Alphen, Netherlands. 16
February. Seventy years ago on the sunny
morning of 16 February, 1945 the beautiful German city of Dresden lay in
smouldering ruins. Known as the “Florence
on the Elbe” Dresden had been attacked over the preceding weekend of 13-15
February, 1945 by 722 Royal Air Force and 527 United States Army Air Force
heavy bombers which had flown 700 miles/1,100 kms or 10 hours to attack the
target and return to their many bases in Eastern England. During the attacks three thousand nine
hundred tons of high explosive and fire bombs (“cookies”) had been dropped by
the bombers on an area 1.25 miles/2.01 kms in length covering some 4 square
miles/6.5 square kms or 1600 acres.
Between 22,700 and 25,000 people were killed many of them incinerated by
the firestorm the raids whipped up.
Many reasons have been
given for this “maximum effort” attack on a German cultural icon when the
outcome of the war could no longer be in doubt.
The Bomber Command aircrews of 1, 3, 5, 6 and 8 Groups who carried out
the attack were told that Dresden was a rail hub with significant arms
manufacturers and that the city was full of German reserves waiting to attack the
advancing Red Army. That was only
partially true. Whilst Dresden did possess
significant industrial and military targets it was also full of refugees
fleeing the advancing Russians, together with Allied prisoners of war.
In spite of losing half
of its 125,000 aircrew during the long bombing campaigns that had attacked
Germany in growing strength since 1940 the RAF had been relentless in fulfilling
the determination of its leader Air Vice-Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris to
prove his belief that the RAF could win the war through ‘strategic bombing’. This fixation was the culmination of a battle
between the Services that went back to the 1920s when military thinkers such as
Trenchard, Douhet and Mitchell developed the idea of strategic bombing and
which was captured in the words of 1930s British Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin, “The bomber will always get through”. In other words, Dresden was
attacked because the RAF could attack it and by 1945 almost all German cities
of note had been attacked. These attacks
included the 1942 attack on another cultural icon Lubeck, and the August 1942
Hamburg firestorm which shook the Nazi regime to its foundations.
“Dresden”, as it was soon
became known, also had its origins in the 1940 Luftwaffe attacks on Warsaw and
Rotterdam. However, revenge for the
German attacks on British cities, the London Blitz of 1940-41, but most notably
the so-called Coventry Blitz of 14 November, was clearly a motivation. Harris said, “The Germans entered this war
under the childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and
nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, Warsaw, London and half a hundred
other places they put their rather naïve theory into practice. They sowed the wind and now they are going to
reap the whirlwind”.
However, my own theory having
examined the attack in some depth is that far from supporting the Soviets the
attack was actually aimed at them.
Shortly before Dresden Churchill had attended the Yalta Conference which
took place from 4-11 February. Churchill
had been appalled by Britain’s humiliation at Yalta and Roosevelt’s acceptance
of Stalin’s proposal to carve up Europe.
In particular, Churchill had fought in vain to keep Poland an
independent state and failed and had little belief that Stalin would observe
the terms of the pact. Whilst I can find
only circumstantial evidence it would appear that the attack on Dresden was
meant as a warning to Stalin about the destruction the RAF could bring to bear
if the Red Army should fail to stop and kept marching West.
When Polish bomber
crews saw the terms of Yalta and that Poland was about to be handed over to the
Soviets they threatened to mutiny. However,
they were told by the Polish Government-in-Exile to complete the mission
against Dresden. As ever, these brave
men fulfilled their duty and those that survived had to wait a further 44 years
to see Poland free.
Too much modern history
attempts to impose contemporary values on past acts. Very few in Britain in 1945 would have
questioned the attack on Dresden, though a few did. After all, it was the total
end to a total war. These politicised
histories view past acts through the political correctness of the current age. Equally, Dresden was used by Nazi apologists to
imply a form of moral equivalency between the acts of the genocidal Nazi regime
and those of the Free World. Indeed, in
the immediate aftermath of the attack Berlin claimed some 200,000 civilians had
been killed by the British and Americans.
Therefore, the Dresden legacy
is important because it reminds all of us who believe in liberal democracy that
in an ideal world upholding the values for which one is fighting must also be
apparent in the way one fights. Equally,
Dresden also reminds us that there are some enemies who adhere to few values and
can only be impressed and deterred by power, strength and a ruthless
determination to win.
By 1945 the RAF had
perfected the art of area or carpet bombing. The Main Force (codename ”Plate Rack”) was
divided into two unopposed waves led by Pathfinders and a Master Bomber who ‘painted’
the main target (the Ostreigehege Stadium close to the old city) with 1000
pound red marker flares. Over the next three
hours two hundred and fifty-four Lancasters of 5 Group dropped firebombs on the
target, before the second wave attacked with high explosives to create a
firestorm. The RAF lost six aircraft,
three of which were ‘bombed’ by their other aircraft.
Julian Lindley-French