Seventy-five years ago this week, in the final months of World War II, the British Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force launched two days of massive bombing raids on the city of Dresden in eastern Germany.
The result was carnage. A beautiful city was transformed into a death trap. Homes, factories, and great centers of culture collapsed into a sea of furious, uncontrolled fires. Twenty-five thousand people are believed to have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians. In the context of this destruction, and because the raids occurred when Nazi Germany’s collapse was all but certain, they were immediately controversial. Some suggest the bombing raids were actually war crimes.
But while I am biased by my British grandfather’s service (my American grandfather was a Pacific Marine), I believe the facts show that the raids were justified.
First off, we must remember that the Allied bombers were attempting to destroy targets of direct and continuing value to the Nazis. Dresden was home to more than 100 factories supporting the German war effort. It also served as a crucial depot for Wehrmacht reinforcements and logistics flows moving east to confront the then-nearby Red Army.
On that point, we must consider the combat context in which the raids took place.
While the Third Reich had lost much of its military capacity by February 1945, it was holding on as best as possible. On the Western Front, February 1945 saw two Allied armies advancing to encircle Wehrmacht forces on the German border. The soldiers struggling in those battles deserved to know everything was being done to help them bring Adolf Hitler to heel. Bombing Dresden served that Western Front agenda by degrading the German will to resist. Even if marginally, it was worth it.
Still, the more compelling case for the Dresden raids comes from the Eastern Front.
As the USAAF-RAF bombs fell on Dresden, the Red Army was engaged in heavy combat just to the east. They were attempting to overcome the Wehrmacht’s defensive lines in Lower Silesia. Theirs was a key shaping operation designed to allow Marshal Georgy Zhukov to launch the final offensive on Berlin. But the Lower Silesia campaign was no easy victory. Right in the middle of the Dresden raids, on this very date 75 years ago, two Wehrmacht Corps, including a Panzergrenadier Corps, launched a counteroffensive against the Red Army outside of Dresden. It was unsuccessful, but the Soviets took casualties, and the attack reflected the Nazi refusal to surrender.
We must remember that fact.
After all, considering the Red Army’s millions of killed in action suffered on the Eastern Front, Britain and the United States had a moral responsibility to do all they could to assist their Soviet ally.
They also had a political reason to do so. President Franklin Roosevelt was dying, but he and Prime Minister Winston Churchill knew that Joseph Stalin would try to secure all the territory he could once the war was one. Note that the Yalta Conference had concluded just two days prior to the start of the Dresden raids.
There’s one final point here. Aerial targeting was nowhere near in February 1945 what it is today. Indeed, on the second day of bombing, a group of USAAF bombers missed Dresden and instead struck Prague, 75 miles away.
In short, strategic bombing was not a perfect tool. It was one that came with great human costs from aircrews, as well as those they were bombing. But it was a tool of war, necessary nonetheless.
Ultimately, the Dresden raids were justified by three factors: the city’s military utility, the ground combat situation, and the urgent need to bring a terrible war to as speedy a conclusion as possible. That doesn’t make what happened pleasant, but it does justify it.
