Dresden 1945

[Oswald Mosley]

Usual pathetic excuse, this one. None of the places mentioned above were bombed anything remotely as badly as Dresden. Roughly the same number of people are estimated to have died at Dresden as all those killed by German bombing on the UK during the whole of the war.
The merchant navy was a legitimate target because it was helping to sustain the enemy's economy and food supplies. The fact that civilians were manning the ships is irrelevant - they were never targets per se.

The German bombing of Stalingrad killed at least 40,000 people in the first raid. Then of course I pretty sure I read less then 15% of the population survived the battle. 1 million give or take at Leningrad. Germany has no right to accuse anyone of bombing civilians.

But you know those are just Soviets...

Ah, so you are using the usual 'Devil's advocate' argument! Well, two wrongs never make a right. The Western powers were supposedly fighting for democratic values, so I would have expected a different standard of behaviour. These days they would not get away with it - no way. There would be a strong public outcry.

As for the Russians, we all know what they did in East Prussia and other areas of Germany they occupied. But then they were only Germans, so they deserved it, right?

[Caldric]

Ah, so you are using the usual 'Devil's advocate' argument! Well, two wrongs never make a right. The Western powers were supposedly fighting for democratic values, so I would have expected a different standard of behaviour. These days they would not get away with it - no way. There would be a strong public outcry.

As for the Russians, we all know what they did in East Prussia and other areas of Germany they occupied. But then they were only Germans, so they deserved it, right?

Ah two wrongs never make a right. That is the common argument I hear from the people who defend the German actions, or damn the allies. It is the easiest way to say that just because Germany raped murdered and rob their way from Poland to Moscow, that does not give the Soviet's the right to seek retribution when the tables are turned.

And sometimes, two wrongs make a right, the cliché' is fallible. And no as I tried to make clear, they were people, just like us, no matter their nationality or race, just because the Soviet's had madmen controlling their country did not give Germany to right to do what they did.

[Oswald Mosley]

Just because they were not as "badly hit" does not make Dresden any less of legitimate target. The Luftwaffe targetted civilians, so did the Allies (Though the latter were rather more effective at it, from the air at least.).
BTW Mr. Justice Gray, in the The Irving Judgement put the death toll in Dresden within the bracket of 25-30,000.
60,000 British civilians died in aerial bombardments, 148 were killed by cross-channel shell-fire and 30,248 died whilst in the service of the Merchant Navy*

So attacking civilian targets at sea is okay, but not on dry land? I don't see the logic in that argument. Surely the targetting of the workforce (Hence the concentration on working class districts.) is just as legitimate as targetting the raw materials? Of course, if you don't agree, then the targetting of shipping (With no knowledge of what is on those ships.) must also be wrong.

What evidence does Judge Gray have have that 25-30,000 were killed at Dresden? He seems to have plucked a figure out of the air just because it sounds plausible (to him). Most reliable estimates point to between 50,000 and 80,000 killed.

What estimates are those?

Standard military arguments, coupled with the demonstration of alliance solidarity and a show-off presentation of [the Bomber Command’s] capacities, cost the lives of about 25,000 people in the night from the 13th to the 14th of February, 1945. This figure results from recent investigations of the Dresden city archive and is based on documents, assessed for the first time, of the departments of the city of Dresden which had been in charge of recovery and burial of the victims at the time. The city administration continued to function even after the attack, the recovery and burial of the dead was by no means carried out in a chaotic manner, there was accurate registration. The number mentioned includes 6,865 dead who were burned on the Altmarkt in order to prevent the spread of diseases. Former rescue workers consider it a myth that dead should have been burnt to ashes in cellars with flame throwers. The figure also includes 1,557 dead bodies which were found in 1957 under the ruins during construction works in Dresden. These data coincide with other official documents which in March of 1945 had contained detailed listings of the dead, but thereafter been crudely manipulated and thus lead to confusion after the war - a forger had added a naught to all the figures.
When discussing the total balance of the horror, the question is often put how many refugees were in the city at the time of the attack. It is widely maintained that these people, unknown in Dresden, died in their tens of thousands in the firestorm. Yet no eyewitness confirms that caravans of refugees crossed Dresden in the middle of February on horse carriages. Neither could massive lodgings in Dresden households be established. Only such a measure would have made it possible to accommodate hundreds of thousands of externals in a city that still had about 600,000 inhabitants. Great numbers of refugees could be seen, however, in the vicinity of the railway stations; many were also lodged in restaurants, hotels, schools and other centers of reception. Serious estimates consider that, including the about 30,000 prisoners of war and forced laborers, there were about 100,000 externals inside the city; other sources mention 200,000 people
from abroad in the city itself and in the surrounding area.
Some controversies about the number of victims in the past took the form of macabre technical considerations. It was considered possible, for instance, that many people were burned in the firestorm into heaps of ash so small that they could not be found. Fire department experts and forensic medics have in the meantime responded to this question very clearly – hardly a human body burns completely to ashes. This means that six digit numbers of victims that have been talked about for decades must be seen as pure speculations.

The above I translated from: Guido Knopp, Unser Jahrhundert -Deutsche Schicksalstage, 1998 C. Bertelsmann Verlag, München, page 258.

Ah, the lawyer is back with his 'evidence'! What do you think you are trying to prove by posting quotes carefully chosen from historians who reflect your own views and prejudices? You don't prove anything. It is well known that there are differing views on the number of casualties at Dresden. David Irving famously pointed to a possible 135,000 deaths (probably an exaggeration) and all you need to do is read through various articles in encyclopedias to find different estimates. For example, the book 'Chronicle of the Twentieth Century' quoted 80,000 dead. Are you now going to argue that this book is written by neo-Nazis? Anyway, although Guido Knopp states that the high death estimates are pure speculation (quite correctly), why should his own estimates not also be considered as pure speculation?

[Oswald Mosley]

Ah, so you are using the usual 'Devil's advocate' argument! Well, two wrongs never make a right. The Western powers were supposedly fighting for democratic values, so I would have expected a different standard of behaviour. These days they would not get away with it - no way. There would be a strong public outcry.

As for the Russians, we all know what they did in East Prussia and other areas of Germany they occupied. But then they were only Germans, so they deserved it, right?

Ah two wrongs never make a right. That is the common argument I hear from the people who defend the German actions, or damn the allies. It is the easiest way to say that just because Germany raped murdered and rob their way from Poland to Moscow, that does not give the Soviet's the right to seek retribution when the tables are turned.

And sometimes, two wrongs make a right, the cliché' is fallible. And no as I tried to make clear, they were people, just like us, no matter their nationality or race, just because the Soviet's had madmen controlling their country did not give Germany to right to do what they did.

Retribution is justifiable, revenge is not. It is simply a question of balance and measure. Let me give you an example: if someone enters your house, steals some valuables and rapes your wife while you are out on the road somewhere, and you later go find the guy and blow his brains out with a shotgun, does that make you right? No. It might make you feel good, but that does not make it right. The right punishment is for that guy to be arrested, tried and jailed for many years, not brutally killed in an act of revenge.

If we all took revenge for perceived wrongs we have suffered, society would be in a permanent state of anarchy. This is why we have the rule of law.

[Caldric]

Retribution is justifiable, revenge is not. It is simply a question of balance and measure. Let me give you an example: if someone enters your house, steals some valuables and rapes your wife while you are out on the road somewhere, and you later go find the guy and blow his brains out with a shotgun, does that make you right? No. It might make you feel good, but that does not make it right. The right punishment is for that guy to be arrested, tried and jailed for many years, not brutally killed in an act of revenge.

I it is right to me, I do not care what you think. Perhaps it is not right to the written laws of the land, but hey I am going to exact revenge if I can. What is prison? It is just another form of revenge. Just one is bloody the other is a slow death of the spirit of most men.

Not to argue nit picking things but Retribution and Revenge are the same thing, I could be wrong but I am almost sure they are both the same thing.

[Richard Murphy]

Actually, if you go back to my original statement, I did not say that what happened in Dresden was right, I merely said it was not illegal. No German was prosecuted for the Luftwaffe's terror attacks, either using manned or unmanned aircraft. Had any been so accussed, then there would be a case for bleating "Hipocrisy!", but there weren't, so there isn't!.
Of course now it is considered immoral (Though that does not stop governments, most notably the Soviets and Americans, from using such tactics as and when they deem them appropriate.), though it's still not a crime.
And for those who doubt Judge Gray's estimate (Which I'm fairly sure wasn't just snatched out the air!), read what Evans wrote in his demolition of Irving's account;

Yet Evans reveals that Irving (1) fabricated a strafing attack on German civilians and refugees by British and American pilots, rearranging dates and missattributing testimony to bolster his account, (2) knowingly took an account of a bombing run on Prague and pretended the events happened over Dresden, (3) derived his own initial estimate of 135,000 dead from the testimony of a lone source who supplied no documentaty evidence of any kind to back up his figure, (4) raised the count to 202,040 on the basis of a typed copyof a document that later turned out to be a forgery, (5) refused to modify the figure even when the man who supplied the document wrote to Irving to complain that he had been wrongly identified as Dresden's Deputy Chief Medical Officer when he was merely a urologist at the local hospital and "only heard of the numbers third-hand," (6) suppresed internal evidence suggesting the document was a fake, and (7) also suppressed testimony-a letter to Irving-from a man whose job it had been to tally the dead, and who put the number at just over 30,000, (8) grudgingly acknowleged the discovery of an official "Final Report" that estimated the death toll at 25,000, but later discounted it, and finally (9) ignored the discovery of the genuine document whose forged copy was refered to in (4) above. The authentic total was 20.204-the forgers had simply added a zero!

quote from the previously mention D.D. Guttenplan book.
All this (It runs to sixty pages!) was entered as evidence in that trial, and was accepted with barely a murmur from Irving!

Regards from the Park,

Rich

[Caldric]

Irving is a Nazi or what? Well could not really be a Nazi, but could sure be a Nazi sympathizer. Which is his business, as along as he does not try to change history to make his view come out correctly.

[Lobscouse]

Caldric says the raping of German women was not promoted by Soviet high command or Stalin.. He obviously has not heard of Ilya Ehrenburg's exhortations to the victorious Red Army, on the occassion of that army's entering East Prussia. Surprising, since Ehrenburg was Stalin's chief propagandist. I cannot quote him in entirety, but phrases such as "break the spirit of the proud Germanic womanhood" left no doubt in the minds of Soviet soldiery as to what they should do. I understand Ehrenburg moved on to a peaceful retirement in Israel.

[Caldric]

Caldric says the raping of German women was not promoted by Soviet high command or Stalin.. He obviously has not heard of Ilya Ehrenburg's exhortations to the victorious Red Army, on the occassion of that army's entering East Prussia. Surprising, since Ehrenburg was Stalin's chief propagandist. I cannot quote him in entirety, but phrases such as "break the spirit of the proud Germanic womanhood" left no doubt in the minds of Soviet soldiery as to what they should do. I understand Ehrenburg moved on to a peaceful retirement in Israel.

To start with he was not the official Propagandist, he was a journalist and writer. Of course he was approved by the Soviet leaders. However, he never held a post like the grease ball and swine Goebbles.

And yes I stand by my statement completely. Also many of the advanced Red Army divisions were not the main source of trouble, it was the less-disciplined second line division's that made most of the horror's, and the NKVD divisions.

Ilya of course was a Jew too, I suppose perhaps the horrors of his own people found through out Poland and Ukraine etc. may have inspired his hateful commentary.

You make it sound as though I approve of such things to, which I do not.

[Lobscouse]

Sorry, Caldric, if I hit a sore spot with you, because it was not my intention to imply you were in favor of any unpleasantness. It is true that front line soldiers rarely have the opportunity for rape. My wife,as an eight year old amidst a group fleeing the Red Army, were overtaken by advanced elements of that army. It was night-time and refugee as well as soldier shared a large abandoned farmhouse and its out buildings. No one was molested, but a German counterattack at first light resulted in most grizzly scene for the survivors. Horses and soldiers littering the yard. Fortunately the majority made it to Pillau, eventually, and rescue by the gallant Kriegsmarine.

[Andy H]

What's the difference between Area Bombing and Blind Bombing-The answer NONE.

After the failure of P.Bombing by the USAAF it started Blind bombing, so don't give me this rubbish that factories can be hit by P.Bombing when the chances (Heavily dependent on the wheather) of doing so are so low.

So here's the scenario-eneny factories are producing weapons etc to use against both yourself and your allies-killing your men in the air maybe. You have a choice to destroy the target and save lives or leave the factories alone so they can carry on producing. Every soldier worth his salt given the balances would destroy the target.

The simple defence against the charge levelled against the aircrews who destroyed Dresden is that There was a war on. It was the War that killed the citizens of Dresden and the citizens of hundreds of other cities around the world. That war killed millions of people, and who should we blame for that.

Andy from the Shire

[Richard Miller]

What's the difference between Area Bombing and Blind Bombing-The answer NONE.

After the failure of P.Bombing by the USAAF it started Blind bombing, so don't give me this rubbish that factories can be hit by P.Bombing when the chances (Heavily dependent on the wheather) of doing so are so low.

So here's the scenario-eneny factories are producing weapons etc to use against both yourself and your allies-killing your men in the air maybe. You have a choice to destroy the target and save lives or leave the factories alone so they can carry on producing. Every soldier worth his salt given the balances would destroy the target.

The simple defence against the charge levelled against the aircrews who destroyed Dresden is that There was a war on. It was the War that killed the citizens of Dresden and the citizens of hundreds of other cities around the world. That war killed millions of people, and who should we blame for that.

Andy from the Shire

What is the objective in using incendiaries in the middle of the night on the center of a highly populated large city?

So here's the scenario-eneny factories are producing weapons etc to use against both yourself and your allies-killing your men in the air maybe. You have a choice to destroy the target and save lives or leave the factories alone so they can carry on producing. Every soldier worth his salt given the balances would destroy the target.

What weapons factories were located in Dresden, that necessitated its total destruction?

[ustal]

Caldric

I it is right to me, I do not care what you think

.
Then why are you here Caldric? Seems like you have nothing to say.

[Roberto]

Just because they were not as "badly hit" does not make Dresden any less of legitimate target. The Luftwaffe targetted civilians, so did the Allies (Though the latter were rather more effective at it, from the air at least.).
BTW Mr. Justice Gray, in the The Irving Judgement put the death toll in Dresden within the bracket of 25-30,000.
60,000 British civilians died in aerial bombardments, 148 were killed by cross-channel shell-fire and 30,248 died whilst in the service of the Merchant Navy*

So attacking civilian targets at sea is okay, but not on dry land? I don't see the logic in that argument. Surely the targetting of the workforce (Hence the concentration on working class districts.) is just as legitimate as targetting the raw materials? Of course, if you don't agree, then the targetting of shipping (With no knowledge of what is on those ships.) must also be wrong.

What evidence does Judge Gray have have that 25-30,000 were killed at Dresden? He seems to have plucked a figure out of the air just because it sounds plausible (to him). Most reliable estimates point to between 50,000 and 80,000 killed.

What estimates are those?

Standard military arguments, coupled with the demonstration of alliance solidarity and a show-off presentation of [the Bomber Command’s] capacities, cost the lives of about 25,000 people in the night from the 13th to the 14th of February, 1945. This figure results from recent investigations of the Dresden city archive and is based on documents, assessed for the first time, of the departments of the city of Dresden which had been in charge of recovery and burial of the victims at the time. The city administration continued to function even after the attack, the recovery and burial of the dead was by no means carried out in a chaotic manner, there was accurate registration. The number mentioned includes 6,865 dead who were burned on the Altmarkt in order to prevent the spread of diseases. Former rescue workers consider it a myth that dead should have been burnt to ashes in cellars with flame throwers. The figure also includes 1,557 dead bodies which were found in 1957 under the ruins during construction works in Dresden. These data coincide with other official documents which in March of 1945 had contained detailed listings of the dead, but thereafter been crudely manipulated and thus lead to confusion after the war - a forger had added a naught to all the figures.
When discussing the total balance of the horror, the question is often put how many refugees were in the city at the time of the attack. It is widely maintained that these people, unknown in Dresden, died in their tens of thousands in the firestorm. Yet no eyewitness confirms that caravans of refugees crossed Dresden in the middle of February on horse carriages. Neither could massive lodgings in Dresden households be established. Only such a measure would have made it possible to accommodate hundreds of thousands of externals in a city that still had about 600,000 inhabitants. Great numbers of refugees could be seen, however, in the vicinity of the railway stations; many were also lodged in restaurants, hotels, schools and other centers of reception. Serious estimates consider that, including the about 30,000 prisoners of war and forced laborers, there were about 100,000 externals inside the city; other sources mention 200,000 people
from abroad in the city itself and in the surrounding area.
Some controversies about the number of victims in the past took the form of macabre technical considerations. It was considered possible, for instance, that many people were burned in the firestorm into heaps of ash so small that they could not be found. Fire department experts and forensic medics have in the meantime responded to this question very clearly – hardly a human body burns completely to ashes. This means that six digit numbers of victims that have been talked about for decades must be seen as pure speculations.

The above I translated from: Guido Knopp, Unser Jahrhundert -Deutsche Schicksalstage, 1998 C. Bertelsmann Verlag, München, page 258.

Ah, the lawyer is back with his 'evidence'! What do you think you are trying to prove by posting quotes carefully chosen from historians who reflect your own views and prejudices?

What is it, Mosley?

Knopp is referring to a recent study of the Dresden city archives, based on documents of the departments of the city of Dresden which had been in charge of recovery and burial of the victims at the time. This is not a matter of "views and prejudices", but of elementary reasoning: Who would know better than the people who carried out the ghastly task of pulling out the the bodies from under the ruins and burying or burning them?

You don't prove anything.

Considering the quality of my sources, I would at least say I'm a lot closer than Mr. Mosley to an accurate rendering of events.

It is well known that there are differing views on the number of casualties at Dresden. David Irving famously pointed to a possible 135,000 deaths (probably an exaggeration)

"Probably" sounds nice, considering that Irving himself acknowledged to have been way off. This he wrote in a letter to the editor of the Times
on 7 July 1966:

_The Times_ of London, July 7, 1966, p. 13. Letter to the Editor.

THE DRESDEN RAIDS

From Mr. David Irving

Sir, -- Your newspaper has an enviable reputation for accuracy, and
your readiness to correct the smallest errors from one day to the
next is an inspiration to your readers; but how can a historian
correct a mistake, when once he finds himself to have been wrong? I
ask the indulgence of your columns.

The bombing of Dresden in 1945 has in recent years been adduced by
some people as evidence that conventional bombing can be more
devastating than nuclear attacks, and others have sought to draw
false lessons from this. My own share of the blame for this is
large: in my 1963 book _The Destruction of Dresden_ I stated that
estimates of the casualties in that city varied between 35,000 and
over 200,000.

The higher figures did not seem absurd when the circumstances were
taken into account. I had tried for three years to bring to light
German documents relating to the damage, but the east German
authorities were unable to assist me. Two years ago I procured from
a private east German source what purported to be extracts from the
Police President's report, quoting the final death-roll as "a quarter
of a million"; the other statistics it contained were accurate, but
it is now obvious that the death-roll statistic was falsified,
probably in 1945.

The east German authorities (who had originally declined to provide
me with the documents) have now supplied to me a copy of the 11-page
"final report" written by the area police chief about one month after
the Dresden raids, and there is no doubt as to this document's
authenticity. In short, the report shows that the Dresden casualties
were on much the same scale as in the heaviest Hamburg raids in 1943.
The document's author, the _Hoehere SS- und Polizeifuehrer Elbe_,
was responsible for civil defence measures in Dresden, it should be
noted.

His figures are very much lower than those I quoted. The crucial
passage reads: "Casualties: by 10th March, 1945, 18,375 dead, 2,212
seriously injured, and 13,918 slightly injured had been registered,
with 350,000 homeless and permanently evacuated." The total
death-roll, "primarily women and children," was expected to reach
25,000; fewer than a hundred of the dead were servicemen. Of the
dead recovered by then, 6,865 had been cremated in one of the city
squares. A total of 35,000 people were listed as "missing".

The general authenticity of the report is established beyond doubt,
because within a very few days of receiving the first, a second
wartime German report was supplied to me, this time from a western
source. It repeats _exactly_ the figures listed in the above report,
upon which it was evidently based.

The second report, a Berlin police summary of "Air Raids on Reich
Territory", dated March 22, 1945, was found, quite by chance,
misfiled among the 25,000 Reich Finance Ministry files currently
being explored at the west German Federal Archives. It was forwarded
to me by one of their archivists, Doctor Boberach.

I have no interest in promoting or perpetuating false legends, and I
feel it is important that in this respect the record should be set
straight.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

DAVID IRVING.

25 Elgin Mansions, W.9.

Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/places/ft ... ualties-01

and all you need to do is read through various articles in encyclopedias to find different estimates. For example, the book 'Chronicle of the Twentieth Century' quoted 80,000 dead.

Which means that the sources of this "Chronicle" are not the most accurate.

Are you now going to argue that this book is written by neo-Nazis?

No, I'm just saying that it's sources are not the most accurate.

Anyway, although Guido Knopp states that the high death estimates are pure speculation (quite correctly), why should his own estimates not also be considered as pure speculation?

Because he is not estimating at all, but referring to a study carried out by the Dresden city archive. See above.

[Reigo]

Palestinians put bombs under enemy (Israeli) civilians so to demoralize them and so maybe the enemy will leave the area which Palestinians consider theirs. That's called today terrorism.

In WW II enemy civilians were bombed so to demoralize them and so maybe the enemy will surrender more quickly. That's not called today terrorism. But it actually should be. Besides German terrorists, there were also Western-Allied terrorists. But in Nürnberg those criminal acts were considered as criminal acts, which the Western-Allies didn't commit in large amounts. Allies also terror-bombed and because that similar German deeds weren't considered as criminal. So a wonderful picture developed: German's did all the criminal things and Allies didn't do practically anything criminal.