35 000 is the official allied post strike estimate. The official German estimate is 125 000. Other sources has the number of casulaties somewhere between 60 000 up to 250 000.
No, 35,000 is the offical German estimate.
The final report of the Dresden police, dated 15 March 1945, sid 18,375 bodies had been recovered.
Report 1404 of the Berlin police, dated 22 March 1945 repeated the same number for bodies recovered, and estimated the true figure was 25,000.
Theo Miller, who worked recording the dead recovered after the Dresden raids, testified that a total of 30,000 bodies were recovered.
Report 1414 from the Berlin police, dated 3 April 45 said a total of 22,096 bodies had been recovered.
The most widely accepted figure now is from book published by historian from Dresden, Friedrich Reichert, which puts the total figure at 25,000.
The figure of 135,000 is the one most often claimed by David Irving.
Irving based his figures, as do most Nazi apologists, on the document TB 47, which claims a figure of 202,040 bodies recovered.
TB 47 had been dismissed as a fogery by historian Max Seydewitz
in the 50s, but Irving continued to use it.
Irving claimed to have recieved TB 47 from Dr Funfack, who he claimed was deputy chief medical officer in Dresden at the time.
Funfack later came forward, denied he had given the document to Irving (Irving had actually seen a copy from a friend of Funfack's), said he had been a urologist, never been involved in the recovery efforts, and had heard widely different figures third hand.
A historian tracked dow a Dresden police reservist, Werner Ehlich, who in 1945 had recieved a copy of TB47. Ehlich's copy gave the figure of 20,204 dead. The fake Irving used as a source had simply had 1 zero tacked on the end.
As you can see from the dates, the figures above are from all the major raids on Dresden, not just one night.
Harris knew there was no real war industry in dresden,
What
was in Dresden?
What were the people there doing, whilst the rest of Germany was working round the clock to produce more guns and tanks and planes? When the German labour shortage was so bad they had taken 7.5 million slaves from around Europe to help production?
I'd really like an answer to this one, because I think the tale that Dresden wasn't important to the war effort is rubish, more lies like the cooked up casualty reports, intended by Nazi apologists to claim the Germans were no worse than anyone else.
Note, I'm not accusing anyone who here who made the claims of being a Nazi apologist.
And (now comes the interesting part) the brittish bomber campaign probably lenghtened the war if anyting. The resources spent on BC was a complete waste of strategic material. Had the BC crews (all experts, highly trained aviators) been given other assignments than "kill civilians, use these expensive 4 eng bombers", and equipped with other aircraft or equipment than enormouosly expensive heavy bombers. Who knows what would have been achieved and when.
The biggest problem for the allies was brining force to bear.
Double the sie of the British army and it still couldn't have invaded Europe until 1944.
The bomber offensive was the only way for Britin to engge Germany between 1940 and 1944, apart from the Med, where enough resources were used anyway.
Bomber Command used up 7% of Britains war economy.
Germany, with a much larger war economy, devoted 9% to countering it, without taking into account any damage caused.
Harris rejected the idea to go after German strategic industry instead of his "dehousing" project. What about a 1 000 plane raid on Ploesti in 1943? What about spreading the attacks, and focusing on German power plants in 1942 (somehting that would have effectively put Germany in a constant black out -Speers greatest fear). Would any of these scenarios have shortened the war?
Britin began an oil campaign in 1940, and continued it into 1941. It didn't work, because at the time accuracy wasn't good enough,
and the facts from 1944 show that even if accuracy hd been good, there weren't enough bombers to crry it through.
Take for example the Leuna oil plant. Over a period of a year, 6552 bomber sorties were flown against the plant, over 18,000 tons of bombs dropped, and production managed to average 9% of normal. Fewer raids would have meant production returning near normal levels. Plants that were hit hd to be hit again and again after they were repaired.
The total tonnage dropped on oil targets in the campaign in 1944 and 45 was over 210,000, which is far more than the RAF dropped in total in 43.
Coupled with that, accuracy wasn't as good in 43, and Ploesti was captured by the Russians in 44, so to achieve the same result would have taken several times the total RAF bombload of 43.
Power attacks were considered by the RAF, and even tried briefly, but the German grid system was (wrongly) thought to be resistant to attack.
In 1944 the RAF dropped about 2/3 of it's tonnge on targets other than German cities, and far less than half in 45.
But no, BC wanted to kill German civilians. Nothing else. There is NOTHING good with that "strategy", it is not justifiable in any way. In fact, had anyone else done it, it would probably be considered a warcrime.
Kesselring pushed for the Luftwaffe to begin bombing London indiscriminately from early in the BoB. Was he tried for it?
If the Nazi's kill 6 million Jews, then it is morally justifiable to gas 6 million Germans.
If the Nazis kill 16 million "undesireables", is it morally justified to kill 500,000 Germans to stop them?
Not revenge, revenge would be to kill them after the war to punish them.
Furing the war, if ou believe it would stop the Nazis, would you have bombed German cities?
I would. To condemn millions to death because you are to squeamish to kill hundreds of thousands is immoral.
Remember, Harris believed he could win the war through bombing, just as LeMay did in Japan. You are now judging his morals on wether he was successful or not, which seems really bizare.
This is the same argument I've seen over and over. Because A did something reprehensible, B, C and D are allowed to do the same, only now it is not reprehensible. Now it's justified. It's a false argument
Not justified becuse they deserve it, or as punishment.
I am trying to point out to you the difference between modern wars and WW2.
When the Serbs or Iraquis were bombed, the west could do so carefully, taking their time to pick out individual military targets, and attack them with fairly high precision. There was no real rush, because the regimes being attacked weren't mssacring people on anything like the scale.
I'm trying to point out the pressure on the commanders. One days delay means thousands
more dead civillians. Every day.
The idea of Thunderclap was to break the Germn's morale, show them that although they were beaten, things would get worse until they surrendered.
If it had worked, it would have saved a million lives. It didn't, so it becomes immoral?
There was a huge difference between mindset and behaviour of soldiers, civilians and government in Japain and Germany.
Japanese bombings were necessary and performed by a small number of people.
Destruction of Dresden population was a pointless mass-murder devised by some hatefull brit in which thousands of americans were made accomplices.
British area bomb = war crime.
US area bomb = justified. Pathetic
