Between February 13 and 15, 1945, the City of Dresden then nicknamed the "Florence of the Elbe" is bombarded by the British and American air forces. In four raids gathering nearly 1300 heavy bombers, 3900 tons of explosives and incendiary bombs were dropped on the city. The effects will have been devastating, most of the city is reduced to ashes by a typhoon of fire, there are (according to the most recent estimates), more than 25,000 dead. An artistic center that has been spared
Dresden, in German Dresden, is a city in eastern Germany, on the Elbe, capital of Saxony, near the border with the Czech Republic . Mentioned for the first time in writings from the beginning of the 13th century, Dresden gradually gained importance from 1485, becoming the residence of the dukes and later electors and then kings of Saxony. In the 17th century, it became a major artistic and cultural centre, notably under Frederick-Auguste I. It was during this period that the alchemist John Friedrich Böttger invented the method of making Meissen porcelain, pieces that until then had been imported from Asia.
The city, badly damaged by the Seven Years' War, was partly rebuilt and nicknamed the "Florence of the Elbe" for its architectural beauty and its many museums. Napoleon won his last great military success there in 1813. Dresden became an important industrial center at the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of 1945, the city, which had been spared until then by the Allied bombings, still had its railway installations, which were still usable by the routed German army...
The bombardment of Dresden
On the night of February 13 to 14, 1945, in the final phase of World War II, the Allied aviation launches a massive bombardment against Dresden:800 bombers, mostly belonging to the British Royal Air Force (RAF), drop 650,000 incendiary bombs on the German city where hundreds of thousands of civilians have taken refuge. The attack, carried out under the pretext of destroying military bases, armament factories and a communications node, killed around 25,000 people and reduced one of Germany's largest artistic centers to ashes.
Officially, this was to break the morale of the German population and hasten the surrender of the Third Reich. The operation was also probably intended to remind Stalin not to try to push his advantage too far west, by showing him what the Anglo-Saxon air force was capable of achieving.
Since this event will have caused a lot of ink. Qualified as an Allied war crime by the nationalist right and the German far right, its commemoration gives rise to overflows across the Rhine each year. Beyond the controversy, this event raised the question of the effectiveness and legitimacy of the Allied strategic bombing campaign on Germany.
To go further
- The Destruction of Dresden:The Night of Retribution for Nazi Germany, by David John Cawdell Irving. A&H, 1987.
- The bombardment of Dresden , documentary on DVD.