From the beginning of my research into the Dresden Firebombing and its results, I have, until recently, been unsure as to what exactly should be my focus. My search brought me to a couple of interesting findings, the first of which are in the form of two maps made before and after the war. The first map was made in 1903 and while it focuses on the parks of the city, it has a detailed map of the city’s center.1 The second map I found was from the United States Department of Defense and was made between 1968 and 1972. The striking difference between these two maps is that the center of the city in the 1903 map is very different in the 1968 map.2 While the two maps are not too dissimilar, the map made after the bombing is missing several structures at the city center that were present in the 1903 map. See the maps below.
Of course, a lot can change in a city over the course of around 40 years and it is possible that the loss of the large cross-shaped building in the center of the Parks of Dresden map could be unrelated to the Firebombing, but many buildings in the city were destroyed during the operation. A U.S. report and study project from 1989 quotes several quantitative and qualitative reports from after action reports and eyewitnesses. The report states that within the two day period, “sixteen-hundred acres were destroyed that one night” with the pilot of the last aircraft of the raid reporting that he saw a “sea of fire” that he estimated covering “40 square miles.”3 The same report also mentions the destruction of several major features of the city including the large passenger rail station called the ‘Hauptbahnhof.’4 These chilling details beg the question, why was Dresden targeted with such a firestorm?
A newspaper from the day of the bombing writes that the RAF (Royal Air Force) reported no anti-aircraft fire from the Germans in response to the raid.5 Lack of anti-aircraft fire at the raid is particularly interesting since it implies the Germans might have not seen Dresden as a worthy target for bombardment. A U.S. intelligence report from the Office of Strategic Services in 1944 mentions Dresden several times but mostly about Dresdener Bank, a financial backer of many Nazi corporations, and a company called Sachsenwerk Licht und Kraft AG which made electro-mechanical components before and during the war.6 While I still have much investigation to do into that book in particular, this does not sound like Dresden would be as important of a target as the Ruhr valley region, Germany’s top producer of coal or other targets.7 The aforementioned lack of anti-air fire confirms that the Germans believed this as well. Therefore, was the bombing justified?
The justification of the Dresden bombing is complicated. Firstly, the U.S. and the British stated that the Soviet Union requested the bombing as it was an important transportation hub for the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front.8 Moeller states that the U.S. and British armed forces viewed the idea of ‘dehousing’ people as a justified way to disrupt industrial production and to harm civilian morale.9 As dark as a policy named ‘dehousing’ sounds, this was also viewed as revenge for other events. The Germans actually bombed civilians first in Warsaw, then England during the Blitz, so it was seen as justified from that perspective alone.10 Thus, before reports came in, it was justified to allied planners, especially due to the Soviet request for it to be targeted. It was only after reports came in of the devastation that the justification was questioned. There is still much work to be done to track down what survived the bombing and what did not, allied weapons used, reactions from both sides, and more.
Bibliography
Conroy, Richard A. “Operation Thunderclap: The Bombing of Dresden:” Fort Belvoir, VA: Defense Technical Information Center, March 31, 1989. https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA209271.
Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief of Engineers. U.S. Army Topographic Command. (9/1/1968 – 7/1/1972). Map of Dresden, Germany 3rd Edition AMS. Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1968. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/280950726.
Jameson, Henry B. “Heaviest Blows of War Aimed at Nazi Rail Center.” Radford News Journal. February 14, 1945. https://jstor.org/stable/community.35145262.
Moeller, Robert G. “On the History of Man-Made Destruction: Loss, Death, Memory, and Germany in the Bombing War.” History Workshop Journal, no. 61 (2006): 103–34 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25472839.
Parks of Dresden, Germany. 1903. Cook County Forest Preserve Photographs. University of Illinois Chicago. CARLI Digital Collections. https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/uic_ccfp/id/861.
United States, ed. A Hundred Major German Industrial Corporations. Washington, 1944. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.hundredmajorgerm00unit/.
- Parks of Dresden, Germany, 1903, Cook County Forest Preserve Photographs, University of Illinois Chicago, CARLI Digital Collections, https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/uic_ccfp/id/861 [↩]
- Parks of Dresden, Germany, 1903, Cook County Forest Preserve Photographs, University of Illinois Chicago, CARLI Digital Collections, https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/uic_ccfp/id/861; Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Topographic Command, 9/1/1968 – 7/1/1972, Map of Dresden, Germany 3rd Edition AMS, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/280950726. [↩]
- Richard A. Conroy, “Operation Thunderclap: The Bombing of Dresden,” 31 March 1989, U.S. Army War College, http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA209271, 28. [↩]
- Ibid, 28 [↩]
- Henry B. Jameson, “Heaviest Blows of War Aimed at Nazi Rail Center,” Radford News Journal, February 14, 1945, https://jstor.org/stable/community.35145262. [↩]
- U.S. Office of Strategic Services, A Hundred Major German Industrial Corporations, Washington, 1944, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.hundredmajorgerm00unit/?sp=9&r=-0.188%2C0.073%2C1.695%2C0.83%2C0&st=pdf&pdfPage=134. [↩]
- Ibid, 7. [↩]
- Conroy, “Operation Thunderclap,” 31. [↩]
- Robert G. Moeller, “On the History of Man-Made Destruction: Loss, Death, Memory, and Germany in the Bombing War,” History Workshop Journal 61, (2006): 107, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25472839. [↩]
- Ibid, 106-107. [↩]