Dresden Print P 68

To antiwar activists, the 1945 attack was a war crime. The real story was very different. The HEN US airpower struck targets in Baghdad during 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 Royal Air Force 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. Germany 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 questionable 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 Hamburg suffered far worse attacks. 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 casualties, 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 firebombing tactics were cruel and and public generally welcomed the of the war, RAF Bomber Command 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.

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