THE JUSTFICATION OF THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN?

[code yellow]

I know this is off the subject of gas chambers,but to me it is a prime example of the biased conformity of the western historical community,meaning,you can't scrutinize the historical aspects of the holocaust,but you can certainly question the implications of allied atrocities.In a new book by Frederick Taylor called Dresden,people magazine reveiws as follows."The WW2 firebombing of the German city of Dresden by British and American air forces in 1945 has become a symbol for the unjust cruelty of war.Thanks to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and many other retellings,the popular image of Dresden evolved into that of a wholly innocent city deliberately destroyed for revenge.IT IS THIS MISSCONCEPTION that historian Taylor sets out to dismantle in his comprehensive study of the bombing and its context.And dismantle it he does.Taylor meticulously documents both the Nazi party's entrenchment in Dresden and the precision manufacturing there,two factors that would have made it an allied target even if the city's strategic position as a transportation hub to the eastern front did not already guarantee it.While honestly enumerating the appalling damages visited upon Dresden,Taylor also explains,with the same honesty,the circumstances that he argues MADE THE ATTACK JUSTIFIABLE-at least,according to the brutal calculus of war."......."Dresden is a bracing rebuke to the MYTHS AND PROPAGANDA that have been painted over the memory of this tragedy."Well,you will probably be able to pick this one up at Barnes and Noble,but you can't get a copy of The Holocaust Industry,Dissecting the Holocaust,or any other revisionist books(speaking of bracing rebukes to myths and propagandas).

[Hannover]

The far worse savage cruelty of the Allies vs. anything the Germans/Axis powers actually did is one of main reasons for 'official' acceptance of the lies about gas chambers, 6,000,000 Jews, gypsies, homosexuals (an alleged 12,000,000 grand total...but no commensurate physical evidence...hellooo). The Allies need to deflect from their barbarity, such as Dresden...which is simply one example.

I haven't read the book in question, but no matter; excuses now being offered cannot possibly justify the deliberate targeting of civilan population in the tens of thousands, which is exactly what happened. Party buildings and alleged precision equipment production facilities would have been easy to isolate.

More lies, easily shot down.

full text 'Dissecting the Holocaust' here:
http://vho.org/GB/Books/dth/found.html

- H.

[TruthSeeker]

Dresden was a predominantly civilian city, no? From what I gather anyway. I've read very little about it, but I first encountered it (I know, funny, isn't it, one has to have read a certain book to have known about it...) in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five... there is some information with photos of pre-bombing and post-bombing on the web... There's a book about it by David Irving, but I have not read it yet.

Here's an excerpt from that book that relates to this:

In a statement describing the target in perhaps unusual detail, the ministry stressed the importance of Dresden to the enemy. As the centre of a railroad network and as a great industrial town it had become of the greatest value for controlling the German defences against Marshal Koniev’s armies. The telephone services and the means of communication were almost as essential to the German army as the railroads and roads which met in Dresden. Dresden’s buildings had been desperately needed for troops and administrative offices evacuated from other towns, the bulletin added. With rather less accuracy, the statement pointed out that ‘among other war factories, Dresden had large munitions workshops in the old Arsenal, and a great number of light engineering works engaged in war production of all kinds.’ There were important factories making electric motors, precision and optical instruments, and chemicals. The city was comparable in size with Manchester.

[code yellow]

clearly the allies were aware of the civilian population of Dresden.Why not kill two birds with one stone,and only promote one excuse to validate the other?Examine what happened at the end of the war to German civilians(expultions and the like).Clearly these were acts of revenge.

[TruthSeeker]

:) clearly the allies were aware of the civilian population of Dresden.Why not kill two birds with one stone,and only promote one excuse to validate the other?Examine what happened at the end of the war to German civilians(expultions and the like).Clearly these were acts of revenge.

Revenge? Maybe hatred, I am not sure if it could be considered "revenge." Revenge for what? The "holocaust"? I don't think so. The war? Maybe? I think they should've known better though, that war is just THAT - war. And each side has loss of lives.. Revenge is just downright stupid, and if that was the reasoning in bombing Dresden, then I would not call them anything but dumb.

[code yellow]

I agree,revenge is stupid.I guess the allies weren't satisfied with just winning the war.They had to strip Germans of their pride and impose a guilt on them that has lasted till this day because of certain war crimes,many of which revisionists prove to be just hoaxes,While supressing there own from the general public.One of the crimes the Germans were found guilty of is forced expulsions of Jews from the east.But while they were trying the Germans for this crime,they were implimenting the very same crime on Germans from the east.And mind you the war was suposedly over at this time.

[Hannover]

But while they were trying the Germans for this crime,they were implimenting the very same crime .........

Indeed, the American concentration camps for Japanese-Americans had to be obscurred by manufacturing 'crimes' of their foes. Then there's the deliberate use of atomic weapons on Japanese civilians, responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

- H.

[neugierig]

Quote:
“Dresden was a predominantly civilian city, no?[...]”

Yes, it was. My Mom was born in Dresden, her sister lived there at the time of the bombing. I saw Dresden before and shortly after the bombing. It is still only partially re-built.

There was, of course, some industry in Dresden. A fairly large optical plant (Zeiss?)for one, no doubt producing equipment used in the war. And so what? Germany was fighting for its survival.

But here is what shoots Taylor’s stupid argument down. If it would have been an important industrial city, it would have had some weaponry to defend it. There was nothing. It had a few airplanes, which were out of fuel at the time of the attack and just a few token pieces of FLAK, air defence system. Because it was of no military importance, it was a cultural marvel, Germans fleeing east Germany went there to seek refuge. Nobody in his wildest dreams believed that Dresden would be bombed. There is a new report out, I have only seen bits of it. It is by a historian (?) by the name of Münzer. He claims he has seen Red Cross reports from that time, they state that 600 000 refugees were in the city. This sounds about right to me. My sister and I visited our aunt two weeks before the murderous raids. She showed us around, as always, being proud of her city. She was quite indignant about all the refugees. They were everywhere, blocking the streets with horse/ox drawn wagons, camped in the parks and all along the shores of the river Elbe. I can well imagine what happened to them when the firestorm was created. Münzer claims 500 000 were killed. We will never know for certain.

What is so frustrating is, anytime anyone mentions that the Germans were victims too, some Taylor comes along and tries to justify what was nothing but a barbaric act. But the Taylor’s of this world are not the worst, this honour goes to the German Lumpenintelligentsia. In their opinion, only the Jews suffered, The Holocaust as party emblem of the left. And as long as those Nestbeschmutzer (nestbefouler) have the say in Germany, nothing will change.

Regards
Wilf
No one is free, until we are all free.

[Sushicotto]

...Red Cross reports from that time, they state that 600 000 refugees were in the city...

I just found this quote at wintersonnenwende.com that might be relevant.

Churchill, Winston, British Prime Minister (1874-1965): "I do not want suggestions as to how we can disable the economy and the machinery of war; what I want are suggestions as to how we can roast the German refugees on their escape from Breslau." Quoted in: Juan Maler, Die Unvollendete, p. 27.

But I have no idea as to its authenticity and when it was made, in relation to the Dresden bombing.

Cheers,

Sushicotto

[neugierig]

Sushicotto wrote:
“I just found this quote at wintersonnenwende.com that might be relevant.[...]”

Thank you for this, Sushicotto, I’ll see if I can find and verify it. I have, however, no doubt that Churchill and his fellow butchers targeted German civilians. I know the Russians did, I experienced it.

But, we are threading on thin ice here, this has nothing to do with the ’Holocaust’, and I have the feeling that the Moderators hammer is about to come down, rightly so.

Regards
Wilf
No one is free, until we are all free.

[TruthSeeker]

As early May 11, 1940, the RAF decided to bomb German cities.
A statement from April 18, 1941:

"The earlier raid against Berlin was not only repercussion, but part of the regular procedure of the RAF as instructed by the royal government.
This policy will be pursued until the war is over by the means of increasing force and will be continued, even if there aren't any more
attacks on England."

So-called historians also like to cite Hitler to justify the attack on Dresden. As an example, Josef Nyary quoted Hitler:
"We will eradicate their cities"
(in German Newspaper "Die Welt" on Feb. 13th, 1995).
The original quote was taken out of context and cut in half:
"If they'll attack our cities, we will eradicate their cities".

The raids on Dresden and the following cities:
Kiel, Neumünster, Stralsund, Bremerhaven, Emden, Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, Neubrandenburg, Neustrelitz, Prenzlau, Bremen, Hannover, Rheine, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, Braunschweig, Magdeburg, Berling, Potsdam, Frankfurt/Oder, Bocholt, Münster, Kleve, Wesel, Dortmund, Hamm, Soest, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf, Aachen, Düren, Bonn, Köln, Siegen, Koblenz, Trier, Bingen, Bad Kreuznach, Mainz, Worms, Kaiserslautern, Pirmasens, Karlsruhe, Pforzheim, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Friedrichshafen, Ulm, München, Augsburg, Straubing, Heilbronn, Nürnberg, Ingolstadt, Bayreuth, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Hanau, Frankfurt, Gießen, Schweinfurt, Würzburg, Gießen, Kassel, Nordhausen, Merseburg, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Eilenburg, Halberstadt, Magdeburg, Gelsenkirchen, Oberhausen, Witten, Duisburg, Hagen, Wuppertal, Solingen, Neuß, Remscheid, Brilon and Aschaffenburg

were said to only target industrial sites, but in reality the allied command targeted the civilians with the goal, to break their will and demoralize the population to trigger a revolt against the Nazi regime.

[...]

"the cities became crematoria..."

[...]

The British historian David Irving quoted on 13 February 1990, on the occasion of a lecture to 45. Anniversary of the destruction of Dresden in the Dresdner culture palace, the war criminal Churchill:

"I would not like to have suggestions, how we can destroy war-important
goals in the surrounding countryside of Dresden, i would like have
suggestions , how we can roast 600.000 Refugees from Breslau."

[...]

Franz Kurowski (Bomben über Dresden):

"Regardless, what a criminal has done, his judges cannot commit the same crimes, without ending up on the same level to become murderers themselves. The difference is: They have won the war and could judge others, without being judged.
They weren't punished at all. Furthermore, as with "bomber" Harris,
memorials were built to remind everyone how successful they were
in destroying German cities, killing more than 600.000
German women, senior citizens and children.."

http://www.pilotenbunker.de/Extrablatt/ ... 3_engl.htm

Don't know how reliable those info are... So far, I haven't found any articles that have that quote by Churchill in it.. But I will look for it, and I'll post a link when I find it.

[Moderator]

was said:

...we are threading on thin ice here, this has nothing to do with the ’Holocaust’, and I have the feeling that the Moderators hammer is about to come down, rightly so.

Not quite. As long as posts are in context to the so called 'holocaust' as alleged and that context is stated and clear, then fine. That point is mentioned in our guidelines.

As to this thread, the main point was the use of the so called 'holocaust' story to obscure the massive war crimes of the Allies (Dresden as an example), at least that's how I read the initial post. As long as posts make that connection I see no problem.

Put yourself in my shoes, the Forum has to keep focused on it's stated subject matter less we become distracted. Distraction ultimately makes continuity and comprehension difficult for our readers. For the most part, outreach to the laymen and new folks is why we exist, keep that in mind. The material we discuss can be confusing to the uninitiated, hence the need for clarity, directness, and focus.

Thanks all, Moderator

[Werd]

I was considering buying Taylor's book on the matter for some balance but others are claiming he is whitewashing the numbers. Others are also claiming it was not of strategic importance.

Some article quoted by neugierig

But here is what shoots Taylor’s stupid argument down. If it would have been an important industrial city, it would have had some weaponry to defend it. There was nothing. It had a few airplanes, which were out of fuel at the time of the attack and just a few token pieces of FLAK, air defence system. Because it was of no military importance, it was a cultural marvel, Germans fleeing east Germany went there to seek refuge. Nobody in his wildest dreams believed that Dresden would be bombed. There is a new report out, I have only seen bits of it. It is by a historian (?) by the name of Münzer. He claims he has seen Red Cross reports from that time, they state that 600 000 refugees were in the city. This sounds about right to me

So maybe I should not buy Taylor's book. I only want to know in regards to that single post on the axishistory forum,
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 71#p669671
which asserts the following points:

1. Irving gives no figure for the high number of refugees. Especially since in the 1963 edition he says 300,000 - 400,000 and in the 1995 he said 1,000,000.

As far as I know, the only attempt Irving ever made was to substantiate his "swollen to its double size" assertion for Dresden's population was in his 1966 Corgi paperback edition where he claimed that the Dresden City authorities had issued 1,250,000 ration cards by the time of the raids, citing statistics "provided by Mr. Howard Gee [further unidentified], who was given them [by whom? unanswered!] during a visit in June, 1963." This fact disappeared from the 1995 edition because as Irving himself admitted he had subsequently become aware that the Allies had dropped millions of fake ration cards to confuse the population and hamper the German administration.

The above is based primarily upon Evans Report and Evans Book at 172-5. Evans concludes at 172 that "It seemed obvious to me in the light of the increase which they underwent between the 1966 and 1995 editions of his book that these figures [as to the number of refugees in Dresden at the time of the raids] were entirely arbitrary. At no point did Irving give a source for any of them. They were figments of his own imagination."

2. Other historians are allegedly more reasonable and have given smaller numbers said this one poster on forumaxis.

Friedrich Reichert in 1994 wrote that there was no billeting of refugees. "Due to numbers of men who were away on active service Dresden's resident population had dropped to 567,000, and to this added 100,000 temporary refugees to arrive at the city's total population at the time of the raids."

Rudolf Förster's Article "Dresden", in Hiller, Jäckel and Rohwer (eds.) Städte in 2. Weltkrieg: Ein Internationaler Vergleich (Essen, 1991) ( Cities in the Second World War: An International Comparison) had come up with the same number of refugees.

As far as I know, the only attempt Irving ever made was to substantiate his "swollen to its double size" assertion for Dresden's population was in his 1966 Corgi paperback edition where he claimed that the Dresden City authorities had issued 1,250,000 ration cards by the time of the raids, citing statistics "provided by Mr. Howard Gee [further unidentified], who was given them [by whom? unanswered!] during a visit in June, 1963." This fact disappeared from the 1995 edition because as Irving himself admitted he had subsequently become aware that the Allies had dropped millions of fake ration cards to confuse the population and hamper the German administration.

The above is based primarily upon Evans Report and Evans Book at 172-5. Evans concludes at 172 that "It seemed obvious to me in the light of the increase which they underwent between the 1966 and 1995 editions of his book that these figures [as to the number of refugees in Dresden at the time of the raids] were entirely arbitrary. At no point did Irving give a source for any of them. They were figments of his own imagination."

Alexander McGee, who in his The Devil's Tinderbox: Dresden, 1945 (London 1982) ends up taking Seydewitz' original 35,000 figure, and then on the basis of poor air raid protection and the number of refugees in the city (as to neither of which can I understand the relevance to the number of corpses actually counted) suggests it might be doubled to 70,000 "without fear of exaggeration".

As well, some take issue with Irving on the claim of straffing.

In his 1996 Corgi paperback edition, he added the following:

Most of the pilots appear from eye-witness accounts to have decided that the safest attacking runs could be made along the Elbe river banks. Others attacked transport on the roads leading out of the city, crowded with columns of people. One ‘A’ Group P-51 of the 55th Fighter Squadron flew so low that it crashed into a wagon and exploded. The other fighter-pilots were, however, disappointed by the lack of opportunities for combat, especially the crews of the ‘B’ Group aircraft.

As a source for the above briefing and its results Irving gives "the account contained in the 20th Fighter Intelligence Bulletin for 14th February 1945". That sounds quite authoritative But Bergander pointed out that this ‘source’ is ‘a partly quite free interpretation’ from ‘Kings Cliffe. The 20th Fighter Group’, in which appeared the sentence: ‘Shortly after leaving the target ‘A’ Group hit the deck to strafe enemy transportation but found few targets.’ It also describes an incident where one fighter crashed and exploded. There was no mention of a briefing to "dive over roof tops". Moreover, Bergander discovered that although there had been an attack by Fighter Group "A" that day, it had been made against Prague and not Dresden!! And as early as 1961 Irving had been provided a detailed report by one of the pilots explaining in detail that they had hit Prague and not Dresden!

The written orders for fighter escort on the US Dresden bombing mission on February 14 are available in the National Archives in Washington DC. They contradict everything in Irving's description. The pilots are instructed to make every attempt to conserve gasoline; any stafing will be done on withdrawal; only "A"Groups are to strafe and only at Group Leader's discretion if no enemy aircraft have been encountered or are expected. In US air force terminology "On withdrawal" did not mean "as soon as the bombing attack was over" as Irving would have it, but rather "once the fighters had been withdrawn from their escort duties" which would be long after the bombing run when the risk of encountering enemy fighters was considered minimal.

And it is true that that the records show that a fighter from the 55th Fighter squadron belonging to the 20th Fighter Group was lost in the way that Irving describes. The problem is that the attack was not on a wagon but upon a truck carrying a Wehrmacht colonel, who was killed in the process, and occured near Donauwörth in Western Bavaria, on the fighter's way home from Prague, not Dresden, and over 200 miles West of Dresden.
_________________________________________________________________________________

The above comments on the strafing issue are based primarily on Evans Report Section 5.2 (c) (i)-(iii) and on Taylor, Appendix A, at 429-42. The former can be viewed at no charge under "Evidence" at:

http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/ieindex.html

This point about strafing was echoed in walterkascher's post under Ad.7 Ignoring Available Contradictory Sources. But there is another addeudum.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 64#p669064

And on this point I can’t resist recounting another incident. In early 1965 one Theo Miller, who was a member of the Dresden Clearing Staff in 1945 with responsibility for keeping track of the number of bombing deaths, wrote Irving complaining of his allegation of a 135,000 death toll. Miller stated that by mid-March, 1945, his task was almost completed – the city was free of corpses – and he was accordingly ordered to return to his Division in Latvia. At that point of time his records according to his best recollection showed approximately 30,000 corpses. He went on in a postscript to deny that the death toll could have possibly exceeded 50,000 – pointing out that the corpses had either to be buried or burnt in the Altmarkt, and that as some 25,000 had been buried, it would have simply been impossible logistically to transport and incinerate the remaining 110,000 in the Altmarkt on a grate of about 70 x 10 meters. Evans Book at 165-6. Irving gave no heed whatsoever to Miller’s correspondence, and indeed raised his death estimate in the 1965 and 1966 editions of the Book to 250,000 on the basis of a copy of a copy which in his 1963 Book he had proclaimed fraudulent, and which was later definitively proved to be such.

Also,

Ad. 5 Ignoring contradictions from His Own Sources.
In explaining how Voigt’s 135,000 death toll estimate was reduced to 35,000 Irving states at 227-8 that it was done arbitrarily by “the Soviet occupation authorities, [who] true to their insistence that the Allied air forces were not an effective weapon of war, refused to accept the estimate of 135,000 dead…and, according to Voigt ‘calmly struck off the first digit.’” Farfetched as this explanation may seem, Irving evidently thought it more plausible than the explanation which Voight had come up with in a letter he wrote to Irving in September 1962, before the Book was published, stating that it was the Dresden German officials who reduced the figure “out of fear of the ‘Big Four’ so as not to speak ill of them.” Evans Book at 151. Irving offers no corroborating evidence of any kind to support either explanation, and either way, to my perhaps oversensitive nostrils both explanations have a strong aroma of fish to them, which Irving makes no attempt to dispel.

So my conclusion is that if we are to believe in a high death toll, we can not look to David Irving since his backup appears to be lacking. Would that not mean there is at least SOME value in the Taylor's work? Showing the shortcomings of Irving is fine. But what if I want a book in English that is NOT plagued with the problems of Irving AND still can prove a high death toll, what would it be? Or am I out of luck? Apparently, given the number of even GERMAN authors who are reporting five figure numbers as opposed to six figure numbers (which my gut tells me it really is as I have not studied Dresden in depth yet), are my hopes doomed? As walterkaschner states here

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 85#p669685

I can only suggest that if you are seriously interested in determining the truth of the matter you take a look at or invest in (or obtain through your library) the links and sources I have cited previously - Bergander, Reichert, Schnatz, Evans, Taylor - a fair reading of which will, I believe, convince you that a death toll of 135,000 from the Dresden air raid can not be supported, either by documentation, by logic or by comparable experience.

I only quote all of these other authors on Dresden not because I agree with them necessarily (although as someone new to Dresden they seem credible prima face), but because it ties in with my question about other works on Dresden in English that may take them into account and correct them and prove a high death toll without the shoddy historical works of David Irving?

[hermod]

THE JUSTFICATION OF THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN? "I do not want suggestions as to how we can disable the economy and the machinery of war; what I want are suggestions as to how we can roast the German refugees on their escape from Breslau." - Winston Churchill

An interesting point is the death toll. It's now officially claimed that 25.000 people were killed by the Allied phosporus bombs at Dresden and any higher estimate is immediately pointed as "Nazi propaganda" and "Neo-Nazi bullshits". But the Nazi propagandists in fact decreased the real death toll in order not to break the morale of their people at that crucial moment of WW2. The real death toll was probably 10 or 20 times higher than 25.000. 25.000 dead after 14 hours of incendiary bombing in a city full of 1.000.000 homeless (and unregistered) refugees is a joke ! The authorities severely punish "Holocaust denial" and support "Dresden Holocaust Denial". Who can still consider those crooks as a reliable source as soon WW2 is concerned?

[Kingfisher]

Well,you will probably be able to pick this one up at Barnes and Noble,but you can't get a copy of The Holocaust Industry,Dissecting the Holocaust,or any other revisionist books(speaking of bracing rebukes to myths and propagandas).

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/The-Holocaust-Industry?store=book&keyword=The+Holocaust+Industry
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Dissecting-the-Holocaust?store=book&keyword=Dissecting+the+Holocaust