12/26/2023 0 Comments Bombing in gunship iiiOn 5 January 1945, two North American B-25 Mitchell bombers dropped 300,000 leaflets over Dresden with the "Appeal of 50 German generals to the German army and people". The Soviet Army continued its push towards the Reich despite severe losses, which they sought to minimize in the final phase of the war. This was later reexamined, and the decision made for a more limited operation. Ī large scale aerial attack on Berlin and other eastern cities was examined under the code name Operation Thunderclap in mid-1944, but was shelved on 16 August. Hence any assistance to the Soviets on the Eastern Front could shorten the war. Despite the post-war assessment, in the period before the Dresden raid, there were serious doubts in Allied intelligence as to how well the war was going for them, with fears of "Nazi redoubt" being established, or of the Russian advance faltering. Alternatively, the report warned that the Germans might hold out until November if they could prevent the Soviets from taking Silesia. A special British Joint Intelligence Subcommittee report, German Strategy and Capacity to Resist, prepared for Winston Churchill's eyes only, predicted that Germany might collapse as early as mid-April if the Soviets overran its eastern defences. On 8 February 1945, the Red Army crossed the Oder River, with positions just 70 km (43 mi) from Berlin. The German army was retreating on all fronts, but still resisting strongly. The Red Army had launched its Silesian Offensives into pre-war German territory. The Altstadt (old town) in 1910 from the town hallĮarly in 1945, the German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge had been exhausted, as was the Luftwaffe's disastrous New Year's Day attack involving elements of 11 combat wings of its day fighter force. One of the main authors responsible for inflated figures being disseminated in the West was Holocaust denier David Irving, who subsequently announced that he had discovered that the documentation he had worked from had been forged, and the real figures supported the 25,000 number. However, in March 1945, the German government ordered its press to publish a falsified casualty figure of 200,000 for the Dresden raids, and death tolls as high as 500,000 have been claimed. The city authorities at the time estimated up to 25,000 victims, a figure that subsequent investigations supported, including a 2010 study commissioned by the city council. In the decades since the war, large variations in the claimed death toll have fuelled the controversy, though the numbers themselves are no longer a major point of contention among historians. Immediate German propaganda claims following the attacks played up the death toll of the bombing and its status as mass murder, and many in the German far-right refer to it as "Dresden's Holocaust of bombs". Some have claimed that the raid constituted a war crime. Critics of the bombing have asserted that Dresden was a cultural landmark with little strategic significance, and that the attacks were indiscriminate area bombing and were not proportionate to the military gains. Several researchers assert that not all of the communications infrastructure, such as the bridges, were targeted, nor were the extensive industrial areas which were located outside the city centre. A 1953 United States Air Force report defended the operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which they noted was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort. Despite the current understanding of the ability of Nazi Germany to continue the war, at the time, Allied intelligence assessments gave undue emphasis to fears of the Russian advance faltering or the establishment of a Nazi "redoubt" in Southern Germany. Postwar discussions of whether the attacks were justified, and the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the bombing, have led to the event becoming one of the moral causes célèbres of the war. Three more USAAF air raids followed, two occurring on 2 March aimed at the city's railway marshalling yard and one smaller raid on 17 April aimed at industrial areas. An estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people were killed. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km 2) of the city centre. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city. The bombing of Dresden was a joint British and American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, during World War II. Dresden from the Rathaus (city hall) in 1945, showing destruction.
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