Panzermahn wrote:
Irving revised the figure of Dresden's bombing victims in his 1995 edition of Destruction of Dresden (Apocalypse: Destruction of Dresden). By the way, the figure of 300,000 victims that Allied apologists attributed to Irving's mention in his 1963 book, was actually a hearsay from other sources which Irving gave the lowest and the highest estimate in it.
In his 1995 book, Irving stated that the most possible number of victims in Dresden was 35,000 after reexamining other sources (which what exactly revisionism is) compare to the static dogmatic mentality of the Allied apologianism. (Only sources from Allied archives are considered the real thing. Other sources are just plain Nazi apologia)
It would be greatly appreciated if Panzermahn would furnish the exact quote and page reference for Irving's casualty revision in his 1995 edition, as I don't wish to waste my time in rereading the entire book again. I wasted enough of that with the 1963 edition.
But even if that were Irving's view in 1995 it took him over thirty years, in the face of an enormous quantity of contrary evidence, to come off his initially incredibly inflated figures. At a Press conference on 29 June
1989 he stated that the raid "burned
Dresden to the ground, killing anything between 100,000 and 250,00" refugees. In a television interview on November 28,
1991 he proclaimed that in one night 125,000 were killed in
Dresden. And as late as
1993, in a promotional video for his Australian visit, he stated that over 130,000 died in the air raid. See Richard J. Evans
Lying About Hitler (Basic Books, 2001) at 181-2.
And
this very day Irving is back again on his web site with a
100,00 number!
An exlusive [sic] pictorial series from the book: THE BRITISH FIRE RAID ON DRESDEN KILLED A HUNDRED THOUSAND CIVILIANS IN TWO HOURS
To be found at:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Dresden/index.html
As to Panzermahn's notion that "only sources from Allied archives are the real thing....other sources are just plain Nazi apologia" I suggest that he depart from his favorite English source and familiarize himself with the following
German sources:
Götz Bergander's
Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschicht, Zerstörung, Folgen (Würzburg 1998) [Bergander was a
Dresden resident at the time of the bombing.]
Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung,
Hamburg und Dresden in Dritten Reich: Bombenkrieg und Kriegsende (Hamburg 1993)
Friedrich Reichert, ed.
Verbranndt bis zum Unkenntlichkeit: Die Zerstörung Dresdens 1945 (
Dresden, 1994) [Reichert was an official with the
Dresden city Museum.]
Helmut Schnatz,
Tieffliegger über Dresden: Legende oder Wirklichkeit? (Köln, 2000)
Max Seydewitz,
Die unbesiegbare Stadt: Zerstörung und neuaufbau von Dresden (Berlin 1955, rev. 1982) [Seydewitz was Communist Premier of Saxony immediately after the Russian takeover and later was director of the City's art collections.)
Walter Weidauer,
Inferno Dresden (Berlin 1965, 2nd ed 1966). [Weidauer was High Burgomaster of
Dresden for many years immediately after WWII. Weidauer's estimate of the number of victims was certainly not based on anything from the "Allied archives" but rather from the original of the Final Report issued by the
Dresden Police on March 15, 1945, which document was given him by the daughter-in-law of the police official who had dictated and initialed it. It stated that there were 18,375 dead, 2,212 badly wounded, 13,718 slightly wounded, 350,000 homeless and re-quartered. Bergander
supra at 265, cited in Evans,
Lying About Hitler supra at 167.]
HaEn wrote:
"The number was based on recovered bodies" .
Ever been in a bombardment ? Or sometimes the resulting 'firestorm"" ?
There just are no bodies to be recovered; just ashes mixed in with the rubble of the buildings.
As Andeas has pointed out, there have been something in the neighborhood of 22,000 bodies recovered.
According to Walter Weidauer, who as subsequent Mayor of the city was surely in a position to know, only in four instances was it impossible to to establish the number of casualties in any one place, and the total for the four could not have been over 100. Only in a very small number of cases were the bodies so mutilated or burned that the exact number could not be ascertained; the majority of the victims having died of suffocation as the natural consequence of a firestorm, which swiftly consumes the oxogen in the atmosphere. There were, of course, bodies buried in the extensive rubble which remained undiscovered at the time of the official Police Report. But Weidauer (
supra at 120) states that in the twenty years following the air raid a total of less than 1,900 bodies had been uncovered from the ruins, and Reichert (supra at 61) states that not a single body had been found subsequent to 1990, despite the heavy archeological excavations on the Altmarkt and elsewhere. And see Evans,
supra at 149-84, and Frederick Taylor,
Dresden (Harper Collins 2004), Appendix B: "Counting the Dead", at 443-56.
Haven't we already flogged this poor old horse to death more than once on this site? It seems to keep rising like a Phoenix from the ashes for reasons which I fail to comprehend but which I am becoming less and less inclined to view charitably. Irving is a convicted charlatan and the death toll in
Dresden was in the 25,000 - 35,000 neighborhood! Doesn't that number suffice to turn one's stomach? Why in the name of all that's holy isn't that toll horrible and sickening enough?!? What legitimate purpose can support insistence upon a figure 4 times higher, in the face of all evidence to the contrary? I'm listening for an answer.....
Regards, Kaschner