Less than three months before Germany surrendered in World War II, the Allies' four-day firebombing of Dresden leveled the city center and killed 25,000 people, mostly civilians.
More than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices were dropped on Dresden.royaloperahouse/Flickr More than 75,000 homes were destroyed, along with pieces of historical architecture. Wikimedia Commons Looking out over Dresden towards the Southwest from the top of the Town Hall, September 17, 1945.Richard Petersen/Deutsche Fotothek/Picture Alliance via Getty Images A view of Dresden in ruins taken from the top of the Rathaus (Town Hall). The statue, called "Bonitas," was sculpted in 1908-1910 and placed on the building as an allegory of kindness.Deutsche Fotothek A mother who died over her baby carriage. Some victims of the Dresden bombing never even had time to leave their homes before the fire sucked all the oxygen out of the rooms and suffocated them.Deutsche Fotothek A destroyed wall lantern on a ruin in the cleared Jakobsgasse in Dresden. Richard Petersen/Deutsche Fotothek/Picture Alliance via Getty Images A view over the ruined Pirnaische Platz from the town hall in DresdenGerman Federal Archives Commuters board a streetcar in bombed-out-dresden, March 12, 1946.Fred Ramage/Keystone/Getty Images What buildings remained after the bombing of Dresden were uninhabitable after fire tore through their roofs and floors. Foto Frost/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images A woman walks through the unfathomable destruction.Wikimedia Commons A casualty found inside a bomb shelter. Wikimedia Commons Skull from a body recovered in the ruins of Dresden. Most victims died of suffocation from the smoke before their bodies burned in the fast-moving firestorm.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Dead bodies are burned at Dresden's Altmarkt near the Victory Monument on February 25, 1945. So many people died that city officials had no choice but to cremate piles of corpses in public.Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Bodies of dead civilians piled in the streets of Dresden in high stacks. Wikimedia Commons A woman's body as found in an air-raid shelter. Wikimedia Commons The remains of the Stallhof, a courthouse of the big Royal Palace complex. Wikimedia Commons The restored monument to Martin Luther in front of the ruined Frauenkirche in 1958, which became a memorial to the destruction of the Dresden bombing.German Federal Archives A 1957 view of sheep grazing in front of the still-ruined Frauenkirche. AFP/Getty Images This before-and-after composite photo shows the ruins of the Frauenkirche church in 1946, and the church as it stood in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images A composite of the Zwinger art museum in 1946, and in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images From left, propaganda director Heinz Grunewald, Dresden mayor Walter Weidauer, and town architect Dr. C. Herbert in 1946 outside City Hall, and City Hall as it stands in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images A statue on the tower of City Hall looking down at the ruins of the city center in 1945, and the same view in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Women in 1946 forming a human chain to pass bricks for the reconstruction of Martin Luther church, and the church in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Removing debris at the ruins of Theaterplatz square in 1946, and the same spot in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Neumarkt square, with a crumbled fountain and statue in 1946, and people taking photos at the square in 2015.Sean Gallup/Getty Images Prager Strasse, now a major shopping street, following the firebombing in 1945, and in 2015. Sean Gallup/Getty Images The infamous slaughterhouse in which prisoner of war Kurt Vonnegut took refuge during the bombing. Wikimedia Commons Outside the "Semperoper" (Semper Opera House) on Febuary 13, 2005 in a memorial to commemorate the victims.Carsten Koall/Getty Images A human chain surrounds the City Centre in remembrance of the Dresden bombing upon its the 66th anniversary in 2011.ROBERT MICHAEL/AFP/Getty Images Neo-Nazis and their sympathizers march to commemorate the anniversary of the Dresden bombing in 2012.Protesters attempted unsuccessfully to surround the expected 1,500 neo-Nazis with a human chain in order to prevent them from marching through the city in the annual event.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images A visitor stands in front of a 360-degree panorama display by artist Yadegar Asisi that depicts the city of Dresden in the aftermath of the 1945 attack.Sean Gallup/Getty Images The panorama "Dresden 1945 - Tragedy and Hope of a European City" by Berlin-based artist Yadegar Asisi is more than 30 meters high and has a 100-meter circumference. It shows the city from a 15-meter-high viewing platform, so viewers get a sense of the totality of the destruction.ROBERT MICHAEL/AFP/Getty Images White roses left by visitors and survivors lie next to the former railway tracks. This train station is where Nazis shipped the Dresden Jews off to concentration camps.Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Inside The Dresden Bombing And The Apocalyptic Firestorm That Turned The City Into A Wasteland View GalleryBy February 13, 1945, Germany had all but lost World War II. Hitler was in hiding, yet British and American bombs burned the city of Dresden to the ground — and claimed the lives of approximately 25,000 innocent people with it.
In four separate bomb raids over three days, the Allied attempt to demoralize the Germans certainly succeeded. But was it justifiable so late in the war?
As people continue to mourn civilian deaths as a cost of war, the moral implications of the Dresden bombing still hang in the air. The photos above serve as a poignant reminder and testament to the true civilian toll that war takes — even on those who think they're safe.
Why The Allies Decided To Undertake The Dresden Bombing
Known as the "Florence of the Elbe," Dresden was Germany's seventh-largest city and had long been a point of cultural pride. It was the capital of the state of Saxony and was also called the "Jewel Box" because of its impressive mix of baroque and rococo architecture in the city center that still retained much of its narrow medieval street grid and timber-framed buildings.
For the Allies at the end of the war, however, Dresden became a target because it was a hub for Germany's network of railroads and the major junction for lines running to Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Prague. As the Soviets advanced on Germany from the east, these railroads became critical for the Nazis to supply their troops at the front and for carrying refugees away from the war.
Library of CongressA colorized photograph of Dresden from across the Elbe River in 1891.
And while Dresden had a reputation for art, it was also home to more than 100 factories that manufactured everything from poison gas to munitions to aid the war effort. Moreover, it was the last built-up metropolitan area in the country that had yet to be bombed. This, according to a British Royal Air Force (RAF) memo, made it a valuable target.
"In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas," the memo read, according to historian Frederick Taylor's 2004 book Dresden.
"The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance."
Bombing Dresden, the Allies reasoned, would overwhelm Nazi authorities by clogging the country's transportation network with thousands of displaced noncombatants and cripple Nazi Germany's ability to reinforce the Eastern Front, helping the Soviet advance.
But more than that, the Dresden bombing was specifically designed as a terror campaign, intended to strike fear into German civilians and force a swift call to end the war, according to History.
So, shortly after 6 p.m. on February 13, 1945, nearly 800 RAF and U.S. Army Air Force bombers took off from England and headed for the city. By 10 p.m., the city's air raid sirens blared. And within minutes, thousands of tons of bombs rained down on Dresden. Almost immediately, dozens of small fires combined into a firestorm that decimated the city center.
The Terrible Human Cost Of Bombing Dresden
Winston Churchill categorized the Dresden bombing and the killing of innocent people as a "terror bombing" — and terrifying it was. Flames engulfed the entire city. The unimaginable heat completely vaporized small children. Civilians who took shelter underground melted into liquid and bones.
But the first night-time Dresden bombing raid wouldn't be the last. Hours later, a squadron of U.S. Army Air Force planes approached the city and unleashed more carnage. According to one pilot quoted in the BBC, the light from the fire could be seen at 500 miles away, and the smoke reached miles into the air. Two more attacks followed in the next days.
Wikimedia CommonsDresden's Altstadt (Old City), pictured in 1910. Ninety percent of the historic city center was destroyed after the bombing.
In the words of survivor Kurt Vonnegut, who was a prisoner of war in the city at the time and based his novel Slaughterhouse Five on the bombing, "Dresden was like the moon... nothing but minerals."
Another Dresden bombing survivor Lothar Metzger, recalled the event this way:
"We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from. I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them."
Metzger was just ten years old at the time.
By the time the Dresden bombing was over on February 15, 1945, the allies had dropped over 3,900 tons of bombs, and over 90 percent of the city center was in ruins — an area of about eight square miles.
Was The Mission A War Crime?
Dresden burned for weeks as the city's meager fire force struggled to fight the flames. According to the National World War II Museum, there were so many dead that Nazi officials piled bodies on top of steel trusses in the Old Square and cremated them en masse. That job, too, took weeks to complete.
Julia Faßbender/BundesarchivSome of Dresden's most famous landmarks remained in ruins for decades after the bombing, like the Frauenkirche, pictured here in July 1991.
According to the city of Dresden's official report, 25,000 people had been killed, though they noted that because there were a large number of uncounted refugees residing in the area and because so many victims had been vaporized, the true count could be as high as 35,000.
In the days after the Dresden bombing, Joseph Goebbels called it a war crime, and Germany's Propaganda Ministry claimed that over 200,000 people had died in the attack. They also claimed that the city had never been part of the country's war industry but was instead a purely civilian target. And despite several reports to the contrary, to this day, those claims are repeated by neo-Nazi and far-right groups in Germany.
But Nazi propagandists weren't the only ones who looked at the Dresden bombing with dismay and wondered if a crime had been committed. According to the BBC, in the aftermath, British members of parliament questioned the value of the attack, and an Associated Press article claimed that the Dresden bombing was part of a dedicated "terror campaign" aimed squarely at the German civilian population.
Even Winston Churchill himself, who had authorized the raid, questioned the end result of the Dresden bombing, saying "the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing."
See why many categorize the Dresden bombing as a war crime and discover which other events join its ranks in this look at the worst U.S. war crimes of World War II. Then, have a look at these stirring World War II photos that bring the entire catastrophe to life.
ncG1vNJzZmiZnKHBqa3TrKCnrJWnsrTAyKeeZ5ufonylvsSsm56mXZe8rq7Ip54%3D