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N0KFQ > TODAY 13.02.17 15:21l 138 Lines 7046 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 22912_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Feb 13
Path: IW8PGT<HB9CSR<IK7NXU<IK6IHL<IZ3LSV<IV3SCP<SR1BSZ<LU4ECL<N0KFQ
Sent: 170213/1314Z 22912@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.13
1945
Dresden devastated
On the evening of February 13, 1945, the most controversial
episode in the Allied air war against Germany begins as hundreds
of British bombers loaded with incendiaries and high-explosive
bombs descend on Dresden, a historic city located in eastern
Germany. Dresden was neither a war production city nor a major
industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February
1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15,
the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of
civilians-somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000-were dead.
By February 1945, the jaws of the Allied vise were closing shut
on Nazi Germany. In the west, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's
desperate counteroffensive against the Allies in Belgium's
Ardennes forest had ended in total failure. In the east, the Red
Army had captured East Prussia and reached the Oder River-less
than 50 miles from Berlin. The once-proud Luftwaffe was a
skeleton of an air fleet, and the Allies ruled the skies over
Europe, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Germany every day.
From February 4 to February 11, the "Big Three" Allied
leaders-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin-met
at Yalta in the USSR and compromised on their visions of the
postwar world. Other than deciding on what German territory would
be conquered by which power, little time was given to military
considerations in the war against the Third Reich. Churchill and
Roosevelt, however, did promise Stalin to continue their bombing
campaign against eastern Germany in preparation for the advancing
Soviet forces.
An important aspect of the Allied air war against Germany
involved what is known as "area" or "saturation" bombing. In area
bombing, all enemy industry-not just war munitions-is targeted,
and civilian portions of cities are obliterated along with troop
areas. Before the advent of the atomic bomb, cities were most
effectively destroyed through the use of incendiary bombs that
caused unnaturally fierce fires in the enemy cities. Such
attacks, Allied command reasoned, would ravage the German
economy, break the morale of the German people, and force an
early surrender.
Germany was the first to employ area bombing tactics during its
assault on Poland in September 1939. In 1940, during the Battle
of Britain, the Luftwaffe failed to bring Britain to it knees by
targeting London and other heavily populated areas with area
bombing attacks. Stung but unbowed, the RAF avenged the bombings
of London and Coventry in 1942 when it launched the first of many
saturation bombing attacks against Germany. In 1944, Adolf Hitler
named the world's first long-range offensive missile V-1, after
Vergeltung, the German word for "vengeance" and an expression of
his desire to repay Britain for its devastating bombardment of
Germany.
The Allies never overtly admitted that they were engaged in
saturation bombing; specific military targets were announced in
relation to every attack. It was but a veneer, however, and few
mourned the destruction of German cities that built the weapons
and bred the soldiers that by 1945 had killed more than 10
million Allied soldiers and even more civilians. The firebombing
of Dresden would prove the exception to this rule.
Before World War II, Dresden was called "the Florence of the
Elbe" and was regarded as one the world's most beautiful cities
for its architecture and museums. Although no German city
remained isolated from Hitler's war machine, Dresden's
contribution to the war effort was minimal compared with other
German cities. In February 1945, refugees fleeing the Russian
advance in the east took refuge there. As Hitler had thrown much
of his surviving forces into a defense of Berlin in the north,
city defenses were minimal, and the Russians would have had
little trouble capturing Dresden. It seemed an unlikely target
for a major Allied air attack.
On the night of February 13, hundreds of RAF bombers descended on
Dresden in two waves, dropping their lethal cargo
indiscriminately over the city. The city's air defenses were so
weak that only six Lancaster bombers were shot down. By the
morning, some 800 British bombers had dropped 1,478 tons of
high-explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiaries on Dresden,
creating a great firestorm that destroyed most of the city and
killed numerous civilians. Later that day, as survivors made
their way out of the smoldering city, over 300 U.S. bombers began
bombing Dresden's railways, bridges, and transportation
facilities, killing thousands more. On February 15, another 200
U.S. bombers continued their assault on the city's
infrastructure. All told, the bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air
Force dropped 954 tons of high-explosive bombs and 294 tons of
incendiaries on Dresden. Later, the Eighth Air Force would drop
2,800 more tons of bombs on Dresden in three other attacks before
the war's end.
The Allies claimed that by bombing Dresden, they were disrupting
important lines of communication that would have hindered the
Soviet offensive. This may be true, but there is no disputing
that the British incendiary attack on the night of February 13-14
was conducted also, if not primarily, for the purpose of
terrorizing the German population and forcing an early surrender.
It should be noted that Germany, unlike Japan later in the year,
did not surrender until nearly the last possible moment-when its
capital had fallen and its Fuhrer was dead.
Because there were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden at
the time of the Allied attack, it is impossible to know exactly
how many civilians perished. After the war, investigators from
various countries, and with varying political motives, calculated
the number of civilians killed to be as little as 8,000 to more
than 200,000. Estimates today range from 35,000 to 135,000.
Looking at photographs of Dresden after the attack, in which the
few buildings still standing are completely gutted, it seems
improbable that only 35,000 of the million or so people in
Dresden that night were killed. Cellars and other shelters would
have been meager protection against a firestorm that blew
poisonous air heated to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit across the
city at hurricane-like speeds.
At the end of the war, Dresden was so badly damaged that the city
was basically leveled. A handful of historic buildings-the
Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House, and several fine
churches-were carefully reconstructed out of the rubble, but the
rest of the city was rebuilt with plain modern buildings.
American author Kurt Vonnegut, who was a prisoner of war in
Dresden during the Allied attack and tackled the controversial
event in his book Slaughterhouse-Five, said of postwar Dresden,
"It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton
has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground."
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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