Essay Update: 2309 words

With Reference to David Irving, Frederick Taylor and other relevant historians and writers, Discuss the different perspectives in the debate of the Bombing of Dresden.

The debate of bombing of Dresden can be split into two contemporary fields. The first is dominated by David Irving (The Destruction of Dresden) and Alexander McKee (Dresden 1945, The Devil's Tinderbox) who argue the terrible and horrendous crime of the bombing. The other field is made up primarily led by Frederick Taylor (Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945) but also includes others such as Sebastian Cox (Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945) and Hew Strachan (Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945). Four key areas can be identified as being cases for major debate; the contextual view of the raid, the legitimacy of Dresden as a target, the legitimacy of the method by which the city was bombed and casualty figures for the raid.

The concept of Dresden as a contextual oddity stems from the belief that by February 1945 World War II was over. Dresden was long considered a target that was destroyed by just a single air raid, chosen at a time when the war was winding down and Irving makes the bold claim that Dresden was “The Virgin Target” in The Destruction of Dresden as a chapter name. This is done to further highlight the contextual contrast between the bombing of Dresden and the rest of the bomber war. Irving doesn't ignore other raids on the city but minimizes their impact and severity, stating, “The local inhabitants unanimously agreed among themselves that the bombing was the result of some unfortunate oversight by an allied navigator.”¹

The above quote fits the other contextual problem that Dresden poses. Irving argues that Dresden was bombed in the last moments of World War II. Irving forgets to mention the Ardennes offensive, one of the main reasons for the renewed bomber offensive. The best he mentions is that, “When Stalin had failed to launch his major winter offensive during Hitler’s attack in the Ardennes, the Allies had sent to Moscow Eisenhower’s deputy.”² Irving downplays the seriousness of the war, acknowledging the existence and impact of Schnorkel submarines, the ME-262 or the V2 rockets but fails to see the affect they would have on the Allied strategy.³ Irving understates the context of the time to fit his goal of creating guilt in the British psyche and at the same time making a world sympathetic to Germany. This is seen in his many negative portrayals of Arthur Harris, calling him at on point “'butcher' Harris.”⁴

Dresden is shown as an attack warranted by it's context in Frederick Taylor's book, Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945. Frederick Taylor emphasizes the importance and magnitude of the previous raids. Taylor emphasizes the previous raids to show that the populace did in fact expect a raid and that the final bombing was consistent with other cities. He describes the first raid on August 24^th, 1944 as being the reason, “'Trust in the leadership is diminishing rapidly.'”⁵ proposing that residents were beginning to suspect themselves as targets, contrary to Irving. Taylor also describes the second raid on the city in a similar manner to further his idea that Dresden was not a surprise for the populace as, “This was the 111^th raid alarm of the war...... the trek down to into the shelter was not to be in vain.”⁶and the much heavier raid on the January 16^th which killed over 300 people illustrate that Dresden had been a target for a much longer time than Irving suggested.⁷

Sebastian Cox, in his chapter of Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945 titled The Dresden Raids: Why and How puts the raids into political and military context. Cox offers interesting insights into the context raid, describing the gloomy atmosphere of the Allied High Command at the time and potential reasons why.

"....the heady hopes of optimism of the previous summer had been replaced by a distinctly chill air of pessimism. This pessimism was the result of the failure of the Arnhem airborne landings (Operation Garden Market) and the subsequent ability of the German Army to deliver a further temporary, if at the time deeply worrying, reverse to the Allies during the Ardennes offensive. These events suggested strongly that the German capacity for resistance was as yet very far from being overcome.”⁸

The Allies had to face the Wehrmacht's continued defiance despite the inevitability of defeat. The notion that the war was to soon end in Europe is dispelled by Cox, the Ardennes offensive, along with the failure of Operation Garden Market, exasperated the frailty of Allied High Command's hope in a quick victory. Cox shows further problems faced by Allied High Command by highlighting the “...the grave danger the jet fighters posed”⁹ and “a renewed maritime threat, in the form of schnorkel-equipped submarines had arisen.”¹⁰ These factors of a new and reinvigorated war, at least to the Allied commanders in January 1945 meant it was “possible that both air and naval supremacy might yet be challenged by German technological ingenuity."¹¹ Cox's argument against Irving places emphasis of using sentient empathy to understand the nature of the raid and why it occurred.

David Irving made a poignant case In 1963 that Dresden was not a military target, referred to by A.C Grayling as”seemingly arbitrary attacks.”¹² He presents Dresden as being a weakly defended city, economically based on, “theatres, museums, cultural institutions and home-industries.”¹³ and that they were impossible to spot by air, “...it would have been hard to single out any one plant of major importance.”¹⁴ Irving's claim of an industry-weak Dresden is not as holistic as it seems, as he relents and states that munitions as well as Junker and V.2 manufacturing firms but assures that, “None of these plants... was within three miles of the city centre, or within the area marked out for R.A.F. Bomber Command’s two devastating night attacks.”¹⁵ All of these claims were based on evidence from prior to 1963

Irving dismisses the official claims of the RAF that it was seen as a major transport link. Irving believed that, “At the time of the attack, however, the city’s strategic significance was less than marginal”¹⁶ He based on the evidence at the time which shows that the raids had minimal impact on the city.

“Rail transport through the city – the ostensible target of the raids – had barely suffered, confirmed the police chief. Although traffic had halted for a few days, by the end of the month the trains were rolling through again.23 Years later, the east German (Soviet zone) history of the destruction and reconstruction of Dresden stated: ‘The railroad lines were not particularly seriously damaged; an emergency service was able to repair them so swiftly that no significant dislocation of traffic resulted.’ After referring to the devastation wrought on the city’s architectural treasures the history continued that ‘in contrast to these cultural monuments and the entire Dresden inner city, these transport installations were not destroyed.....”¹⁷

Although the initial damage had cause traffic to halt briefly the rail yards were unscathed compared to the destruction that had been hoped according to Irving. However several problems arise in these claims. His information is based off unreliable Soviet sources and does not consider that the result does not make it a legitimate target, as Bomber Command had still aimed for them.

The question of the city's vital infrastructure as being unaffected is stressed by Alexander
McKee. McKee in his book Dresden 1945, The Devil's Tinderbox in 1982 acknowledges that although the marshaling yards and train works were important they were but they were not the target. “In my view Dresden had been bombed for political reasons and not military reasons; but again, without effect. There was misery, but it did not affect the war.”¹⁸ He insists that they could not have been the target because of the Nazi built Autobahns, “But the main road route to the Front was carried by the Hitler-built Autobahn which crossed the river Elbe outside the city limits entirely to the west.”¹⁹ He instead offers his view that, “What they were looking for was a big built-up area which they could burn, and that Dresden possessed in full measure.²⁰ These show that McKee presents a sensationalistic view as his first words are “Dresden was a famous massacre from the start.”²¹ McKee's context as a Allied foot soldier is prevalent, “ I only saw a dozen or so buildings which were intact....there was a peculiar smell.....The smell of human flesh, long dead, decomposing in the heat.”²² This affects his argument as to whether it was a legitimate question as he is unable to consider the perspective of Bomber Command or the bomber crews.

The theory of Dresden as an industrial target is currently lead by Frederick Taylor who provides it as the reason Dresden was bombed. He describes the work done by those before him as unjustly causing “unmitigated shame”²³ and queries the nature of Dresden as a industrial city at the beginning of Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945 saying, “The notion that Dresden, a city of almost three-quarters of a million hardworking human beings in one of the oldest industrial regions of Europe, concerned itself only with harmless pottery.”²⁴ Taylor provides evidence that Dresden was a target, “the city of Dresden contained 127 factories that had bee assigned their own three-letter manufacturing codes,”²⁵ and using the details of converted factories assumes that, “Dresden quickly followed the rest of Germany into an integrated war economy.”²⁶

Cox supports this stating that:

“Dresden was ranked at number twenty in the list of the hundred German towns of leading economic importance to the German war effort......Thus, although Dresden was 80 percent larger than Chemnitz in terms of population, the latter's economic importance on this measure was ranked three places higher at seventeen.”²⁷

Cox is establishing that Dresden is a significant military target based on British Army Intelligence assessments. Dresden had been, “ranked number twenty..... for economic importance to the German war effort.”²⁸ which was given in 1943, certainly implies that this report was not merely written to give a legitimate, though fake, excuse for the attack as it.

Grayling offers a philosophical approach to the legitimacy of the raid by considering the raid from a moral view point. Grayling makes a clear point about bombing civilians proffering the idea that, “Allied bombing in the Second World War was on whole or part morally wrong,”²⁹ challenging the notion that war creates forgivable necessities. Grayling uses the memo from Winston Churchill's minute on the 28^th of March that stated, “..I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.”³⁰ He uses this to show the immediate reactions of Churchill to the bombings so as to show that it was a moral issue from the beginning.

The bombing of Dresden is likened to the blockade in Hew Strachan's article, “Strategic Bombing and Civilian Casualties” in which he states that both were a part of total war and as such, “It defined not only what would be required of one's own population, but what one could inflict on the enemy's.”³¹ He makes it clear that the WWI blockade was worse than the bomber campaign as “600,000 died, fewer than were reckoned than were reckoned to have succumbed to the navy's blockade in the First World War.”³² Strachan makes this statement to highlight that the blockade, “was not a war crime.” Hence Strachan concludes that Dresden is not a war crime as contextually the blockade and air offensive had the same objective of fighting an enemy engaged in total war. Dresden being bombed as not a war crime supported by Russell Wilson, “In the concept and conduct of war in the twentieth century,civilians increasingly came to be seen....as an integral part of the war machine...”³³

The actual attack on Dresden was, according to Irving, specifically significant and different from other bombings. The bomb load was, “Unlike most of the air raids on German targets at this stage of the war, the force was carrying about seventy-five percent incendiaries.”³⁴ This is a phenomenal claim to make but with the restriction of wartime documents relating to Dresden. Another claim he makes is that:

“Mustangs concentrated on the river banks, where masses of bombed out people had gathered. Another section took on the targets in the Grosser Garten area. These strafing attacks were apparently designed to perfect the task outlined in the air commanders’ directives as ‘causing confusion in the civilian evacuation from the east.’”³⁵

Irving is claiming that P-51 Mustangs deliberately attacked civilians after the raids. More importantly he implies that they were under direct orders from allied high command as they were following the “air commanders' directives” in carrying out the attack. Irving substantiates his claims with eye-witness testimonies such as, “The fighter aircraft came right down and a woman near us suddenly screamed out, shot in the stomach.”³⁶ and of a Breslau refugee at the Leipziger Strasse rail bridge saying, “We could hear the aircraft diving low and then they began firing from all their guns. We

were fortunate, we were able to crawl into a doorway.”³⁷ Irving does consider the fallibility of memory however and adds as a side note that “(U.S. Air Force historians have pointed out, ‘Nothing in the records can be found to substantiate such claims,’ and it is only fair to record this.)”³⁸ Kurt Vonnegut in his surreal book Slaughterhouse 5 exaggerates the heartlessness of the bomber crews stating that, “...the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and had no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground."³⁹ Vonnegut's book is heavily influenced by his own context as a prisoner of war during the raids and so refused to consider other perspectives, much alike Irving's conclusions on the context of the raid.

These claims have been ridiculed by more modern historians as being completely unsubstantial. Cox counters Irving's claim of a higher proportion of incendiaries as"Despite claims to the contrary, the proportion of incendiaries carried as a percentage of the bomb-load was by no means unusual for a Bomber Command area raid."⁴⁰ and bases this off Air Historical Branch papers that show, “Dresden ranked only tenth in terms of the percentage of incendiaries used with 44 percent.”⁴¹ Cox is able to do this because of release of Air Ministry documents after the war's end, something that was unavailable to Irving and so Cox is correcting past histories.

The P-51 strafing runs are attacked by Taylor who proves that they are insubstantial. He shows that the strafing could not have happened above Dresden as, “the Twentieth Fighter Group was....at the time more than eighty miles away escorting the attack not against Dresden but Prague.”⁴² Tayor continues to attack Irving's claims stating that, “...nor - perhaps more significantly – in German accounts originating at the time are such daylight strafing attacks mentioned.”⁴³ This new information was discovered after the Soviet bloc fell and allowed historians to reveal the true extent of the raids and progress history on Dresden.

1D. Irving, Apocalypse 1945 The Destruction of Dresden, Focal Point, 1999, p. 90 (internet edition)

2Irving, Apocalypse, p. 110

3Ibid., p.115 (jet and submarine .production)

4Ibid., p. 79

5F. Taylor, Dresden Tuesday 13 February 1945, Bloomsbury , 2005, p. 167 (Quoting a Dresden police officer.)

6Ibid., p. 222

7Ibid., pp. 230-231

8S. Cox, The Dresden Raids: Why and How in P Addison and JA Crang (ed.), Firestorm: The bombing of Dresden, 1945, Ivan R. Dee, 2006, p. 19

9Ibid., p. 20

10Ibid., p. 20

11Ibid., p. 20

12A.C. Grayling, Amongst the Dead Cities the history and moral legacy of the WWII bombings of civilians in Germany and Japan, Walker & Company, 2006, p. 73

13Irving, op. Cit, p. 91

14Ibid., p. 91

15Ibid., p. 92

16Ibid., p. 93

17Ibid., pp. 230-231

18A. McKee, Dresden 1945, The Devil's Tinderbox, Souvenir Press Ltd, 1982, p.244

19Ibid., p. 70

20Ibid., p. 70

21Ibid., p. 10

22Ibid., p. 11

23Taylor, op. Cit, p. xi

24Ibid., p. xii

25Ibid., p. 169

26Ibid., p.170

27Cox, op. Cit, pp. 54-55

28Cox, op. Cit, p. 53

29Grayling, op. Cit, p. 5

30Ibid., p. 175

31H. Strachan, Strategic Bombing and Civilian Questions in P Addison and JA Crang (ed.), Firestorm: The bombing of Dresden, 1945, Ivan R. Dee, 2006, p. 2

32Ibid., p. 17

33R. Wilson, Why Dresden Matters in P Addison and JA Crang (ed.), Firestorm: The bombing of Dresden, 1945, Ivan R. Dee, 2006, p. 168

34Irving, op. Cit, p. 173

35Ibid., p. 237

36Irving, op. Cit, p. 237

37Ibid., p. 238

38Ibid., p. 237

39K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5, Vintage, 2000, p. 138 (originally published 1969, New York)

40Cox, op. Cit., p. 31

41Ibid., p. 223 (end notes)

42Taylor, op. Cit, p. 491

43Ibid., p. 494