APOCALYPSE 1945 the Destruction of Dresden

THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN APOCALYPSE 1945 The Destruction of Dresden F FOCAL POINT THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. Educated at Imperial College of Science & Technology and at University College London, he subsequently spent a year in Germany working in a steel mill and perfecting his fluency in the language. Among his thirty books the best-known include Hitler’s War, The Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field- Marshal Rommel, Accident, the Death of General Sikorski, The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe and Göring: a Biography. He has translated several books by other authors. He lives in Grosvenor Square, London, and is the father of five daughters. In he published his first English language book, The Destruction of Dresden. Translated and published around the world, it became a best- seller in many countries. The present volume, Apocalypse , revises and updates that work on the basis of information which has become available since . THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN LUFTWAFFE HOSPITAL AIR ZONE COMMAND XVI () DRESDEN A. GENERAL-WEVER-STRASSE. I think it is February 13, 1945. My darling, darling wife, I doubt that this letter will ever reach you; these are probably the last words and thoughts I shall ever write to you. Apparently I was brought to Dresden earlier yesterday. Tonight there have been two air-raids, one after another. Now everything around me and above me is on fire. The hospital I’m in has been evacuated, and is empty. Outside I can hear a fire-storm raging, like the one in Hamburg. The whole building has been abandoned long ago. Eve- rybody ran off when it caught fire. I am curious to know how many of them will survive, and where they’ve gone to. Everything around my bed is on fire; smoke and sparks are making breathing almost impossible. It is peaceful here in the cellar. There is one candle giving out a little light. It is going to get very hot in here too. At the moment, I am just lying here in the cellar which is still cool, smoking my last rescued cigarette, and thinking of all the things one ought to think of in ones last minutes alive. There’s nothing I can do but wait, and write these words… Perhaps you will then sense somehow, even if this letter does not reach you and you find yourself alone, that my last conscious thoughts were with you and my mother. Yours, V. THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN Copyright © Focal Point, London Internet edition Copyright © Focal Point, London http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/Dresden All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. Copies may be downloaded from our website for research purposes only. No part of this publication may be commercially reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission in accordance with the provi- sions of the Copyright Act (as amended). Any person who does any unauthor- ised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The Destruction of Dresden was first published in Great Britain by William Kimber & Co. Ltd , in a revised and updated edition in by Corgi Books Ltd, and by Papermac, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, in . The present work Apoca- lypse has been thoroughly revised and expanded on the basis of materials available since . Source notes are still in draft form. Researchers are advised that figures for the final deathroll in Dresden still vary widely, and may be lower than this author originally stated. Printed edition published by FOCAL POINT PUBLICATIONS, Duke Street, Lon- don WM DJ British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Irving, David John Cawdell Apocalypse . The Destruction of Dresden . World War, – – Aerial operations . Dresden (Germany) – Bombardment, ISBN ––– THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN [Click to navigate] Contents They Have Sown the Wind .......................................................... 7 Bomber Command Gets its Teeth .............................................. 22 Fire-Storm................................................................................ 36 A Second Firestorm .................................................................. 55 The Sabre and the Bludgeon ..................................................... 74 Dresden the Virgin Target .......................................................... 89 Thunderclap ........................................................................... 110 The Plan of Attack .................................................................. 133 The Plate-Rack Force Arrives .................................................. 151 A City on Fire......................................................................... 168 The Triple Blow Complete ...................................................... 187 Ash Wednesday ....................................................................... 202 The Victims ............................................................................ 220 Abteilung Tote ........................................................................ 234 Anatomy of a Tragedy ............................................................. 255 They Shall Reap the Whirlwind................................................ 271 The Reaction of the World ....................................................... 295 A Serious Query ..................................................................... 310 THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN Part One DRESDEN: THE PRECEDENTS They Have Sown the Wind IR HISTORIANS trace the earliest roots of the area offensive against Germany to Athe events of May , . Prior to this date, aerial attacks had been delivered by the Royal Air Force only against capital ships, bridges, or gun installations, more from respect of the superiority of the German Luftwaffe than from considerations of international law. Warships in the Kiel Canal had been attacked as early as September , but it was not until the night of March –, that the R.A.F. dropped its first bombs on German soil, bombing a seaplane base on the island of Sylt; three days earlier the Luftwaffe had raided the Orkney Islands, killing a British civilian. ‘Up to that time,’ the Air Ministry noted in June , ‘the R.A.F. had avoided the bombing of targets which might have involved the civilian population.’ The Royal Air Force had continued to restrict its operations over Germany to ‘nickelling’ – dropping leaflets on the Reich, a pursuit which continued up to the evening of May , , the day when Hitler’s invasion of France and the Low Countries began; it was also the day on which Neville Chamberlain, a pronounced THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN opponent of the use of the bomber as a weapon of terrorisation, was replaced by a less inhibited British prime minister. Just before four P.M. on that warm but cloudy afternoon three twin-engined aircraft flying at an altitude of around five thousand feet appeared out of the cumulo- nimbus clouds over Freiburg-im-Breisgau in south-western Germany; each dropped a stick of bombs and departed swiftly. Most of the hundred-pound bombs exploded very wide of their original aiming point, the fighter airfield: only ten fell on the airfield, while thirty-one, including four which did not explode, fell within the city limits to the west; six fell near the Gallwitz barracks, and eleven fell on the Central Station. Two of the bombs fell on a children’s playground, in Kolmar-Strasse. The Polizei-Präsident – the official responsible for civil defence in every German city – reported fifty-seven fatal casualties, comprising twenty-two children, thirteen women, eleven men, and eleven soldiers. The German propaganda ministry was swift to exploit this incident. The official D.N.B. news agency stated that night: ‘Three enemy aircraft today bombed the open town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, which is completely outside the German Zone of Operations and has no military objectives’; the agency added that the German Air Force would answer this ‘illegal operation’ in a like manner. ‘From now on any fur- ther systematic enemy bombing of the German population will be returned by a five-fold number of German planes attacking a British or French town.’ The Freiburg raid was surrounded in immediate mystery. The French, accused of having executed the attack, insisted that they were innocent, although a Potez aircraft had been seen in the area; satisfied by this plea, the British Foreign Office published a clear warning that they regarded the German allegation as ‘mendacious’; they suspected an attempt at prefabricating a justification for a Luftwaffe (German air force) assault on allied towns: while recalling that on September , they had given an assurance to the President of the still, nominally, neutral United States that the Royal Air Force had been given orders prohibiting the bombing of civilian populations – an assurance which it must be stated the British prime minister up to May , had scrupulously observed – the British government now publicly proclaimed that it reserved the right to take whatever action it considered appropri- THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN ate in the event of German air raids on civilian populations. Thus the Cabinet on its very first day of office under Mr Winston Churchill, the new prime minister, was able to dispose of Mr Chamberlain’s public guarantee to respect German civilian lives, a guarantee which could well have proved embarrass- ing in the offensive against Germany that was to ensue. vvv Four days after the Freiburg affair, the Luftwaffe launched

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