draw false equivalence to the Holocaust. I hope I am allowed to object without being painted as a Holocaust denier.

[Soloist]

Anyone who argues that the ends justify the means has never experienced a firestorm.
We tried to do it again several times too.

[Ken]

The worst was not Dresden. The worst non-nuclear bombing attack was Tokyo which had a death toll 4-times larger than Dresden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

In any event, historical context is important. 1945 was the worst year of the war in terms of human death toll.

The Nazi holocaust was marching relentlessly onwards, killing an average of 14,000 people per day. Auschwitz was only liberated 2 weeks earlier than Dresden but the Nazi death machine was still in full operation in points further west.
The Soviets were losing about 20,000 people per day on the eastern front.
Germany was losing about 10,000 soldiers per day during 1945
China was experiencing enormous losses (15 million deaths during the course of the war)
The USSR had nearly 6 million soldiers taken prisoner of which less than 20% survived the war
Germany held nearly 100,000 American prisoners of war

The war was a relentless death machine and every day it could be shortened would result in tens of thousands of lives saved. Did the bombing of German cities bring the war to a quicker end? Yes, undoubtably. It brought the German industrial war machine too its knees. Take away aerial bombing of German cities and how many extra months would the war have lasted and how many more people would have died? Who knows.

Was Dresden uniquely different from other German and Japanese cities that were bombed during WW2? From what I have read, no, not really. What made it unusual was the firestorm that resulted. Which was something that involved no small amount of luck (or perhaps chance) in that atmospheric conditions had to be just so. On a different day with different atmospheric conditions, Dresden might have been a more ordinary (and forgotten) bombing raid no different from dozens of others.

One can make a similar argument about many strategic military choices that involved civilians. Sherman's march to the sea, for example. Did that shorten the Civil War? I don't know but many have made that argument.

[MaxPC]

I was a young lad in Great Britain during the frightening German bombing of our country. Hence I understand how the Israelis felt during the Hamas blitzkrieg.

[Ernie]

Did the bombing of German cities bring the war to a quicker end? Yes, undoubtably.

Yes, perhaps...

However... regarding Dresden...
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... of-dresden

On the evening of February 13, 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raids begins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the “Florence of the Elbe” to rubble and flames, and killing roughly 25,000 people. Despite the horrendous scale of destruction, it arguably accomplished little strategically, since the Germans were already on the verge of surrender.

[Ernie]

See last paragraph.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/a ... ruary-1945

[Ernie]

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/artic ... justified/

Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, head of Britain’s Royal Air Force Bomber Command, had a special desire to wipe every major German city off the map, even though it was plainly obvious that targets were becoming fewer, and the end of the war was just weeks away.

Early in the war, British Chief of the Air Staff Charles Portal had calculated that a concerted program to bomb the Third Reich’s cities could kill 900,000 people in 18 months, seriously injure a million more, destroy six million homes, and leave 25 million Germans homeless, thus creating a humanitarian crisis that, he believed, would lead to the collapse of the Nazi government.

[Ernie]

Did the Allies have any options for ending the war more quickly, other than bombing German cities?

[Ernie]

And then you have cities hit by mistake. 700 innocents killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Prague