[rad-green] The Beasts and the Bombings: Reflecting on Dresden, February 1945

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/10/beasts-and-bombings-reflecting-dresden-february-1945
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/10/beasts-and-bombings-reflecting-dresden-february-1945>Common
Dreams          February 10, 2020*





*The Beasts and the Bombings: Reflecting on Dresden, February 1945The
Dresden bombing shocked the world’s conscience.by Brett Wilkins*

[image: View from Dresden city hall after the February 13-15, 1945 Allied
bombing. (Photo: Deutsch Fotohek/Wikimedia Commons)]

*View from Dresden city hall after the February 13-15, 1945 Allied bombing.
(Photo: Deutsch Fotohek/Wikimedia Commons)*

The Allied destruction of Dresden wasn’t the biggest or deadliest aerial
bombardment of a German city during World War II. But it is by far the most
infamous, largely due to Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war masterpiece
Slaughterhouse-Five. February 13 marks the 75th anniversary of what
Vonnegut, who survived the bombing as a prisoner-of-war, called “carnage
unfathomable.”

Butcher Harris and British Terror Bombing

By early 1945 the once-unstoppable German army was in retreat on all
fronts. Its desperate last-ditch counteroffensives against the rapidly
advancing Allied forces in the west—the Battle of the Bulge and Operation
Baseplate—had failed, while in the east the Red Army rolled into German
territory during the first Silesian Offensive. The time was right, British
commanders argued, for large-scale aerial attacks on cities in eastern
Germany that would aid the Soviet offensive and crush German morale.

Long before this time the British had implemented a policy of what they
called “terror bombing,” or the total deliberate destruction of German
cities, as a method of breaking the will of the German people to continue
fighting. Waves of Royal Air Force (RAF) warplanes bombed densely populated
cities under cover of night, abandoning any pretense of precision targeting
and causing widespread, indiscriminate death and destruction. The chief of
the RAF Bomber Command, Arthur “Bomber” Harris, declared his desire to
visit “the horrors of fire”
<https://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2009/12/germany-air-bomber-war-bombing> on
the German people. Once Harris was pulled over by a British police officer
for speeding in his black Bentley. “You could have killed someone,” the
constable admonished him. “Young man,” the commander retorted, "I kill
thousands of people every night."

In 1943, Harris wrote that “the aim is the destruction of German cities,
the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilized life
throughout Germany” while “downplaying the obliteration of German cities
and their inhabitants.”

He wasn’t lying. Although the British government insisted that it was never
its policy to target civilians, the truth was something altogether
different. As Harris said after Luftwaffe bombers blitzed British cities,
since the Germans had “sown the wind” they should “reap the whirlwind.” In
1943, Harris wrote that “the aim is the destruction of German cities, the
killing of German workers and the disruption of civilized life throughout
Germany” while “downplaying the obliteration of German cities and their
inhabitants.”

“Bomber” was indeed a fitting nickname for Harris, but his men had another
one for him — “Butcher.” He lived up to the moniker. Around 50 German
cities were subjected to horrific aerial bombardment, often with incendiary
bombs designed to spark massive firestorms and maximize death, destruction
and terror. In July 1943, some 45,000 civilians
<https://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2009/12/germany-air-bomber-war-bombing>
including
21,000 women and 8,000 children died during more than a week of relentless
bombing in Hamburg. In February 1945 hundreds of Lancaster bombers leveled
Pforzheim
<https://www.dw.com/en/pforzheim-the-dresden-nobody-knows-about/a-18274739>,
killing nearly a third of the population. The list went on and on.

‘Fire, Only Fire’

Harris and other RAF commanders proposed simultaneous attacks on Berlin,
Chemnitz, Dresden and Leipzig in the winter of 1945. Dresden, Germany’s
seventh-largest city, was the largest urban area in the Third Reich that
hadn’t yet been bombed. It had been spared from Allied attack because it
was an important cultural city — known as the Jewel Box for its celebrated
architecture — with relatively few significant military targets. It was a
city of refuge, with 19 hospitals and more than a million refugees fleeing
the horrors of the Red Army advance encamped there. They were drawn by
Dresden’s reputation as a safe haven from the flames of war that had
engulfed most of the rest of Germany, a reputation reinforced by the
presence of some 25,000 Allied prisoners of war held in and around the city.

The first RAF warplanes approached the city after 9:30 p.m. on February 13.
Some 200,000 incendiary bombs along with 500 tons of high-explosive
munitions including two-ton “blockbuster” bombs were dropped during the
initial raids, sparking thousands of fires that could be seen from 500
miles (800 km) away in the air. The heat generated by the inferno melted
human flesh, turning many victims into piles of goop. Men, women, children,
the sick, the elderly, refugees and Allied POWs and even the animals in the
city zoo — all were incinerated together. The 2700º Fahrenheit (1480° C)
firestorm sucked all the oxygen from the air; many thousands suffocated to
death. Lothar Metzger, who was nine years old at the time, later recalled
<http://www.timewitnesses.org/english/~lothar.html>:

About 9:30 p.m. the alarm was given. We children knew that sound and…
hurried downstairs into our cellar… My older sister and I carried my baby
twin sisters, my mother carried a little suitcase and the bottles with milk
for our babies. On the radio we heard with great horror the news:
“Attention, a great air raid will come over our town!” … Some minutes later
we heard a horrible noise — the bombers. There were nonstop explosions. Our
cellar was filled with fire and smoke and was damaged, the lights went out
and wounded people shouted dreadfully. In great fear we struggled to leave
this cellar…

We did not recognize our street any more. Fire, only fire wherever we
looked… It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many
people were horribly burnt and injured. It became more and more difficult
to breathe… Inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon…
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… The twins had disappeared… we never saw my two baby sisters
again.

The following morning, a wave of more than 300 United States Army Air Force
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers pounded the survivors with over 700
tons of explosives. On February 15, US warplanes bombed the city’s
southeastern suburbs, as well as the nearby towns of Meissen and Prina. By
the time it was all over, some 25,000 men, women and children were dead and
nearly 90 percent of the homes in central Dresden were obliterated. Many of
the targets that could have been considered of military interest — a few
factories, the railway system — remained relatively unscathed. Nazi
military trains were chugging through the city again within three days
<https://classic.esquire.com/article/1963/11/1/apocalypse-at-dresden> of
the bombing.

‘Are We Beasts?’

British and American officials insisted Dresden was chosen as a target
because of its industrial and transportation infrastructure. This is only
partially true. On the eve of the bombing, the Red Army was a mere 80 miles
(130 km) from Dresden and the US and Britain, knowing that Europe would be
carved up between themselves and the Soviets after the war, wanted to
impress Stalin with a massive show of force. An RAF memo to airmen the
night of the attack explained
<https://books.google.com/books?id=XUMuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA300&lpg=PA300&dq=%25252522to+show+the+russians+when+they+arrive+what+Bomber+Command+can+do%25252522&source=bl&ots=j6ZbDkQsF0&sig=ACfU3U2IQ6bfn2VErUFPBtEYHZxfATlDYw&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizncPL6L3nAhVBCjQIHa8CAyk4ChDoATACegQICBAB%252523v=onepage&q=%25252522to%25252520show%25252520the%25252520russians%25252520when%25252520they%25252520arrive%25252520what%25252520Bomber%25252520Command%25252520can%25252520do%25252522&f=false>
that
“the intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it
most” and “to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can
do.” A few months later, the United States would wage the world’s first and
only nuclear war, obliterating two Japanese cities and killing hundreds of
thousands of their people, in what was partly yet another bid
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/08/04/did-america-have-to-drop-the-bombnot-to-end-the-war-but-truman-wanted-to-intimidate-russia/46105dff-8594-4f6c-b6d7-ef1b6cb6530d/>
to
shock and awe the Soviets.

The Dresden bombing shocked the world’s conscience. Churchill, not known
for outpourings of compassion, was appalled by the savagery of the attack,
calling it “an act of terror and wanton destruction.” After seeing
photographs of the devastated city, the prime minister asked
<https://books.google.com/books?id=7DZ0AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT269&lpg=PT269&dq=churchill+%252522act+of+terror+and+wanton+destruction%252522+%252522are+we+beasts?%252522&source=bl&ots=a_ENdknbtI&sig=ACfU3U0uSKR4fbpzwpl_zAmSkUdW49TzdA&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN0Oyxkb7nAhU0KX0KHcpWBrwQ6AEwAHoECAIQAQ%2523v=onepage&q=churchill%252520%252522act%252520of%252520terror%252520and%252520wanton%252520destruction%252522%252520%252522are%252520we%252520beasts%25253F%252522&f=false>,
“Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?” In a top secret memo
<https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g1/cs3/g1cs3s3a.htm>
dated
March 28, 1945, he wrote:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of
German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under
other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of
an utterly ruined land.

Others defended the bombing. “Butcher” Harris acknowledged
<https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g1/cs3/default.htm>
that
“the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the
war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that
our earlier attacks were fully justified.” However, he asserted that terror
bombing would “shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers.”
Harris infamously added
<https://www.ft.com/content/dd103704-e785-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39>: “I do
not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth
the bones of one British grenadier.”

As many as 600,000 German civilians
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/oct/22/worlddispatch.germany> were
killed by Allied bombing over the course of the war. Many of these victims
died during the war’s final months, when Germany’s defeat was certain and
such slaughter served no valid military purpose. And while the Nazis may
have started the air war by bombing British cities, killing 14,000
civilians during the Blitz, the whirlwind they reaped—to paraphrase
Harris—was so grossly disproportionate that it would forever stain the
Allies’ self-righteous claims of having waged the “last good war.”

*Brett Wilkins <https://www.commondreams.org/author/brett-wilkins> is a San
Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital
Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human
rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com <http://www.brettwilkins.com/>.*

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