I contend that the Dresden bombing was unjustified.
(1) Dresden was full of refugees and was attacked to give the Russians a demonstration of Allied air power.
Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester, is also far the largest unbombed built-up the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westwards and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium. The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.
- From an Internal RAF memo of January 1945.
(2) Churchill was uncomfortable with the bombing of Dresden because he felt the city wasn't all that valid a target compared with other possible bombing targets. He believed that the purpose of bombing Dresden was to spread terror amongst the German people.
It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, should be reviewed
I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction.
- Memo from Churchill to 'Bomber' Harris, March 1945.
(3) No attempt was made to limit civilian casualties.
My father was one of the "anonymous RAF meteorological officers (who) finally sealed Dresden's fate"
.At the Dresden briefing, my father told me, the crews were given no strategic aiming point. They were simply told that anywhere within the built-up area of the city would serve.
He felt that Dresden and its civilian population had been the prime target of the raid and that its destruction and their deaths served no strategic purpose, even in the widest terms; that this was a significant departure from accepting civilian deaths as a regrettable but inevitable consequence of the bomber war; and that he had been complicit in what was, at best, a very dubious operation.
David Pedlow, writing in the Guardian 07/14/04
Finally, I like the last sentence of this next extract, to me it sums up what a lot of brave people have been arguing in this thread.
In Coventry, on the 50th anniversary of the attack, the German president Richard von Weizsäcker spoke of his nation's guilt; but when the Queen visited Dresden, she failed to lay a wreath at the cathedral ruins. Her advisers feared tabloid headlines. And, who knows, someone might throw an egg. It was a sad failure of diplomacy. Yet maybe a few have accepted that in war, however just the cause, no one emerges with clean hands. Saying sorry is not a sign of weakness.
