Dresden

[Walt's Daughter]

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Read the facts about Dresden

 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dr...in_World_War_II

 

The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Estimates are made difficult by the fact that the city and surrounding suburbs which had a population of 642,000 in 1939[21] was crowded at that time with up to 200,000 refugees,[22] and some thousands of wounded soldiers. The fate of some of the refugees is not known as they may have been killed and incinerated beyond recognition in the fire-storm, or they may have left Dresden for other places without informing the authorities. Earlier reputable estimates varied from 25,000 to more than 60,000, but historians now view around 25,000–35,000 as the likely range[23][24] with the latest (1994) research by the Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert pointing toward the lower part of this range.[25] It would appear from such estimates that the casualties suffered in the Dresden bombings were similar to those suffered in other German cities which were subject to firebombing attacks during area bombardment.[26]

 

Contemporary official German records give a number of 21,271 registered burials, including 6,865 who were cremated on the Altmarkt.[27] There were around 25,000 officially buried dead by March 22, 1945, war related or not, according to official German report Tagesbefehl (Order of the Day) no. 47 ("TB47"). There was no registration of burials between May and September 1945.[28] War-related dead found in later years, from October 1945 to September 1957, are given as 1,557; from May 1945 until 1966, 1,858 bodies were recovered. None was found during the period 1990–1994, even though there was a lot of construction and excavation during that period. The number of people registered with the authorities as missing was 35,000; around 10,000 of those were later found to be alive.[24] In recent years, the estimates have become a little higher in Germany and lower in Britain; earlier it was the opposite.

 

There have been higher estimates for the number of dead, ranging as high as 300,000. They are from disputed and unreliable sources, such as the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels, Soviet historians, and David Irving, the once popular but now discredited self-styled 'historian'[29] who retracted his higher estimates.[30] Both the Columbia Encyclopedia and Encarta Encyclopedia list the number as "from 35,000 to more than 135,000 dead", the higher figure of which is in line with Irving's incorrect retracted estimates.

 

The Nazis made use of Dresden in their propaganda efforts and promised swift retaliation. The Soviets also made propaganda use of the Dresden bombing in the early years of the Cold War to alienate the East Germans from the Americans and British.

 

The tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was actually lower than in many other areas.[31] However, ideal weather conditions at the target site, the wooden-framed buildings, and "breakthroughs" linking the cellars of contiguous buildings and the lack of preparation for the effects of air-raids by Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann,[32] conspired to make the attack particularly devastating. For these reasons the loss of life in Dresden was higher than many other bombing raids during World War II. For example Coventry, the English city which is now twinned with Dresden, and is often compared and contrasted with it, lost 1,236 in two separate raids in 1940. In late 2004, an RAF man involved in the raid said in an interview on the BBC's Radio 4 that another factor was the lower-than-expected level of anti-aircraft fire, which allowed a high degree of accuracy on the part of the bombers.

 

Overall, Anglo-American bombing of German cities claimed between 305,000 and 600,000 civilian lives.[33] Whether these attacks hastened the end of the war is a controversial question.