Why did the US and Britain destroy Dresden. The bombing of Dresden is a war crime

Much is known about the barbaric bombardment of Dresden. But even more remains unexplored or not understood. The dates of the bombings are known, but for some reason no one pays attention to the objects of the bombings. The results of the bombings are known with an inexplicable variation in the official figures of the dead - from 25 to 135 thousand (there is a figure of 250 and 500 thousand), but even the pedantic Germans could not explain such strange arithmetic. It is also known that some buildings have not been restored so far. But why the city was the target of the bombing for some reason is not customary to say. Not that it's a secret, all the documents have long been published in the press, but somehow it turned out inconveniently. It seems to be not fascists, it seems to be enlightened Europeans, but wiped off the face of the earth a city with civilians, with refugees and the wounded.

To understand this tragic history and answer the questions posed, briefly recall how these bombings took place. For clarity, we summarize the data on the bombings in a table.

It follows from the table that Dresden attracted the attention of the Allies only at the end of 1944, when it was bombed for the first time by the US Air Force. On October 7, 1944, 30 "flying fortresses" - Boeing B-17, which failed to drop bombs on the main target, were bombed on the spare - on Dresden. A similar situation was repeated on January 16, 1945, with the only difference being that there were a hundred more aircraft. Both times the Americans bombed high altitude(6000 m), fearing enemy anti-aircraft fire. And both times it was ineffective, although anti-aircraft guns were removed from the city back in 1943, as was blackout.

The bombing in February was supposed to begin with an air raid by the 8th Air Force of the USAF on the night of February 13, but bad weather over Europe prevented the participation of American aircraft. In this regard, the first blow was delivered by British aircraft. However, the RAF pilots participating in the raid noted excellent visibility and cloudless skies, which allowed them to accurately approach the target. It seems that the Americans, knowing the purpose, refused to bomb the city, but the British lied so that against the background of their bloodthirstiness, the Yankees would not be wearing white gloves. At the same time, the Americans on the Western Front, unlike the British, did not burn with the "fire of revenge", and, accordingly, had no motivation to exterminate civilian Germans. Another thing is the Japanese - the shame of Pearl Harbor in a heap with Japanese prisoner of war camps - aroused righteous rage among the Yankees. And even then, those who fought in the Pacific theater of operations.

At 22:09 CET, guidance planes dropped lighting bombs on the Dresden stadium, marking the starting point for the bombing. Please note that the center of the city was illuminated, and not military enterprises on the outskirts, not railroad marshalling yards. The airstrike was aimed precisely at the city, at civilians. Five minutes later, the first wave of 244 bombers arrived, which, passing this point, fanned out along predetermined trajectories and dropped bombs after a certain time. Three hours later, a second attack took place with a composition of 528 bombers on the already burning city, working firefighters and the fleeing population. The losses of the Royal Air Force during these two raids on Dresden amounted to 6 aircraft, in addition, two aircraft crashed in France and one in England, which confirms the virtual absence of German air defense. In other similar raids, the Allies lost from 30 to 70 aircraft.

Both the first and the second wave of bombers used the same tactics: first high-explosive bombs were dropped to rip roofs off houses and expose the wooden structures of buildings, thereby increasing the effectiveness of incendiary bombs, then firebombs were dropped, and again high-explosive bombs to hamper the work of firefighting services. As a result, it formed fiery tornado.

On February 14 at 12:17, 316 American Boeing B-17 bombers dropped 782 tons of bombs, incl. nearly 300 tons of incendiaries, targeting railroad depots. On the same day, part of the bombers heading for Dresden, but lost their course, bombed Prague. On February 15, 211 American bombers dropped 466 tons of explosive bombs. There is evidence that civilians fleeing the fire were attacked by American fighters. However, their reliability is doubtful.

As rail traffic quickly recovered, the US Air Force carried out two more bombing raids. On March 2, 406 B-17 bombers dropped 940 tons of explosive and 141 tons of incendiary bombs. On April 17, 572 B-17 bombers dropped 1,526 tons of explosive and 165 tons of incendiary bombs. On the same day, they also bombed the industrial zones of Dresden with 8 bombers. Obviously, these eight bombers were enough to destroy the city's military industry. During the raid on Dresden, American aircraft irretrievably lost 8 B-17 bombers and 4 P-51 fighters.

The foregoing indicates that the city was precisely the target of the bombing by British aircraft, neither railway communications nor factories operating for military purposes were subjected to air raids throughout the war. The Americans, on the other hand, massively “ironed” the railway six times, without achieving significant results, and in the end, destroyed several auxiliary military factories.

The total tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was less than in the massive bombardments of other large German cities. However, good weather conditions for aviation, buildings with wooden structures, passages connecting the basements of adjacent houses, as well as the lack of air defense, contributed to the fact that the results of the bombing were disastrous for the city.

The area of ​​the zone of continuous destruction in Dresden was four times larger than that in Nagasaki after nuclear bombing Americans on August 9, 1945.

According to a Dresden police report compiled shortly after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city. The report stated that "24 banks, 26 insurance company buildings, 31 trading shops, 6470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 taverns, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges. In addition, the destruction of military targets was reported: the command post at the Taschenberg Palace, 19 military hospitals and many less significant military buildings. Nearly 200 factories were damaged, of which 136 suffered major damage (including several Zeiss optics factories), 28 moderate damage and 35 minor damage.

The US Air Force documents say: “... 23% of industrial buildings and 56% of non-industrial buildings (not counting residential buildings) were seriously damaged. Of the total number of residential buildings, 78,000 are considered destroyed, 27,700 are considered uninhabitable but repairable, 64,500 are considered slightly damaged and repairable.” The American raid was assessed as follows: "As a result of raids on the railway infrastructure of the city, severe damage was inflicted, which completely paralyzed communications", "Railway bridges across the Elbe River - vital for the transfer of troops - remained inaccessible for movement for several weeks after the raid."

For some reason, the Americans clearly embellished their "merits": sorting railway stations were slightly damaged, one bridge over the Elbe was preserved, traffic through Dresden was partially restored already on February 15, and three days later - completely. The military airfield located in the vicinity of the city was also not damaged. And where did 27.7 thousand destroyed buildings come from, if the Germans report about 12 thousand - only God knows.

The scale of destruction and the number of victims are shown by photographs and post-war testimonies of those who took part in clearing the ruins, the burial of victims of the bombing. We will not take into account the testimonies of those who accidentally survived, because, due to circumstances, they remembered only separate fragments of the tragedy.

According to eyewitnesses, the first wave of bombardment caused thousands of fires, which flared up and merged into one huge one. Approximately 2 - 2.5 hours after the bombardment, a firestorm swept through the city. Giant masses of air were sucked into the formed funnel and created an artificial tornado with a temperature of 600º - 800º Celsius. Fire devoured oxygen on the ground and in basements, people suffocated by the thousands. The currents of air tore off people's clothes, threw their bodies into the raging flames and onto the molten asphalt. The force of the tornado was so great that the wagons were blown off the railway tracks. And two days after the fire, fragments of furniture, the remains of clothes, papers were found 30-40 kilometers from the city.

The second wave of bombardment caused a second tornado, which connected with the first. The temperature, judging by the various melted metal objects found, in places reached 1500º Celsius. The bodies of people evaporated almost without a trace. People were thrown into the fire, uprooted trees, cars, fragments of destroyed buildings. Since after the first tornado people could no longer stay in hot houses and basements, the second one “covered” them in parks, squares and on the Elbe embankment, where they escaped from the heat. This, in particular, explains the thousands of naked, both burned and suffocated people found after the bombing. This air strike, twice as powerful as the previous one, brought the main human casualties, incomparable with the previous bombing, since it hit completely unprotected people.

On the way home, the navigators of the British bombers recorded the light reflections from the flames of the fire at a distance of one hundred and forty kilometers. We saw flames from a fire in Dresden and at a distance of 200 km from the city on the Soviet sector of the front.

The subsequent raids by the Americans, in the already burned city, did not cause either large-scale fires or mass casualties comparable to the British strike. Everything that could burn - burned down, there were no more living people.

Rescue services were able to start work only two days later, when the red-hot ruins of the city began to cool. Their functions were reduced only to clearing the rubble and burying the dead. There were so many dead that it was not even possible to properly bury them. It was not possible to identify the dead: the vast majority of the bodies were badly damaged by the fire. The remains were loaded onto trucks and taken outside the city, where they were buried in mass graves dug out with the help of excavators. However, there were too many corpses, they did not have time to bury them, they began to decompose. In order to prevent an epidemic, giant bonfires were laid in the city, on which corpses were burned. For several weeks, the city center was shrouded in black smoke. Gasoline, scarce in the Wehrmacht, was delivered by personal order of Goebbels to huge quantities. Flamethrowers were also used en masse. Piles of ashes and unburned remains were dumped into the Elbe with the help of bulldozers.

“There were bodies everywhere. From the heat, they shrank to about one meter in length and melted into the asphalt. We just scraped them off with a shovel. The air was saturated with the vile smell of decaying and burned flesh, ”recalled one of the soldiers assigned to participate in rescue operations. The leaders of the rescue squads, which received the informal name of "death units", demanded "more gas masks, alcohol and cigarettes" for their people. The human psyche has limits, it has become unrealistic to work in such conditions without alcohol.

Attracted to clear the city and prisoners of war (mainly British and Americans), and the civilian population that survived on the outskirts.

Estimates of the number of dead differed by dozens of times - from 18 thousand to half a million. According to the official version, 25 thousand died. However, such a figure raises fair doubts. The Germans themselves note in their report about 12 thousand completely destroyed buildings, of which a little more than a thousand were non-residential. Even if we take into account that there were 2-3 people in each residential building, it follows that more than 25 thousand people died. Photos of destroyed buildings show us arrays of multi-storey buildings, which means that there were significantly more deaths than units of destroyed housing.

It is known that about 650 thousand people lived in Dresden before the war, but by February 1945 there were many refugees and several dozen hospitals. According to various estimates, at the time of the bombing, there were from 1,000 to 1,300 thousand people in the city. After the war, there were 369 thousand people in the city. Thus, the resulting difference in population between the beginning and end of the war can in no way be explained by the men who went to the front. Assuming that there were no more refugees than the number of men who went to the front, and also that some of the front-line soldiers nevertheless returned home, the real figure of the dead will be estimated at 300 thousand. What if there were more refugees?

Since the bombing of Dresden immediately after its implementation fell into the category of a political action (more on that below), in different years, different countries, organizations, politicians, journalists and writers published various data on the number of deaths. In February 1945, the Goebbels department estimated the losses to be close to 200,000 people. On March 22, 1945, the municipal authorities of the city of Dresden issued an official report, according to which the number of deaths recorded by this date was 20,204, and total killed during the bombing, amounted to about 25 thousand people. In 1953, Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf estimated the losses at 60-100 thousand civilians. In 1963, David Irving's book The Destruction of Dresden spoke of 135,000 deaths. In 1964, US Air Force Lieutenant General Ira Eaker also estimated the death toll at 135,000. In 2000, according to the decision of the British court, 25 - 30 thousand people were recognized as dead. According to an analysis prepared by the US Air Force History Department, 25,000 people died, according to official figures from the British Royal Air Force History Department - more than 50 thousand people. In the USSR, an estimate of the victims was 135 thousand people. In 2005, the BBC gave the number of victims at 130 thousand people, in 2007 - 35 thousand people. In 2006, Russian historian Boris Sokolov noted that the death toll from the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 ranged from 25,000 to 250,000. In the same year in the book Russian journalist A. Alyabyev noted that the number of deaths, according to various sources, ranged from 60 to 245 thousand people. In 2010, a commission of 13 German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden estimated the death toll to be between 18,000 and 25,000. Other estimates of the number of victims, reaching up to 500 thousand people, were called by the commission exaggerated or based on dubious sources.

Thus, the policy still prevails over common sense, does not allow us to come to a real, at least approximate figure of the victims of the bombing. Although it must be emphasized once again that the figure can only be approximate. For the documents on the registration of the inhabitants of the city, refugees and the wounded in hospitals burned down during the fires. It is impossible to establish the number of victims from the bodies of the dead buried or burned by the authorities, because an unknown number of people burned without a trace, many were buried forever in the rubble, which after the war were “smoothed out” by bulldozers and were not opened, thousands drowned in the Elbe, only charred bones remained of thousands , which were not counted.

After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, on the site of Dresden there was only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that were here. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the rest of the parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

What was the reason for these bombings? After all, in military terms, Dresden was of no importance. The military industry of the city included 110 enterprises, mostly small ones. Among the large ones, two tobacco factories, a soap factory, a Siemens factory for the production of gas masks, and a Zeiss company specializing in optics stood out. At the same time, they were all located on the outskirts of the city, while the historical, residential center was bombed. The excuse that Dresden had a major road junction does not fit. Why was it necessary to bomb the city, instead of marshalling yards? In addition, to block the transport hub, regular strikes were needed at its entrances and exits. We see, in fact, a one-time action that did not stop the work of the railway.

After a massive outcry in the world caused by the bombing of Dresden, the Allies put forward a version that the bombing was a request from the Soviet command in order to prevent the transfer of troops from the Western Front to the Eastern. However, after declassifying the materials of the Yalta conference, it turned out that it was about delivering strikes on the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden was not mentioned.

Even the memorandum that was read to the British pilots before the bombing flight on February 13 did not reveal the true meaning of this military operation: "... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time show the Russians, when they arrive in the city, what the Royal Air Force is capable of." There have been no other allied explanations on this topic until today.

According to a number of historians, the bombing of Dresden and other German cities belonging to the Soviet zone of influence was carried out not to assist the Red Army, but pursued exclusively political goals: a demonstration military power to intimidate the Soviet leadership. However, such a formulation only partially characterizes the goal of the allies, or rather, was more inherent in the British than in the Americans. The US hardly shared this concern. And even then the threat was more of a fictitious general than real, since the USSR had no plans to attack Britain, nor such an opportunity, even theoretical, which was due to the lack of a fleet.

Yet the Allies had common goal, political and economic, which was shared by both Great Britain and the USA: to leave continuous destruction in the zone of occupation of the USSR. After all, the costs of restoring the occupied territory should have been borne by the USSR, weakening it by long years in future. And to avenge the bombing of Britain and scare the USSR were accompanying goals, and not prevailing.

Thus, the lives of the inhabitants of Dresden and refugees became for the Anglo-American strategists only a bargaining chip in their political game, which they still do not recognize.

The reaction in the world to the bombing of Dresden was swift and condemning London in the first place. Already on February 16, 1945, German diplomats distributed photographs of the victims of the bombings, and a little later, photo albums with terrible illustrations. Having not received convincing evidence of the need for such a bombardment of Dresden from the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, the world press accused the Allies of terror. This issue was also raised at meetings of the House of Commons.

Churchill, who had previously supported the bombing, distanced himself from them. On March 28, in a draft memorandum sent by cable to General Hastings Ismay, he said: “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the bombing of German cities, carried out under various pretexts for the sake of increasing terror, should be reconsidered. Otherwise, we will get a completely ruined state under our control. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious pretext against Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that henceforth military objectives should be determined more strictly in our own interests than in the interests of the enemy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs has informed me of this problem, and I believe that it is necessary to focus more carefully on such military targets as oil and communications immediately behind the war zone, rather than on clear acts of terror and senseless, albeit impressive, destruction.

There are different opinions as to whether the bombing should be considered a war crime. Naturally, discussions are still only on a theoretical plane, although German nationalist politicians say that "ordinary residents of Dresden put an equal sign between the bombing of German cities and the destruction of Jews." Other, less radical politicians say that the question of classifying the bombing of Dresden as a war crime does not make sense without considering, together with the facts of the bombing of such cities as Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn, Pforzheim, which had no military significance, carried out according to an identical scheme, and also almost completely destroyed. The bombing of these and many other cities was carried out after the bombing of Dresden. Year by year, the questions of the bombings are getting louder and louder. Who knows, maybe over time the organizers of these bombings will have their own, some kind of posthumous Nuremberg trial in absentia.

Based on materials from sites: http://waralbum.ru; https://ruposters.ru; http://rusvesna.su; http://lurkmore.to; https://ru.wikipedia.org; http://uznai-pravdu.com; http://smi2.mirtesen.ru; https://en.wikipedia.org; http://www.telegraph.co.uk; http://www.history.com; https://www.reddit.com http://dawn666blacksun.angelfire.com; http://whale.to http://www.youngmuslimdigest.com.

Before attempting to establish the significance of this air attack on the scale of history, it is necessary to understand a little about the political situation at the beginning of 1945. As you know, this year marks the end of World War II. Despite the fact that the final surrender of Germany took place only in May, at the beginning of 1945, the outcome of the largest military conflict was already becoming apparent. After the opening of the Normandy Second Front in the summer of 1944 by the Allied forces (Great Britain + USA + others), the German troops lost all chances of victory. The only question that remained open was when the final surrender of Germany would come.

German position

During the fighting, Dresden was not considered a valuable city from a military point of view. By the beginning of World War II, the population of Dresden numbered 642 thousand people. By 1945, more than 200 thousand refugees and soldiers were added to this figure. There were no significant industrial enterprises on the territory of Dresden, with the exception of the largest optical plant in Germany, Zeiss Ikon A.G. and a couple of military plants (an aircraft plant and a production plant chemical weapons). However, in relation to such powerful industrial cities in Germany as Cologne and Hamburg, the city did not have a great importance for the economy of the Third Reich.

Dresden was of much greater value as Cultural Center Germany. The architecturally rich capital of Saxony is filled with buildings made in the Baroque style and carrying a bit of German history. The Zwinger Palace Ensemble and the Sammer Opera House are striking examples of luxurious architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries. Unfortunately, these and other equally valuable sights (Dresden Residence Palace, Frauenkirche, etc.), located in the city center, were practically destroyed by carpet bombardment by the Allied troops. "Florence on the Elbe" was on fire, engulfed in a fiery tornado that sucked people into itself and was distinguishable at a distance of 200 miles.

Palace Ensemble Zwinger

Allied aviation took care of the cruelty of this raid separately. The bombing was carried out according to a clear algorithm developed by the British air force throughout the war. The first wave of aircraft carried high-explosive bombs, which were used to destroy buildings, knock out windows and destroy roofs. The second wave carried incendiary bombs that were devastating to the defenseless population. Of course, there were bomb shelters, but few managed to hide from a deadly attack there. The fire tornado burned the oxygen in the rooms, and many people simply suffocated in their traps. Those who tried to hide in the city wells were simply boiled alive. The third wave again dealt a high-explosive strike so that the fire brigades could not get close to the hearths and cope with the conflagration. The city turned into a real hell, in which people burned seconds before ash in a flame with a temperature of 1500 °.

Tragically, it was the status of the city-museum that in many ways became the cause of the catastrophe for its inhabitants. The military command of the German state decided to leave the city practically defenseless, transferring most of the air defense assets to protect strategically important fuel plants. Thus, the Allied troops did not meet significant resistance on the night of February 14th. There is evidence that American fighter jets were chasing civilians trying to save their lives. It is also said that the British used napalm, which is now on the list of prohibited weapons in weapons because of the deadly ability to maintain a flame for a long time.

The total number of victims has not yet been established. The modern official estimate is close to 25,000 victims, taking into account the bodies found and people burned to the ground in a fiery tornado. However, not everyone agrees with these data. Fascist propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, in order to multiply the scale of the catastrophe, cited his figure of 250,000 deaths. Since then, disputes on this topic have not ended to this day, and the number of deaths in different sources varies from 25,000 to half a million. It is noteworthy that one of the survivors of that night is the American writer Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote his most famous book “Slaughterhouse Number 5, or Crusade children."

Many believe that the destruction of Dresden is the minimum revenge for the people who died in concentration camps. Maybe. But absolutely everyone who was in the city at that time was sentenced to death - children, old people, animals, Nazis, me and my friend Bernard.

K. Vonnegut, American writer

Allied point of view

By February 1945, the minds of the Allies were no longer so much concerned with an early victory over Hitler as passive rivalry with the USSR. They saw their task as containing the Soviet machine, in which the leaders of Great Britain and the United States saw their potential rival in post-war world. The destruction of half a peaceful city seemed like the perfect demonstration to the rest of the world of the fact that Britain and the United States would stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

What motivated the actions of the allies? To begin with, it is worth noting that, despite the lack of significant industrial power, Dresden was the most important transport hub, where 3 railway lines converged. The destruction of such a transport point was supposed to significantly tie down the remnants of the German army, depriving them of the possibility of an early transfer of reinforcements from one front to another. With a similar request, the USSR turned to the allies at the Yalta Conference shortly before the air raid on Dresden. But it is worth noting that the Soviet side only mentioned the bombing of Berlin and Leipzig.

Attacks on cities, like any other act of war, are intolerable as long as they are not strategically justified. But they are strategically justified, since they aim to hasten the end of the war and save the lives of Allied soldiers ... Personally, I believe that all the cities remaining in Germany are worth the life of one British grenadier.

A. Harris, Commander of the British Strategic Air Force

Perhaps furious with the bombing of English cities in the early years of World War II, the British wanted to get even with the Nazis to the end. Due to its insular location, from the very beginning of hostilities, Great Britain was subjected to massive bombardments, and this was the hour of reckoning for them.

On the other hand, the numbers speak in favor of the allies. For example, Munich, which outnumbers Dresden by 200,000 people, had four times as many bombs dropped during the war. In the same Hamburg, which was subjected to no less monstrous bombardment, during the raid, about 42,000 inhabitants were killed out of a population of 1,700,000 people. Thus, it cannot be decisively asserted that the scale of the air attack was so huge. Fascist propaganda and the destruction of many world-famous cultural monuments played their role in this representation. An important detail that justifies the British pilots (but by no means the leadership of the Air Force) is the fact that before the flight the pilots received a briefing from above, which stated that their target was the headquarters German army, and Dresden itself is almost the largest industrial city in Germany. Years later, all these pilots, with the exception of Commander-in-Chief Arthur Harris, repented of their actions, and the British side had a hand in the revival of Florence on the Elbe.

After 70 years

The bombing of Dresden, which shook Germany on February 14, 1945, has not been forgotten to this day. Together, Dresden was rebuilt, and the destroyed monuments of antiquity were restored. Is it possible to say that Dresden has finally revived? Certainly not. If you break a vase into small fragments and then glue it together, it will still not be the same. There are many voices these days calling for the bombing of Dresden to be a war crime. Perhaps this is true, the only thing I would like is that the death of 25,000 civilians is not used as a toy in the hands of modern political forces. After 70 years, we cannot bring innocent people back to life, we cannot recreate the works of art burned in the Dresden Gallery, we cannot finally return the city to its former appearance. We can only keep this lesson in mind and do our best to keep the skies over our cities peaceful.

For several decades there have been calls in Europe to give the bombing ancient city Dresden status of a war crime and genocide of the inhabitants. Recently, the German writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature Günter Grass and the former editor of the British newspaper The Times Simon Jenkins again demanded this.

Supports them American journalist And literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who stated that the bombing of many German cities was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could work out the practice of bombing.

The German historian Yorck Friedrich in his book noted that the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity: "... it was an absolutely unnecessary bombardment in the military sense."

The number of victims of the terrible bombing that took place from February 13 to 15, 1945, is from 25,000 to 30,000 people (many sources claim more). The city was destroyed almost completely.

After the end of World War II, the ruins of residential buildings, palaces and churches were dismantled and taken out of the city. On the site of Dresden, a site was formed with marked boundaries of former streets and buildings.

The restoration of the center lasted about 40 years. The rest of the city was built much faster.

To this day, the restoration of historic buildings on Neumarkt Square is underway.

The fiery tornado drew people in ...

Before the war, Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Tourist guides called it Florence on the Elbe. The famous Dresden Gallery, the second largest porcelain museum in the world, the most beautiful Zwinger palace ensemble, the Opera House, which competed in acoustics with the La Scala Theater, and many churches built in the Baroque style, were located here.

Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin often stayed in Dresden, and Sergei Rachmaninov prepared here for his world tours. The writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who worked on the novel "Demons", lived in the city for a long time. Here his daughter Lyubasha was born.

At the end of World War II locals were sure that Dresden would not be bombed. It did not have military factories. There were rumors that after the war the Allies would make Dresden the capital of a new Germany.

There was practically no air defense here, so the air raid signal sounded just a few minutes before the start of the bombing.

At 22:03 on February 13, the inhabitants of the outskirts heard the rumble of approaching aircraft. At 10:13 p.m., 244 RAF Lancaster heavy bombers dropped the first high-explosive bombs on the city.

Within minutes, the city was engulfed in flames. The light from the giant fire was visible for 150 kilometers.

One of the pilots of the British Royal Air Force later recalled: “The fantastic light around became brighter as we approached the target. At an altitude of 6000 meters, we could distinguish in an unearthly bright glow details of the terrain that we had never seen before; For the first time in many operations, I felt sorry for the people downstairs.”

The navigator-bomber of one of the bombers testified: “I confess, I glanced down when the bombs were falling, and with my own eyes I saw a shocking panorama of the city, blazing from one end to the other. Thick smoke was visible, carried by the wind from Dresden. A panorama of a brightly sparkling city opened up. The first reaction was the thought that shocked me about the coincidence of the massacre taking place below with the warnings of the evangelists in the sermons before the war.

The plan to bombard Dresden included the creation of a fiery tornado on its streets. Such a tornado appears when the scattered fires that have arisen are combined into one huge bonfire. The air above it heats up, its density decreases and it rises.

The British historian David Irving describes the fire tornado created in Dresden by pilots of the British Royal Air Force as follows: “... the resulting fire tornado, judging by the survey, absorbed more than 75 percent of the destruction area ... Giant trees were uprooted or half broken. Crowds of fleeing people were unexpectedly caught up by a tornado, dragged through the streets and thrown directly into the fire; ripped off roofs and furniture… were thrown into the center of the burning old part of the city.

The fiery tornado reached its peak in the three-hour interval between raids, precisely at the time when the inhabitants of the city who had taken refuge in underground corridors had to flee to its outskirts.

A railroad worker who was hiding near Postal Square watched as a woman with a baby carriage was dragged through the streets and thrown into the flames. Others fleeing along the railroad embankment, which seemed to be the only escape route not littered with rubble, told how the railroad cars on open sections of the track were blown away by a storm.

Asphalt melted on the streets, and people, falling into it, merged with the road surface.

The telephone operator of the Central Telegraph left the following memories of the bombing of the city: “Some girls suggested that we go out into the street and run home. The stairs led from the basement of the telephone center building to a quadrangular courtyard under a glass roof. They wanted to get out through the main gate of the courtyard to Postal Square. I didn't like this idea; suddenly, just as 12 or 13 girls were running across the yard and fumbling with the gate, trying to open it, the red-hot roof collapsed, burying them all under it.

In a gynecological clinic, after being hit by a bomb, 45 pregnant women died. On Altmarkt Square, several hundred people who sought salvation in ancient wells were boiled alive, and the water from the wells evaporated by half.

During the bombing, approximately 2,000 refugees from Silesia and East Prussia were in the basement of the Central Station. Underground passages for their temporary residence were equipped by the authorities long before the bombing of the city. The refugees were cared for by representatives of the Red Cross, women's service units under the state labor service and employees of the National Socialist welfare service. In another city in Germany, the accumulation of such a large number of people in rooms decorated with flammable materials would not be allowed. But the Dresden authorities were sure that the city would not be bombed.

Refugees were also on the stairs leading to the platforms and on the platforms themselves. Shortly before the raid on the city by British bombers, two trains with children arrived at the station from Koenigsbrück, which was approached by the Red Army.

A refugee from Silesia recalled: “Thousands of people crowded shoulder to shoulder in the square ... Fire raged above them. At the entrances to the station, the corpses of dead children lay, they were already stacked on top of each other and taken out of the station.

According to the air defense chief of the Central Station, out of 2,000 refugees who were in the tunnel, 100 were burned alive, another 500 people suffocated in the smoke.

During the first attack on Dresden, the British Lancasters dropped 800 tons of bombs. Three hours later, 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs. The losses of the Royal Air Force during the two raids amounted to 6 aircraft, 2 more aircraft crashed in France and 1 in the UK.

On February 14, 311 American bombers dropped 771 tons of bombs on the city. On February 15, American aircraft dropped 466 tons of bombs. Part American fighters The R-51 was ordered to attack targets moving along the roads in order to increase chaos and destruction on the region's important transport network.

The commander of the Dresden rescue squad recalled: “At the beginning of the second attack, many were still crowded in the tunnels and basements, waiting for the end of the fires ... The detonation hit the basement windows. Some new, strange sound was added to the roar of explosions, which became more and more muffled. Something resembling the rumble of a waterfall - it was the howl of a tornado that started in the city.

Many who were in underground shelters instantly burned out as soon as the surrounding heat suddenly increased dramatically. They either turned to ashes, or melted ... "

The bodies of other dead, found in the basements, shrunken from the nightmarish heat to one meter in length.

British planes also dropped canisters filled with a mixture of rubber and white phosphorus on the city. The canisters broke on the ground, the phosphorus ignited, the viscous mass fell on the skin of people and stuck tightly. It was impossible to redeem...

One of the inhabitants of Dresden said: “The tram depot had a public toilet made of corrugated iron. At the entrance, with her face buried in a fur coat, lay a woman of about thirty, completely naked. A few yards away lay two boys, about eight or ten years old. They lay down, hugging each other tightly. Also naked... Everywhere, where the eye reached, people lay suffocated from lack of oxygen. Apparently, they tore off all their clothes, trying to make it look like an oxygen mask ... ".

After the raids, a three-mile column of yellow-brown smoke rose into the sky. A mass of ash floated, covering the ruins, towards Czechoslovakia.

In some parts of the old city, such heat was created that even a few days after the bombing it was impossible to enter the streets between the ruins of houses.

According to the report of the Dresden police, compiled after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city, “... 24 banks, 26 buildings of insurance companies, 31 trading shops, 6470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges.

On March 22, 1945, the municipal authorities of Dresden issued an official report, according to which the number of deaths recorded by this date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths during the bombing was expected to be about 25,000 people.

In 1953, in the work of the German authors “Results of the Second World War”, Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “The number of victims in Dresden cannot be calculated. According to the State Department, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual figure of losses, of course, is much less; but even 60-100 thousand civilians who died in the fire in one night hardly fit in the human mind.

In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden concluded that approximately 25,000 people died during the bombings.

“And at the same time show the Russians…”

On January 26, 1945, Air Force Secretary Archibald Sinclair suggested bombing Dresden to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in response to his dispatch with the question: “What can be done to properly finish off the Germans during their retreat from Breslau (this city is located 200 kilometers from Dresden. "SP")?

February 8 Supreme rate The Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe informed the RAF and the US Air Force that Dresden was on the list of targets for bombing. On the same day, the US military mission in Moscow sent an official notification to the Soviet side about the inclusion of Dresden in the list of targets.

An RAF memorandum given to British pilots the night before the attack stated: "Dresden, Germany's 7th largest city... currently largest district enemy still not bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, housing is in short supply as workers, refugees, and troops need to be accommodated, as well as government offices evacuated from other areas. Once widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden developed into a major industrial centre... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time show the Russians, when they arrive in the city, what the Royal Air Force is capable of.

- If we talk about war crimes and genocide, then many cities in Germany were bombed. The Americans and the British developed a plan: mercilessly bomb the cities in order to a short time break the spirit of the German civilian population. But the country lived and worked under bombs,” says Vladimir Beshanov, author of books on the history of World War II. - I believe that not only the barbaric bombing of Dresden, but also the bombing of other German cities, as well as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should be recognized as war crimes.

In Dresden, residential buildings and architectural monuments were destroyed. Large marshalling yards received almost no damage. The railway bridge over the Elbe and the military airfield, located in the vicinity of the city, remained intact.

After Dresden, the British managed to bomb the medieval cities of Bayreuth, Würzburg, Zoest, Rothenburg, Pforzheim and Welm. Only in Pforzheim, where 60,000 people lived, a third of the inhabitants died.

What will come out of another attempt to give the monstrous event the status of a war crime is unknown. So far, every year on February 13, the inhabitants of Dresden commemorate fellow citizens who died in a fiery tornado.

Aviation of the Western Allies launched a series of bombing attacks on the capital of Saxony, the city of Dresden, which was almost completely destroyed as a result.

The Dresden raid was part of an Anglo-American strategic bombing program launched after the US and British heads of state met in Casablanca in January 1943.

Dresden is the seventh largest city in pre-war Germany with a population of 647 thousand people. Due to the abundance of historical and cultural monuments it was often called "Florence on the Elbe". There were no significant military installations there.

By February 1945, the city was full of wounded and refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. Together with them in Dresden, there were estimated to be up to a million, and according to some sources, up to 1.3 million people.

The date of the raid on Dresden was determined by the weather: a clear sky was expected over the city.

During the first raid in the evening, 244 British Lancaster heavy bombers dropped 507 tons of explosive and 374 tons of incendiary bombs. During the second raid at night, which lasted half an hour and was twice as powerful as the first, 965 tons of high-explosive and over 800 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city by 529 aircraft.

On the morning of February 14, 311 American B-17s bombed the city. They dropped more than 780 tons of bombs into the sea of ​​fire raging below them. On the afternoon of February 15, 210 American B-17s completed the rout by dropping another 462 tons of bombs on the city.

It was the most devastating bombing strike in Europe in all the years of World War II.

The area of ​​the zone of continuous destruction in Dresden was four times larger than that in Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing by the Americans on August 9, 1945.

In most of the urban development, destruction exceeded 75-80%. Among the irreplaceable cultural losses are the ancient Frauenkirche, Hofkirche, the famous Opera and the world-famous Zwinger architectural and palace ensemble. At the same time, the damage caused industrial enterprises, turned out to be insignificant. The railway network also suffered little. The marshalling yards and even one bridge over the Elbe were not damaged, and traffic through the Dresden junction resumed a few days later.

Determining the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden is complicated by the fact that at that time there were several dozen military hospitals and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the city. Many were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings or burned in a fiery tornado.

The death toll is estimated in various sources from 25-50 thousand to 135 thousand people or more. According to an analysis prepared by the US Air Force History Department, 25,000 people died, according to official figures from the British Royal Air Force History Department - more than 50 thousand people.

Subsequently, the Western Allies claimed that the raid on Dresden was a response to the request of the Soviet command to strike at the city's railway junction, allegedly made at the Yalta Conference in 1945.

As evidenced by the declassified minutes of the Yalta conference, demonstrated in the documentary film directed by Alexei Denisov "Dresden. Chronicle of the Tragedy" (2006), the USSR never asked the Anglo-American allies during World War II to bomb Dresden. What the Soviet command really asked for was to strike at the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig due to the fact that the Germans had already transferred about 20 divisions from the western front to the eastern one and were going to transfer about 30 more. It was this request that was delivered in writing like Roosevelt and Churchill.

From the point of view of domestic historians, the bombing of Dresden pursued, rather, a political goal. They attribute the bombardment of the Saxon capital to the desire of the Western Allies to demonstrate their air power to the advancing Red Army.

After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, on the site of Dresden there was only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that were here. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the rest of the parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

From 13 to 15 February 1945, the British and American Air Force carried out a series of devastating bombing raids on Dresden. The city was almost completely destroyed.Before presenting you with a selection of photographs, my friends, I would like to acquaint you with the publication and documentary, revealing little known facts about this event.

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Destruction of Dresden, 1945

Second World War left many sad and terrible pages of human cruelty in world history. It was during this war that the tactics of carpet bombing cities became widespread. As he says famous proverb He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind. This is exactly what happened to Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1937 with the bombardment of Spanish Guernica by the Condor Legion, continuing with raids on Warsaw, London, Moscow and Stalingrad, from 1943 Germany itself began to be subjected to Allied air strikes, which were many times more powerful than the raids carried out by the Luftwaffe in initial period war. Thus, one of the symbols of the tragedy of the German people was the Allied air raid on the large city of Dresden in February 1945, which led to huge destruction of the city's residential infrastructure and heavy casualties among the civilian population.

Even after the end of the war for more than 60 years, there are calls in Europe to recognize the destruction of the ancient city of Dresden as a war crime and genocide against its inhabitants. Many in Europe and the United States are of the opinion that the bombardment of German cities in the final months of the war was no longer dictated by military necessity and was militarily unnecessary. Recognizing the bombing of Dresden as a war crime is now being demanded by the Nobel Prize in Literature winner German writer Günter Grass and the former editor of the English newspaper The Times Simon Jenkins. They are also supported by the American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who believes that the bombing recent months wars were fought only for the purpose of developing bombing methods for young pilots.

The number of victims of the bombing, which the city was subjected to from February 13 to 15, 1945, is estimated at 25,000 - 30,000 people, while many of the estimates crossed the mark of 100,000. During the bombing, the city was almost completely destroyed. The area of ​​the zone of continuous destruction in the city was 4 times the area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in Nagasaki. After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, on the site of Dresden there was only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that were here. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the rest of the parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

Formally, the Allies had reason to bombard the city. The USA and England agreed with the USSR on the bombing of Berlin and Leipzig, there was no talk of Dresden. But this large 7th largest city in Germany was indeed a major transportation hub. And the allies claimed that they bombed the city in order to make it impossible for traffic to bypass these cities. According to the American side, the bombing of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden had importance and contributed to the withdrawal of these transport hubs out of service. Indirectly, the effectiveness of the bombing was confirmed precisely by the fact that near Leipzig, in Torgau, on April 25, the advanced units of the allied forces met, cutting Germany in two.

However, even the memorandum, which was read to the British pilots before flying out on a bombing raid on February 13, revealed the true meaning of this military operation:

Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany... by far the largest enemy area still un-bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, housing is in short supply as workers, refugees, and troops need to be accommodated, as well as government offices evacuated from other areas. At one time widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center ... The aim of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what the RAF is capable of.

Dresden. Chronicle of tragedy.

The film by Alexei Denisov is dedicated to the events of February 13, 1945 - the bombing of Dresden by Anglo-American aircraft during the Second World War. This action was interpreted by the allies as an act of assistance Soviet troops advancing from the east, allegedly in confirmation of the Yalta agreements.
The barbaric bombardment was carried out in three passes by forces of almost three thousand aircraft. Its result is the death of more than 135 thousand people and the destruction of about 35,470 buildings.
One of the main questions that the authors of the film tried to answer was whether there really was such a request from the Soviet side and why to this day former allies England and America are trying hard to shift the blame for the senseless bombardment of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, which, moreover, has no military significance, onto Russia.
German and Russian historians, American pilots and eyewitnesses of this tragedy take part in the film.

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1. View from the city hall of Dresden to the ruins of the city after the Anglo-American bombing in February 1945. On the right, the sculpture by August Schreitmüller - "Good".

3. View from the city hall of Dresden to the ruins of the city after the Anglo-American bombing in February 1945.

4. Ruined Dresden. 1945

5. Frauenkirche Cathedral, one of the most significant churches in Dresden, and a monument to Martin Luther, destroyed by the bombing of the city on February 13, 1945.