The state of Saxony is home to Dresden as well as two other major industrial cities, those being Leipzig and Chemnitz which were also targeted by allied bombing raids. My aim in this post is to look at the population damage that Dresden suffered, as a first step to researching the damage done to other major parts of Saxony in the same period. Population statistics from the period of 1940-1945 have been very difficult to find as of yet. Wikipedia gives a few numbers that we can use as a comparison with other historical sources, however, none of these numbers have a source behind them. For example Wikipedia states that Dresden had a 1940 population of 626,900, a 1944 population of 566,738, and a 1945 population of 368,519.1 If we take the Wikipedia 1944 number at face value, neither the American nor German estimates perfectly match with the depopulation of the city. Conroy 1989 states that there was a large influx of refugees from the Eastern Front in early 1945 and that the “normal population of 630,000 had more than doubled prior to the attack.”2 While he may have been using a similar number that Wikipedia does for 1940 due to a lack of data his statement here about refugees shows that the population would have been closer to a million, if not more when the firebombing occurred in February. American estimates state that around 135,000 were killed by the bombing, which is close, but not quite enough to explain the drop of almost 200,000 that Wikipedia states.3 However, we have to remember that not all of those who died were permanent residents and that there were almost as many refugees in the city as there were residents.4
While the data incomplete during this period, the rest of Saxony shows a decline in population. By taking the 1945 number and dividing it by the 1940 number, we get a decline that occurred as the result of Allied Strategic bombing among other things. Dresden is hit the hardest by far with a nearly 41% decrease in population. Chemnitz and Leipzig, cities which will be researched in future posts, lost 27% and 18% of their populations respectively. Dresden has still not recovered to 1940 population data to this day, with it having a population of 557,782 as of the 2022 Census.5
- “Wikipedia: Dresden,” Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 12 September 2024, 21:35, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden#. [↩]
- 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, 23 [↩]
- Ibid, 29 [↩]
- Ibid, 23 [↩]
- “Wikipedia: Dresden” [↩]