Aircraft of World War II - WW2Aircraft.net Forums

Forgive me for the disagreement.

My reasoning is that there was a POW and concentration camp in Dresden which the Allies knew about and bombed anyway. And aside from that, the mass bombing of any city is wrong. It's true that mass murder can be neccessary. But at no point should we argue that mass murder is right, if "right" is defined in terms of justice, morality, and the law.

The city was choked with retreating Wehrmacht and SS troops and equipment.

It's airfields were active with fighter, bomber, transport and training units.

It's railyards were moving men and materials.

How is this city any different than Berlin, Cologne or even London?

IIRC, it was February of 1945 and Germany teetered on the verge of collapse. Did the Allies really need to carpet bomb the city with ground forces closing in? AFAIK, Dresden had almost no anti-aircraft batteries and they could have even used low-level bombing rather than carpet bombing, which would have spared the concentration camp as well as the POW camp. Dresden may be forgivable but it was a mistake.

The two POW camps were 27 miles north and 20 miles north-east, respectively. The slave labor camp, which about 500 inmates was on the outskirts of the city.

As has been pointed out, there was a massive amount of military forces in and around the city.at the time. In February of 1945, Germany was still VERY much in the fight and several savage battles between Allied forces were yet to come.