Sabocat
15th February 2005, 13:42
Here's another interesting hypothesis about the motives for the bombing of Dresden. It is also a pretty good account of the actual event.
The firebombing of Dresden in World War II
By Bill Brust
15 February 2005
The following article was originally published on February 12, 1985, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. It was written by Bill Brust, a leading member of the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, and appeared in the Workers League’s newspaper, the Bulletin. It was later published in the book, Defending Principles: the Political Legacy of Bill Brust. The article is republished here to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the bombing of the German city.
Forty years ago, on February 13-14, 1945, one of the most horrific crimes of US and British imperialism was carried out: the total annihilation of the city of Dresden within 14 hours, when three massive bombing raids set off a firestorm that killed as many as 250,000 people.
Dresden, the administrative capital of the province of Saxony, had been virtually unbombed through the end of 1944, although British and US bombing raids had systematically destroyed 40 of the largest cities of Germany. The city was not an industrial target, with the only factories related to the Nazi war effort located far out in its suburbs. Indeed, Dresden was a center of civil administration, light industry, culture, education and medicine. Even in the waning days of the Third Reich, with Soviet armies only 80 miles away across the Oder River, theaters, cinemas, the opera, museums, even the circus, were in full swing. Insofar as there was an “industry,” it consisted of the city’s 19 permanent hospitals. Because of these facilities, Dresden had become a medical complex for the wounded and convalescing soldiers from all the warring fronts.
Because of its geographical location—now close to the Eastern front—and its reputation as a haven from air bombardment, the city in the last few weeks before the firebombing actually doubled its size to 1,200,000 or even 1,400,000. The huge migration came from the flood of mainly women and children fleeing the theater of bitter fighting unleashed by the rapid advance to the west by the Red Army, which launched a winter offensive on January 12, 1945.
These hundreds of thousands of new residents obviously had no satisfactory quarters in the dead of winter, let alone any possible shelter against a devastating aerial bombardment. Moreover, there were 22,000 prisoners of war, English, American and Russian, held in the city, another factor lulling the population into a false sense of security. An English prisoner, captured at Anzio in Italy in 1944, wrote about his relatively benign treatment in captivity:
“The Germans here are the best I have ever come across ... and we are allowed an extraordinary amount of liberty in the town. The Feldwebel has already taken me to see the center of the town. Unquestionably it is beautiful—I would like to see more of it.”
During the early war years, a powerful network of antiaircraft batteries encircled the city. But it was used no more than twice for what were thought to be Allied pilot navigational errors. The weapons were transferred to the Ruhr and to the eastern front.
The decision to target Dresden for a devastating bombing raid was made at the highest level of the British government. According to the book, Destruction of Dresden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), written by David Irving, the decision was made by Churchill himself.
The British and American high command were well aware of the horrific consequences that saturation bombing of a large and undefended city would produce. The first firestorm of World War II took place in Hamburg after the saturation bombing raids by US and British warplanes on July 27-28, 1943. More than 2,700 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, and the resulting firestorm resulted in the death of an estimated 50,000 people, virtually all of them civilians. The death toll of this single air strike equaled the total casualties of all German bombing raids on Britain in the entire war.
Firestorm was a new phenomenon: Separate fires, started by the bombing, combined to form a qualitatively more powerful holocaust, with winds of hurricane and tornado force whipping sheets of flame, melting metal, incinerating buildings, destroying all utilities such as water, gas, telephone and electricity, thus making organized resistance to the fires impossible. Conventional bomb shelters in the area hit by the firestorm became huge ovens which killed all those who sought safety in them. The police president of Hamburg ordered a scientific investigation of this man-made catastrophe, which warned:
“An estimate of the force of the firestorm could be obtained only by analyzing it soberly as a meteorological phenomenon: as a result of the sudden linking of a number of fires, the air above was heated to such an extent that a violent updraught occurred which, in turn, caused the surrounding fresh air to be sucked in from all sides to the center of the fire area. This tremendous suction caused movements of air of far greater force than normal winds.
“In meteorology the differences of temperature involved are of the order of 20 to 30° C. In this firestorm they were of the order of 600, 800 or even 1,000° C. This explained the colossal force of the firestorm winds.”
Further massive air raids caused firestorms in the cities of Kassel, Koenigsberg, Darmstadt, Brunswick and Heilbronn. In each raid the technique for creating a firestorm was developed and eventually perfected. First, blockbuster bombs were dropped to pulverize buildings, break open gas lines and smash walls and floors, exposing the flammable contents such as beds, furniture, rugs, etc. Incendiary bombs were dropped in a second wave to ignite the rubble and set off a chain reaction fire. Finally, a third wave of blockbuster bombs was dropped to discourage fire containment efforts. In Dresden there was even a fourth wave: American fighter planes attacked the periphery of the firestorm area and machine-gunned the columns of defenseless refugees fleeing the inferno. The British air commander, Sir Arthur Harris, advocated a policy of “area bombing,” rather than the target bombing preferred by the US commanders, because of its moral effect on the civilian German population.
In July 1944 the Allied Chiefs of Staff discussed a proposed “Operation Thunderclap,” a full-scale terror raid on the city of Berlin, or on one of the other relatively unscathed major cities in the eastern portion of Germany. Sir Charles Portal, the chief of the allied bomber command, discussed the issue with Churchill and, in a memo to the chiefs of staff, suggested that “immense devastation could be produced if the entire attack was concentrated on a single big town other than Berlin and the effect would be especially great if the town was one hitherto relatively undamaged.”
However, the plan was shelved for later reexamination by the Joint Intelligence Committee. The JIC did not return to the subject until January 1945 when it was prompted, not by the military necessity of the struggle with Hitler’s disintegrating armies, but by the overriding political preoccupation of the imperialist alliance—the coming struggle with the Soviet Union.
Soviet forces launched their final offensive of the war January 12, 1945, with an enormous show of strength that took the Red Army into the heartland of German Prussia and Silesia. A second offensive was on the outskirts of Budapest and faced only the flat Hungarian plain between there and Vienna. Churchill was preparing for the Yalta conference in the Soviet Crimea where he, Roosevelt and Stalin met to discuss the division of Europe in a postwar settlement.
On January 25, 1945, a week before the opening of the conference, the Red Army crossed the Oder River at Breslau (now Wroclaw), the capital of Silesia. The next day, Churchill gave the go-ahead for a massive air strike in eastern Germany, only 70 miles in front of the Red Army. He made it clear in a memo to air force commanders that this attack was aimed, not so much at the Germans, but at intimidating his Soviet “allies.”
“I did not ask you last night about plans for harrying the German retreat from Breslau. On the contrary, I asked whether Berlin, and no doubt other large cities in East Germany should not now be considered especially attractive targets. I am glad that this is ‘under examination.’ Pray, report tomorrow what is going to be done.”
February 4 was set as the first day that the moon conditions would be favorable. David Irving wrote that Churchill “clearly ... had achieved his immediate aim: soon after February 4, at the climax of the Crimea conference, he would be able to produce a dramatic strike on an eastern city that could not fail to impress the Soviet delegation.” However, Churchill was double-crossed by the weather, and the incineration of Dresden could not be carried out until the thirteenth, when he had already left Yalta after concluding his counterrevolutionary deal with Stalin. Even the senior air force officers had little enthusiasm for the mission, regarding it as a waste of time and of no military value. “With considerable misgivings,” said Sir Robert Saundby, the deputy British air commander, “I had no alternative but to lay on this massive air attack.”
At 10:15 p.m. on the evening of February 13, the first wave of British bombers struck. Only 27 night-defense fighters were available to greet the massive bomber force of over 900 planes. The city was so completely undefended by antiaircraft weapons that the commander of the raid ordered his Lancaster bombers to a lower altitude so that the bomb load could be more evenly distributed throughout the target area.
Three hours and 15 minutes later, the second wave of 529 British bombers swept over the city, which was already in flames. The bomb loads for the second wave were specifically chosen “to spread the fires and to keep the heads of the firefighters down,” writes Irving. One of the pilots described the scene as the second wave of bombers approached: “The fantastic glow from 200 miles away grew ever greater as we moved into the target. At 20,000 feet away we could see details in the unearthly blaze that had never been visible before; for the first time in many operations I felt sorry for the population below.” One of the bombers filmed the inferno for 10 minutes: Not one searchlight, not one burst of flak, can be observed on the entire film. The city was totally defenseless.
Another British pilot wrote: “There was a sea of fire covering in my estimation 40 square miles. The heat striking up from the furnace below could be felt in my cockpit. The sky was vivid in hues of scarlet and white, and the light inside the aircraft was that of an eerie autumn sunset. We were so aghast at the awesome blaze that although alone over the city, we flew around in a standoff position for many minutes before turning for home quite subdued by our imagination of the horror that must be below. We could still see the glare of holocaust 30 minutes after leaving.”
Almost 650,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on Dresden—one for every citizen of the city. Hundreds of two- and four-ton blockbusters were also used. And still it was not over. Fourteen hours after the first attack, shortly after noon on February 14, 1,350 American Flying Fortresses and Liberator bombers appeared over the city and began dropping 771 tons of bombs on those who had survived the first two blitzes. At 12:23 p.m., when all the heavy bombs were unloaded, 37 P-51 fighters zoomed low over the city to machine-gun columns of survivors trying to leave the city. Hundreds fortunate enough to have escaped the conflagration met their deaths on the highways and along the banks of the Elbe from low-flying American planes.
The fires in Dresden raged for seven days and eight nights. Thousands of bodies were never found and others were reduced to unidentifiable ashes. The thousand-year-old city was razed to the ground. One thousand six hundred acres were totally destroyed, twice the damage done to London by all the Nazi bombs and rockets of the war. Eleven square miles of the inner city were more than 75 percent destroyed, according to the city authorities. The column of smoke rose three miles into the air and created a pall over the surrounding countryside that lasted for three days. A shower of ash drenched the area downwind of the city for 20 miles. Dresden’s fire brigade of 1,000 men was paralyzed by the impact of the first wave of bombers. Its telephone and electricity service were knocked out. By the time firemen could be mobilized and put into action, the second wave hit.
The timing of the first two raids, three hours apart, had the most devastating impact on the refugee population, mainly German peasants from Silesia who had no previous experience of bombing raids. Tens of thousands of people, who had hidden in groups of 80 or 90 in the cellars of the Victorian-era houses which predominated in the city, began to emerge and flee for their lives after the first raid. Just at this point, the firestorm reached its height. Eyewitnesses reported entire groups of fleeing refugees literally picked up by the hurricane force winds and sucked into the center of the raging fire. Most often, death came virtually instantaneously, through the inhalation of super-hot gases. Giant trees were snapped in half and even railroad locomotives were blown over by the force of the gales. Those who remained inside the cellars fared no better. Thousands died of smoke inhalation. In one railroad tunnel where 2,000 refugees were billeted, only 100 died of direct action of the fire, but another 500 suffocated.
The eyewitness descriptions of the impact of this destruction are comparable only with the accounts of the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One soldier in the recovery work said, “All the way across the city we could see the victims lying face down, literally glued to the tarmac, which had softened and melted in the enormous heat.”
Hanna Voight, an assistant school master, was named head of the Dead Persons Department, charged with the impossible task of identifying the victims. He described the scene: “Never would I have thought that death could come to so many people in so many different ways. Never had I expected to see people interred in that state: burst, cremated, torn and crushed to death; sometimes the victims looked like ordinary people apparently peacefully sleeping; the faces of others were racked with pain, the bodies stripped almost naked by the tornado; there were wretched refugees from the East, clad only in rags, and people from the Opera in all their finery; here the victim was a shapeless slab, there a layer of ashes shoveled into a zing tub. Across the city, along the streets wafted the unmistakable stench of decaying flesh.”
The number of fatalities can never be known with any accuracy. The estimate by the Stalinist East German authorities is the lowest—35,000. The original position of the Stalinists was to downplay the horror of Dresden in line with Stalin’s insistence that his imperialist allies were not doing enough in the war with Germany. The fact that the Dresden bombing was directed more against the Soviet Union than against Germany is only now being belatedly admitted, in the celebrations making 40 years since the defeat of Hitler by the Red Army. Other estimates range from 135,000 to 250,000, which would make the death toll greater than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Certainly the presence in the city of hundreds of thousands of refugees makes the higher totals much more probable.
Like the atomic bombing of Japan, the bombing of Dresden was carried out, not to “win the war quickly,” as propagandists for the Pentagon and the British War Office claimed. Nor was it even to terrorize the population of the defeated imperialist powers, Japan and Germany. In each case, the aim was rather to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the awesome firepower of Allied air force, armed with new techniques and new weapons, and the cold-blooded willingness of the imperialists to use these methods of mass extermination.
The New York Times, in an article on the commemoration of the firestorm, in its January 30 [1984] issue, cites “Churchill’s wish—to warn the Soviet dictator of the terrifying air power at their command.” Churchill ordered the incineration of Dresden as a terrorist action against the Soviet Union, aimed at holding up the advance of the Red Army into central Germany and putting British and US imperialism in a better bargaining position in the carve-up of Europe which was taking place. That the Soviet “ally,” not the Third Reich, was the main enemy is underscored in the instructions given the airmen who flew nine Mosquito aircraft on the Dresden raid. Supplied with the most advanced electronic gear developed by the imperialist powers, the pilots were instructed in case of forced landing, if at all possible to destroy their aircraft, but in any case “to land in German-occupied territory in preference to that overrun by the Soviet Army.”
In his Memoirs of the Second World War, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959) Churchill, in a personal letter to the president of the United States dated April 1, 1945, reminds Roosevelt that, were the Soviets to beat the Western Allies to Berlin, would it not “lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future?” He then puts into italics his proposal: “I therefore consider that from a political standpoint we should march as far east into Germany as possible, and that should Berlin be in our grasp we should certainly take it. That also appears sound on military grounds.”
Link (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/dres-f15.shtml)
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