I've grouped the following together from numerous sources...
Dresden was a center of cultural and architectural wonders, including the famous Zwinger Museum and Palace and the cathedral, the Frauenkirche.
There were no military objectives of any consequence in the city--its destruction could do nothing to weaken the Nazi war machine. U.S. and British air warfare had left Dresden intact until that point.
Articles 25, 27 and 56 of the Hague - prohibit bombardment "by whatever means" of undefended cities, cultural monuments, etc...
By February 1945, refugees fleeing westward before the onrushing Red Army had doubled Dresden's population.
The Soviet military forces were poised to seize the city from the Nazis.
It was at that moment that the military and political strategists of Britain and the United States decided to launch a terror bombing attack.
Winston Churchill was Britain's prime minister then. He was also responsible for war strategy, especially regarding its political aims. Churchill's goal in Europe was not only to destroy the military machine of Britain's imperialist rival--Germany--but to stop the advance of the Soviet Union.
Churchill's goal in bombing Dresden was to impress the Soviets with the air power of the Western capitalist allies and to make sure that the Red Army would seize a dead city.
—The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
—The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.
—The term “terrorist group” means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.
CIA
During three waves of attacks, over 1,300 British and U.S. bombers dropped more than 3,300 tons of bombs on Dresden. Many of the bombs were incendiaries.
The incendiaries dropped on the old city center started a firestorm--a huge blaze that sucked the oxygen from the air. Temperatures soared as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. This had not been seen before in Europe, although U.S. bombing started a firestorm in Tokyo and the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki also set off firestorms.
Article 23 (3) of the Hague - prohibits weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.
The cultural center of the city was totally destroyed. Meanwhile, the only possible military or economic targets--the barracks in the city's north and the train station where trains carrying reserves for the Eastern Front might depart--were left untouched.
A look at aerial maps of the city before and after the terror attacks clearly shows the large white oil tanks owned by British-controlled Shell Oil. These tanks remained entirely untouched by the bombardment.
Official figures issued by the new city government of Dresden, set up in the wake of the city's surrender to the Red Army, indicate that 35,000 people--mostly women, children and older people--suffocated in the firestorm or burned to death. Other studies give a much higher casualty figure for the attack. The presence of so many refugees made accurate counts difficult.
Victims of the bombings.
Here you can see the positioning of Dresden in the far east.
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Oh yeah, and a last note to make. To all those who thought the list of american terrorist activities that i put up on soc v's cap, this is why WW2 is on there. Obviously there are far too many individual events to have noted on that list; and thus why i'm making this "series" of threads in "History"
(Edited by James at 3:53 pm on July 31, 2002)
