Posted on 10/01/2008 7:53:54 PM PDT by BGHater
A NEW study claims no more than 25,000 people were killed in the massive Allied bombing of Dresden in the Second World War – far fewer than many scholars have believed. Four years of research being carried out by a team of historians and academics has cast doubt on previous claims that up to 135,000 may have lost their lives in the eastern German city over two days in 1945.
The bombing of Dresden became arugably the most controversial operation carried out by British and US forces during the Second World War as it involved creating firestorms by dropping incendiary bombs.
Controversy has raged for decades over how many people died in the waves of attacks by the Allied bombers.
A recent book by British historian Frederick Taylor, published in 2005, claimed as many as 40,000 lost their lives. But the new commission – which involves dozens of university professors, archivists and military historians – has managed to confirm there were just 18,000 deaths. They have also discovered that police and city officials at the time believed that there were only 25,000 victims.
The medieval city of Dresden, was 85 per cent destroyed by two waves of British bombers on 13 February 1945. US planes blasted the city the next day.
The official death toll has most recently been put at about 35,000, but many scholars believe the actual number was higher as bodies – civilians mostly, fleeing the advancing Red Army in the east – were reduced to ashes in the firestorm.
The Allies hoped the bombing would hurt the Nazis where they would feel it most, and help force their capitulation.
Recently, neo-Nazis in Germany have talked of between 500,000 and a million victims of Dresden, calling the raid a "bombing Holocaust" and comparing it to Hitler's murder of six million Jews.
However, a statement issued by the research team yesterday said: "The commission, in this preliminary report, believes there were a maximum of 25,000 people who died during the February aerial attack."
The team of experts has pored through file stretching for more than 2,600ft in the Dresden state archives and interviewed dozens of witnesses. The commission has also studied aerial attacks, rescue operations, firefighting, and archaeological evidence.
Despite the chaos during the devastation of the bombing, they said they found records of recovery and burial of the dead to be "remarkably orderly".
Dresden's mayor Helma Orosz said: "Through this work of the commission the victims get a face and a name. Behind every single victim is suffering and we should remember this."
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
What about Dresden, Wuppertal and the rest of the Ruhr Valley ????
The 8th Army Air Corp and the RAF, December, 1944
Vonnegut would say, “So it goes.”
Who is to blame? Hitler.
The Frauenkirche has been rebuilt and the Neumarkt area is being rebuilt in traditional style houses. It’s quite nice, actually. 24 hour panorama here:
...but THEY started it!
The hard thing about being a FReeper is that you have to get in on a thread very early to post witty, intellectual responses before others do!
Darn you!
good thing Frank Murtha wasn't around to tell us we're murdering civilians
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,
Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze
Brüderlich zusammenhält.
Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world,
When, for protection and defence, it always
takes a brotherly stand together.
Hard to feel sorry for the vast majority who supported genocidal world-war starting racist socialists.
Dr Goebbels: “I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?”
German people: “Ja.”
Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
It’s very difficult to acertain exact numbers on a bombing campaign of that scale. Even if we did it today.
And remember that bombing was not incredibly accurate during WWII though the Norton Bomb site did make it better. I remember my grandfather (Nose gunner in B-24s) mentioning that the smaller the target the more ofter it had to be hit to be sure that it was taken out.
It sounds like they really took some time to get a solid numbers on the Dresden firebombing. Good job by them.
Warsaw
Rotterdam
Neat!
Never a good idea ~ he should have waited for the nukes then no one would have found out he burned only a small percentage of those he sought to destroy.
Growing up in Indianapolis I early discovered that there were a good 150,000 people around who had a personal (blood tie) interest in the outcomes in several German cities.
First Cologne ~ Koln ~ Naptown has a Catholic church which is a scale model replica of Den Dom. There's a reason for this.
Secondly, Dresden ~
Thirdly, Dusseldorf ~
Fourth, Frankfurt and its many suburbs.
Strange, eh?
This was the case throughout the American Midwest.
The Germans voted in the Nazis to resolve vexatious economic and monetary problems. They got Hitler. No doubt many Americans think the unknown, inexperienced, untried Democrats led by Obama can fix some of our vexatious economic and monetary problems.
We'll be lucky to have someone 64 years later who gives a damn how Cleveland was burned to the ground or how many millions were turned into dust.
Over 12,000 built, somewhere around 5000 lost, 10-man crews, over 46,000 casualties.
The "clean" air war.
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