To antiwar activists, the 1945 attack was a war crime. The real story was very different. The HEN US airpower struck targets in Baghdad dur- ing the first days of Gulf WWar II, the media brought up the name Dresden of a historic European city almost as often as they mentioned the Iraqi capi- tal itself. That city was Dresden. It was a potent symbolic reference, intended to suggest cruelty, horror, and unjustifiable overkill. On Feb. Legend 13-14, 1945, two waves of firebomb attacks and a follow- up US Army Air Forces raid all but obliterated Dresden, an old and grace- ful German city on the Elbe River. Huge incendiary assaults created a firestorm that consumed everything in its path. surrendered three months later, but by then the world had al- ready begun to hear a “legend” of Dresden, one formed and promoted by By Rebecca Grant Nazi propagandists. According to this legend, the destruction of Dresden was not a valid military operation at all but was at best a vicious attack of ques- tionable value and, at worst, a war crime against defenseless civilians. The legend grew in postwar years. Dresden was in Soviet-occupied East Germany, and Moscow put the 1945 event fully in the service of anti-Ameri- can and anti-British propaganda. Many western writers did their part, too. In the 1960s, Kurt Vonnegut’s best-sell- ing novel, Slaughterhouse 5, deliv- ered a memorable fictional rendering of Dresden’s blazing streets and burned bodies. Critics persistently raised questions about why this “Florence of the Elbe” had evidently been singled out for such a ferocious attack, and so near the end of the war, when it had been hit only a few times before February 1945.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and ... Dresden This legend of Dresden was part history, part propaganda, and part out- right myth. Other cities such as Berlin and suffered far worse at- tacks. Still, Dresden has surpassed them

64 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2004 in the public mind as a symbol of brutal conventional bombing and mor- ally questionable target selection. Only Hiroshima and Nagasaki have higher revulsion quotients. Thus, Dresden is a well-established reference point, guaranteed to prompt debate on city bombing, civilian ca- sualties, and the morality of Allied The Price. Dresden paid a price for Nazi operations. Germany’s sins. As Which brings us to Baghdad. In Soviet forces closed in early 2003, the ghost of Dresden was from the east, the city’s an ever-present touchstone for anti- fate was determined by war forces. its strategic location along rail and road lines “Recently, a debate over whether of communication that the Allied bombing of Dresden was could facilitate a German a war crime has preoccupied the Ger- counterattack. In this man press,” observed columnist Anne famous photo taken from Dresden’s Townhall Applebaum. Tower, a sculpture titled “Dresden 1945. Baghdad 2003: “The Goodness” The Same Crime,” read a placard in appears to be surveying a Berlin protest spotted by a New the wreckage. York Times reporter after the start of Gulf War II. After the bombing of Baghdad, “Some excited TV commentators lik- ened the scene to the devastation caused by the extensive bombing of Dresden and other cities during World War II,” observed a New York Times editorial. It was also a marker for the coali- tion—a “don’t go there.” “Baghdad What, exactly, happened at Dresden ing, with the large Zeiss-Ikon cam- will not be like Dresden,” vowed an in 1945? And why has it remained a era factory converted to make fuses Air Force colonel conducting a Penta- powerful symbol nearly 60 years later? and bombsight optics. The United gon background briefing on airpower When World War II began, Dresden States Strategic Bombing Survey just before Operation Iraqi Freedom was the seventh largest city in Ger- listed at least 110 factories and in- began. many. Official statistics put Dresden’s dustries in Dresden. Some 50,000 What makes Dresden stand out is population at 642,143. It had been a people worked in munitions and ar- the sense that the Allied attack was popular tourist destination because maments production. disproportionate. In the laws of war, of its marvelous cathedral, synagogue, proportionality is key. Claims that palaces, gardens, and avenues radiat- Too Far East Dresden was not a legitimate military ing out from the medieval city center. Still, Dresden was not a target of target, that the attack came too late in For all of its charm, however, Allied air attack until 1944. It was the war to make a difference, and that Dresden had an ugly side. Its leaders too far to the east. In the early years the tactics were cruel and and public generally welcomed the of the war, RAF unusual are at the center of the debate. Nazis’ rise to power. and the US Army Air Forces had Ernest W. Lefever, a senior fellow “Dresden is a pearl, and National their hands full attacking Nazi-held of the Ethics and Public Policy Cen- Socialism will give it a new setting,” France, Holland, and western Ger- ter in Washington, D.C., summed up Adolf Hitler boasted in 1934. Most many. Then came concentrated at- the case against the Allies with this resistance to the Nazis in Dresden tacks on major industrial targets and charge: “Hitler’s barbarity didn’t jus- was stamped out by 1935, according the all-important preparations for the tify the fiery obliteration of beautiful to historian Frederick Taylor in his Normandy invasion. Dresden.” comprehensive 2004 book, Dresden: In those early years, bombers that Dresden also provides a major count Tuesday, February 13, 1945. found themselves over Dresden gen- in the indictment of RAF Bomber Even while Dresden was being con- erally were strays from raids on Ber- Command’s doctrine of nighttime area verted to a Reich stronghold, observ- lin. Dresden recorded just 12 air raid bombing. ers outside Germany paid attention warnings in all of 1940, seven in Denouncers of the Dresden attack only to its cultural beauty and luxury 1941, and four in 1942. Most came to come from different points on the industries. This was true despite con- nothing. Dresden took its first air raid political spectrum. For instance, neo- trary evidence. In fact, said Taylor, casualties only in August 1944, when Nazi groups promote the legend of an official 1942 guide described the some bombs from a raid on the nearby Dresden via Internet postings in or- German city as “one of the foremost town of Freital fell in its outskirts. der to show that non-Jewish Ger- industrial locations of the Reich.” According to official Air Force re- mans suffered in the war. Dresden shifted to a wartime foot- ports, Dresden was not targeted de-

AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2004 65 alarming, the JIC laid out a timetable predicting the Germans could com- plete the reinforcements by March 1945. The JIC’s research was backed up by supersecret Enigma-code inter- cepts. The JIC had no doubt that the suc- cess of the Russian offensive would © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS have “a decisive effect” on the length of the war. Then came the recom- mendation: “We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and Ameri- can strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employ- ment to this end.” It got more than a review. On Jan. 27, 1945, Gen. Arthur T. Harris, head of Bomber Command, got his orders Decision. Gen. Arthur Harris, head of RAF’s Bomber Command, got the “go” from his RAF boss. The chief of the order Jan. 27, 1945. Harris viewed Dresden as “a mass of munitions works, an Air Staff would allow one big attack intact government center, and a key transportation center.” on Berlin, but he also ordered re- lated attacks “on Dresden, Leipzig, liberately until 30 B-24s of Eighth but significant Panzer forces re- Chemnitz, or any other cities where Air Force on Oct. 7, 1944, struck the mained in areas like Hungary. a severe blitz will not only cause rail marshaling yards with more than confusion in the evacuation from the 70 tons of high-explosive bombs—a Soviet Jeopardy east but will also hamper the move- comparatively light raid. Eighth Air By Feb. 2, 1945, the Russians were ment of troops from the west.” Force returned to Dresden’s marshal- near Frankfurt, but Moscow’s drive The idea of US and British air ing yards with 133 bombers on Jan. now formed a bulge 400 miles long support for the Russian campaign 16, 1945, dropping 279 tons of high at its base with northern and south- was hardly new. Eisenhower him- explosives with 41 tons of incendiar- ern flanks over 100 miles deep. Even self used exactly the same technique ies in the mix. this juggernaut was vulnerable to to support his own Normandy land- As the war closed in, it was the flank attacks from areas still held by ings in 1944. He was counting on strategic location of Dresden along the German Army. Dresden was a airpower again in 1945 to “prevent rail and road lines of communica- major rail junction controlling Ger- the enemy from switching forces back tion that would determine its fate. man movement on that front. and forth at will” against attackers. By January 1945, one of the most A big question was how best to What was good for the Western important elements in the Allies’ stra- use Bomber Command and Eighth Front also was good for the Eastern tegic calculus was the new Russian Air Force to support the Russian ef- Front. In December 1944, the US ground offensive. Gen. Dwight D. fort. ambassador to Russia, W. Averill Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Com- Britain’s Joint Intelligence Com- Harriman, had talked over the idea mander, had the Battle of the Bulge mittee had a detailed answer to that with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. under control and Allied forces in the question. Composed of representa- Stalin got the same message in a west were ready to move into Ger- tives from military intelligence ser- mid-January 1945 meeting in Mos- many itself. To end the war by sum- vice, counterintelligence, naval in- cow with Eisenhower’s deputy, Brit- mer 1945, the Allies would have to telligence, the , and the ish Air Marshal Arthur W. Tedder. coordinate the eastern and western Ministry of Economic Warfare, this Tedder briefed him on “application drives as never before. powerful committee tracked the sta- of the Allied air effort with particu- Russia’s winter offensive began tus of German forces and produced lar reference to strategic bombing of from Poland on Jan. 12, 1945, and papers on the likely outcome of communications as represented by made “remarkable progress,” as courses of action. According to Tay- oil targets, railroads, and waterways,” Eisenhower said in his memoirs, lor, the JIC’s Jan. 21, 1945, report and they also discussed how to bring reaching German soil a week later. put it bluntly: Germany might be airpower into the fight as Germany Though the ring was tightening on able to reinforce the Eastern Front began to shuffle forces. Germany, Berlin had a compensat- with up to 42 divisions pulled from ing benefit: shorter internal lines of France, Norway, Italy, Latvia, and Call for Help communication. The smaller battle elsewhere. At Yalta on Feb. 4, 1945, Gen. area meant that the German Army Thus, it was a race between Russian Alexei Antonov, Red Army chief of could redeploy its forces from one offensive operations and the arrival of staff, briefed Stalin, Roosevelt, and front to another rapidly. According German reinforcements. Half a mil- Churchill on the Russian offensive to historian Matthew Cooper, Hitler lion men pouring eastward was the and asked for US and British help. immediately began shifting his forces, last thing the Allies wanted. More He wanted them to speed up the ad-

66 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2004 vance in the west, crush the Ardennes they sucked oxygen from street level dar at ground stations and in night salient once and for all, and weaken so that many of Coventry’s 538 vic- fighters. The firestorm killed about German ability to shift reserves east. tims died of asphyxiation. 40,000 and compelled even Hitler’s The Russians wanted to begin a The main damage to Coventry’s war production chief, Albert Speer, new phase of advance in February. economy came from the combined to admit that more attacks like Ham- To do so, Antonov wanted air forces effects of burned houses, factories, burg would derail German war pro- to pin down German forces in Italy and city infrastructure. Instead of duction. and to paralyze junctions in eastern counting on the near-impossible task This was the same method chosen Germany. That meant Leipzig, Ber- of precision bombing of industrial by Bomber Command for the Dresden lin, and Dresden. sites, the had brought war attack. Less than two weeks after The Allies were now committed to work to a halt by destroying all the Yalta, Bomber Command and Eighth an attack on Dresden designed to choke secondary mechanisms that fed the Air Force got the weather they needed off transport through the city. How life of the city. “This was a new level for the Dresden attack. The Russians would they achieve those effects? of annihilation,” commented histo- were notified a day in advance via the The answer lay partially in the rian Taylor. US military mission in Moscow. history of the air war to date, start- Bomber Command soon figured In England, 722 bombers formed ing with the Nov. 14, 1940, German out how to create firestorms of its up to attack in two main waves. Lead- bomber attack on Coventry, England. own. The attack on Hamburg that ing the first wave was Bomber Com- Coventry, like Dresden, was a ma- began on July 27, 1943, provided a mand’s veteran 5 Group, once com- jor manufacturing center built on a weapons-effectiveness model for manded by Harris himself. Their medieval city grid with small work- Dresden. Nearly 800 bombers headed primary aircraft was the newer, faster shops and factories interspersed for Hamburg and masked their ap- Lancaster bomber. Light wood-frame through the city. More than 500 Ger- proach with one of the first opera- Mosquito aircraft led the man bombers attacked with loads of tional uses of Window, Britain’s new formations using a beacon sys- incendiaries. As the fires combined, strips that fuzzed German ra- tem to locate city targets with far

The Route. This mission map published in David Irving’s famous 1965 book, The Destruction of Dresden, shows the route flown by two waves of RAF bombers on the night of Feb. 13-14, 1945.

AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2004 67 to 4,100 tons of incendiaries, more than triple Dresden’s totals. The to- tal of 7,100 tons of bombs of all types dropped on Dresden during the war hardly compared to the 67,000 tons of bombs that fell on Berlin or the 44,000 tons on Cologne. The next day, Feb. 14, 1945, 316 bombers from Eighth Air Force at- tacked Dresden’s marshaling yards outside the city center. The mix was 487 tons of high-explosives and 294 tons of incendiaries. Another 200 bombers of Eighth Air Force returned to hit the same target the next day. “Dresden still burning from the night attacks,” noted Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s British driver, who also kept an official headquarters diary.

Round 3. The day after the RAF’s nighttime attacks, 316 bombers of the US Gruesome Result Eighth Air Force attacked Dresden’s marshaling yards outside the city center. The human toll was high. POWs Taking part were B-17 Flying Fortresses. were detailed to excavate the bodies, giving Vonnegut, who was a prisoner greater precision than in the early around them, running through burn- there, the subject of his novel. Ac- years of the war. ing streets and reaching either the river counts of groups of 10 to 20 people or high ground away from the flames. found untouched, but dead of carbon Grim News Now Bomber Command’s second monoxide poisoning in basement shel- Many of the 5 Group veterans pre- wave was on its way. The second ters, helped to give the Dresden raid paring to fly that evening had just wave released weapons from 1:21 its gruesome reputation. heard grim news: Their initial tours a.m. to 1:45 a.m. All told, Bomber Casualty estimates became a source of duty were being extended from 30 Command dropped 1,477 tons of of ongoing debate. At the time, the missions to 40 missions. “We shan’t high-explosive bombs and 1,181 tons British estimated the firestorm killed make it,” commented one aircrew of incendiaries on Dresden that night. up to 16,000. One 1948 estimate by member cited by Taylor. Their pes- Although this was Dresden’s first two German generals went as high as simism was well-founded, for as late heavy attack, the tonnage was not 250,000. Some British historians in as 1944, official Bomber Command high by Bomber Command standards. the 1950s and 1960s settled on num- statistics forecast that less than 25 of For example, Cologne, Hamburg, and bers near 100,000 by adding together 100 bomber crews would complete Frankfurt-am-Main had all been known casualties plus estimates of even 30 missions without being shot bombed with mixes including 3,800 people missing. down. Losses from 1939-45 aver- aged 60 killed out of every 100 air- crew members in Bomber Command. Flying so deep into Germany also got the attention of Bomber Com- mand’s crews. As one bombardier from 5 Group later recalled, “They said the reason for the raid [on Dresden] was chiefly ... ‘blocking

the supply to the Russian front,’ ... © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS and we were out to knock it out.” Still, conditions favored Bomber Command that night. German air raid warnings went off shortly after 9 p.m. Pathfinders dropping flares from 800 feet marked the targets accurately. RAF 5 Group hit the city at about 10:15 p.m. Ten minutes later, the blaze be- gan. As the old buildings burned, the firestorm spread and created the howl- ing street-level winds that depleted oxygen from the atmosphere. Those Workhorse. The heart of the RAF long-range bomber force was the fast- who survived escaped the heat with flying Lancaster (shown here). The Lancaster was the RAF analogue to the wet blankets and clothing wrapped USAAF B-17 and B-24 bombers. It saw heavy action over Dresden.

68 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2004 However, the true number was probably closer to the 25,000 to 30,000, now cited in official Air AP photo Force historical statistics. Taylor backed the number, too. He cited records recovered from the Dresden archives in 1993, listing the number of people buried after the attack in municipal cemeteries at 21,271. All sources agreed on one fact: A con- tributing factor in the number of ca- sualties was that Dresden lacked proper air raid shelters for civilians. Harris was unapologetic. Dresden, he said at the time, “was a mass of munitions works, an intact govern- ment center, and a key transporta- tion center.” He added, “It is now none of those things.” The attack on Dresden achieved its goal of unhinging the city as a rail Aftermath. Dresden was a scene of devastation after the raids. Within days, transport and communications cen- Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels had launched the “legend.” It was, ter. Official USAF figures show that said one historian, “Goebbels’ final, dark masterpiece.” 23 percent of Dresden’s industrial buildings were destroyed or severely 70 miles from the city, he said. Rus- followed the Dresden bombing rep- damaged, along with more than 50 sian positions were still vulnerable to resents, at least in part, Goebbels’ percent of its houses. In total, 80 German counterattack, and, indeed, final, dark masterpiece.” percent of the buildings in Dresden counterattacks elsewhere on the East- No doubt the view of Dresden as suffered some form of damage. ern Front cost the Russians very heavy overture to Hiroshima and Nagasaki The war continued, with Bomber casualties. There was no way the Al- also played its part. So did the nuclear Command recording its heaviest to- lies could let the Dresden rail and balance of terror during the Cold tals of munitions dropped in the entire communications nodes open the gates War, where the destruction of Dres- war during the month of March 1945. for German reinforcements. Accord- den stood as a graphic warning of The bloody Russian advance went for- ing to a memo signed by Marshall, what nuclear war might do to Eu- ward, too, and Russian troops actually he concluded that communications rope. Yet even after the Cold War entered Dresden on the last day of the through Dresden were made impos- ended, Dresden was held by some to war in Europe: May 8, 1945. sible by the Allied bombings, and the be a black mark against airpower. The distortion of the Dresden raid Russian salient was thereby protected. The strategic and tactical setting of began almost immediately, and it came the raid in support of the Russian from two sources. The first was an ill- Goebbels Strikes offensive was long since lost. advised Feb. 18, 1945, release by Su- The second source was Nazi Ger- In the 1990s, Britain took a special preme Headquarters Allied Expedi- many’s propaganda chief, Joseph interest in Dresden, by then a part of tionary Force (SHAEF). It trumpeted Goebbels. The foreign news service unified Germany. In 2000, the effect of terror bombings. SHAEF and the state-run Das Reich newspa- goldsmiths donated a replica orb and tried to recall the statements, and, at per started bumping casualty estimates cross as part of the reconstruction of Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold’s direc- from around 25,000 to around 200,000 the Frauenkirche cathedral. tion, the Air Staff in Washington and emphasizing Dresden as a lost The true surprise is that the Dresden launched an immediate investigation— cultural treasure. “A city skyline of legend has lived on and has been used but not before the Dresden terror raid perfected harmony has been wiped to prompt comparisons between that story made the front page of newspa- from the European heavens,” Das long-ago operation and present-day pers around the world. Reich said in early March 1945. American- and British-led air opera- The furor led no less a figure than Goebbels did his job well. Soon, tions. No incendiary raids devastated Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Dresden was under Russian control, Baghdad in the Gulf War of 1991. In Marshall to issue a definitive state- and it became impossible for de- 2003, it took neither firestorm nor ment on Dresden’s significance in cades to sort out the facts. In 2004, 300-bomber raids on railroads to stop early March 1945. When Dresden was Taylor came to a conclusion: “[The] effective maneuver of the Republi- bombed, the Russian salient was only ripple of international outrage that can Guard around Baghdad. That was the work of truly modern airpower: precise, discriminate, and employed Rebecca Grant is a contributing editor of Air Force Magazine. She is president with maximum care to avoid collat- of IRIS Independent Research in Washington, D.C., and has worked for RAND, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Grant is a eral damage. fellow of the Eaker Institute for Aerospace Concepts, the public policy and Dresden will never be forgotten, research arm of the Air Force Association’s Aerospace Education Foundation. but its place in the record of airpower Her most recent article, “The Missing Aces,” appeared in the September issue. belongs only in the past. ■

AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2004 69