Bombing of Dresden in World War II

The bombing of Dresden in World War II by the Allies remains controversial after more than 50 years. Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, was fire-bombed by Allied air forces (the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) over three days (February 13-15, 1945) near the end of World War II. Air Marshall Arthur Harris[?], inventor of area bombing, ordered the action. He was never held accountable for this alleged war crime.

The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Numbers vary from 35,000 to 135,000 dead. There have been larger estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as a quarter of a million, but they are from disputed sources, primarily the Nazi Propaganda Ministry and holocaust denier David Irving. The Nazis made use of Dresden in their propaganda and promised swift retaliation.

The Dresden bombing is a strongly debated decision, and the action is still widely perceived as lacking military justification, even within the context of the controversial area bombing policy pursued against Germany by Britain's Bomber Command[?] in 1942-1945. The city has never regained its pre-war population of 630,000.

There are anecdotes of the pilots and crew having problems years later. Some had nightmares, some thought they would go to hell as war criminals, some had unshakable visions of the fires and the burning cities.

Author Kurt Vonnegut had been captured during the Battle of the Bulge and was a prisoner of war near Dresden during the bombing. He later wrote about his experiences and feelings in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

External link and references

• Alan Forbes on wartime atrocities, Boston Review, October/November 1995 (http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR20.4/Forbes.html)