A review of the book I wrote a little while ago -
The Destruction of Dresden
Avid Irving 1963 This printing, March 1968
287 pages with appendixes and index Ballantine Books NY
"The single biggest massacre in European history," according to this author, took place as a result of the triple-blow air raids over the night of February 13-14, 1945 when successive waves of British and American bombers bombed the Eastern German city of Dresden. In this book, the author covers so many aspects of the raid that I took four pages of notes.
Dresden was acknowledged as a cultural center for arts, music, and architectural beauty. There were wartime rumors that the city had not been bombed because of a secret deal with England – Germany would not bomb Oxford and the British would not bomb Dresden. Many Germans believed the city was safe from air attack since it had no factories making any particular war materials, though it did have small shops and an optical facility. Some RAF personnel questioned whether it was really the target, or had there been a mistake? The war was still raging, though the end was inevitable in February 1945. The Red Army was 90 miles from the city center. Evacuees fleeing the advancing Red Army had flooded the city; its hospitals were full while schools were being converted to handle more patients. Allied prisoner of war camps were in the suburbs. Prison camps in the East that were being moved were passing through the city as well.
The city had no massive air raid shelter, and in fact, searchlights and anti-aircraft guns had been moved to other parts of Germany in October the year before. It was undefended. (The book cover's artwork is incorrect – the AA guns had been pulled out to use as anti-tank guns elsewhere.)
The residents had seen 171 false air raid alarms before that night when the RAF dropped 650,000 incendiary bombs, plus many 4,000 and 8,000 pound blockbuster bombs, on the old historic residential part of the city (not the suburbs with the rail yards and small factories). A
And that was just the first wave that struck at 10:10 PM. At 1:30 AM the second wave struck – timed to interrupt the firefighting attempts and cause a fire-storm.
The American B-17s dropped their bombs just after 12 noon on the 14th (Ash Wednesday) but because 9/10ths cloud cover, their bombs (aimed at the railway yards) fell wide into residential sections. P-51 Mustangs swooped down and strafed columns and masses of people fleeing and rescue people heading in. Again, there was no anti-aircraft fire. No German night fighters met the bombers either.
One whole U.S. Bomb group bombed the wrong city. (They mistakenly bombed Prague, Czechoslovakia)
The result, according to this book, was the death of 135,000 people in one day. The results caused a furor in London and Washington, D.C. "Were terror raids being conducted or strategic bombing of industrial facilities?"
The book covers the grisly recovery and attempts to identify bodies. The well-organized Germans did their best under the circumstances. However, four buckets of gold wedding bands tagged from bodies for identification (the wearers initials and sometimes wedding dates were engraved) disappeared when the Red Army took them. As can be imagined, there was much finger pointing among the Allies. That too is covered in the book.
One thing to take away from reading this was my wondering how modern emergency preparedness measures would do under such circumstances.