Remembering Dresden

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Remembering Dresden

DW-World.de
February 13, 2005

Sixty years ago Sunday, Allied bombers attacked Dresden and the thousands of residents and refugees who lived there. Traces of the militarily dubious decision to bomb the city remain visible today.

On the evening of Feb. 13, 1945, nine Mosquito fighter planes and 244 Lancaster bombers from the Royal Air Force's 5th fleet took off from their base in the south of England. Dresden's air raid sirens started to wail at 9:39 p.m. Around 20 minutes later the first target-marking bombs fell on the stadium just outside of the city center. The first air raid lasted about 30 minutes and was so dense that the entire inner city was engulfed by a firestorm.

"There, between exploded trams, I saw the first scorched dead, charred, shrunken, some of them just brushed by the flames but still asphyxiated," a soldier recounted. "Women, children, men -- the horrible death had taken them all."

The Allies didn't just attack Dresden to break the civilians' morale; the idea was also to cut off communication lines to the front.

The second air attack took place between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Feb. 14. More than 500 planes bombed 15 square kilometers (9 square miles) of the city. All told, 650,000 firebombs, air mines and 1,800 demolition bombs were dropped on Dresden in the first two air raids. They totally destroyed the densely inhabited historic city center, mainly hitting residential buildings, churches, offices and museums.

"Our house was hit many times during the second attack," a survivor said. "We all threw ourselves on the floor and my husband said, 'It's burning, it smells like fire.' And he opened the first door and the flames were already blazing. There was nothing to do to save our lives but run through the flames."

Strategic after all?

The military's Albertstadt, the industrial areas and the airport where barracks were located, remained largely untouched. In the next raid, around noon, the US Air Force targeted the transportation infrastructure.

Though the bombing of Dresden has for years generally been viewed merely as pointless destruction, British historian Frederick Taylor claimed that the city was strategically important after all. Taylor's book "Dresden: February 13, 1945" has caused controversy in the city itself.

"There was a train junction, a garrison, troops came and went as in any other German city near the front," Taylor said. "The English planners wanted to prevent the replenishment of supplies to the eastern front. The attack was not exclusively directed against Dresden; it was also against Chemnitz and Berlin."

But similarly large carpet bomb attacks on Chemnitz, Plauen or Leipzig killed far fewer people, because thousands of people had taken refuge in Dresden at the time of the air raids. Though there's no way knowing exactly how many people died, the official death toll is 35,000, and the city has become a symbol of World War II aerial warfare.

Raids saved Jews

Aside from the suffering and destruction they caused, the air raids saved the last 175 Dresden Jews. On the morning of Feb. 13, orders were dispatched to deport them. During the bombing though, many of the Jews were able to go underground, including the family of Heinz Joachim Aris, today head of Saxony state's Jewish community.

"I was born in Dresden and this city's ruin and the endless suffering of many innocent citizens was dreadful," Aris said. "One must simply see it in the context of cause and effect."

For, Aris added, the Semper Synagogue was burned down on Nov. 9, 1938, and six years later the entire city followed. The Dresden inferno was part and parcel of a horrible war that included the destruction of cities like Rotterdam, Coventry and Leningrad.

Dresden's residents showed an immense willingness to rebuild their devastated home after the war. Their determination is exemplified by the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche, the Church of Our Lady. For nearly 50 years, the church's ruins evoked destruction and death.

But after German reunification in 1990, the Frauenkirche was rebuilt thanks to generous donations -- also from the partnership with the city of Coventry. The new cross atop the church was donated by Britain's "Dresden Trust" and forged by the son of one of the bomber pilots.

Wolfram Nagel (ncy)

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Questioning The Reasons For Allied Air War

DW-World.de
February 14, 2003

With the publication of a new book, Germans are re-examining the horror brought by Allied planes during World War II. It is an issue that the city of Dresden knows too well.
The white postcard framed within a square of red bears a sign of death. "City gone," it says.

The message was written in the immediate aftermath of the Allied firebombing of the baroque city of Dresden, a series of air raids carried out from Feb. 13-15, 1945. Today, it is one of the surviving documents that help people remember one of the war's most controversial air attacks, directed at a city that had little military significance and served as sanctuary for thousands of refugees who had fled from the Soviet Red Army.

As they do each year, the city's residents held a series of services on Thursday to mark the start of a three-day bombing attack that showered fire on the city. It is not clear how many people died, partly because many victims were incinerated and their ashes mingled with the rubble. The official estimate is 35,000.

"You have to look at the fate of each individual so that afterward you don't simply talk of collateral damage," said Jens Herrmann at one of the Thursday services.

To help keep the memory of those victims alive, the bells of all churches in the city began to toll at 9:45 p.m., the time that the bombs began to fall.

Anniversary gains new meaning

This year's services had special significance for two reasons.

Hanging over Thursday's services was the growing threat of a new war. Even though this war would occur far from Dresden, the city's residents still expressed their dismay that this violence might kill more innocent people. "We, the survivors of the bombing raids, appeal to the world: Help prevent new suffering, new destruction and new death," a declaration said.

This year's anniversary also falls at a time when Germans have begun to re-examine the horrors that the Allied air war brought to their country. The new debate was started with last years's publication of a book called "The Fire - Germany and the Bombardment 1940-1945"by historian Jörg Friedrich.

"The bombardment of German towns and cities that went on for five years during World War II has no parallel in history," Friedrich wrote. "More than 1,000 cities and villages were bombed. Nearly a million tons of explosives were dropped on 30 million civilians -- mostly women, children and the elderly."

An estimated 635,000 civilians were killed and 130 German cities destroyed in the campaign.

Book focuses on suffering

But Friedrich's book goes beyond a recitation of numbers. Using such terms as "mass extermination," "gassed," and "crematoriums," Friedrich describes the suffering of the civilian population who were buried, burned and killed in the attacks with language more commonly used to describe the victims of German campaigns.

He also questions the strategy that led to this suffering. "The British did indeed have the option in 1944-45, a time when Germany was already on its knees, of stopping the senseless carpet bombing campaign," he said in a newspaper interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.

The book's publication started a new examination around the country about the air war, its methods and its goals. The war became the subjects of cover stories in national magazines. "Crimes against the Germans?" the magazine GEO asked on its cover this month. "The taboo subject -- the air war."

The war also was the subject of a documentary on public television last month that showed children eating their meals amid the ruins, elderly residents hobbling over piles of rubble and row after row of bodies lying on streets. And Germany's leading opposition bloc in the German parliament is preparing to formally ask the coalition government how the country should mark the 60th anniversary of the raids around the country.

Critics dislike book's language

Friedrich's book stands in the center of the debate. It has also stood in the center of criticism -- at home and abroad.

German critics, for one, have taken issue with Friedrich's choice of words. In a review of the book that appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hans-Ulrich Wehler wrote: "There is talk of a 'war of annihilation' being waged against the German cities and its residents, although this term was reserved for good reason in the past for the (Nazi) war of annihilation waged against the Jews and Slavs."

Expressing a criticism coming from historians, Wehler wrote: "The danger of Friedrich's book is that in its passion for the helpless victims of the Allied bombing war it could further the cult of victimization that is so widespread in the United States."

Abroad, the book has upset Britons. These critics point out in particular that Friedrich's narrative is lopsided, ignoring the fact that Nazi Germany was the first to launch air raids on civilians in Warsaw, Poland; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Coventry, England; and London.

Thoughts of reconciliation

In defense of his work, Friedrich said he saw the book in a larger context. "The culture of reconciliation has expanded to the point that we can now accept the truth," he told the newspaper Die Welt.

In Dresden, that culture of reconciliation has been at work for years. One victim of the raids was a city landmark, the Frauenkirche, the baroque church that for 200 years stood as a monument of the Saxon capital's glory. The church is being rebuilt in an international effort.

Among the thousands of people who have joined the effort are the British who are providing a golden cross for the new dome. The cross was created by a London goldsmith with a special interest in Dresden: His father was a pilot in the air raids.


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