Dresden Bombing. 13-15 February 1945

[irisblue]

https://www.history.com/news/dresden-bombing-wwii-allies


snip--"They had heard the “whump a whump” of distant aerial bombings many times before. But on February 13, 1945, the American prisoners of war heard Dresden’s fire sirens howl right above their heads. German guards moved them two stories down into a meat locker. When they came back to the surface, “the city was gone,” remembered writer and social critic Kurt Vonnegut—one of the American POWs who witnessed the bombing of Dresden.


The punishing, three-day Allied bombing attack on Dresden from February 13 to 15 in the final months of World War II became among the most controversial Allied actions of the war. The 800-bomber raid dropped some 2,700 tons of explosives and incendiaries and decimated the German city.


As a major center for Nazi Germany’s rail and road network, Dresden’s destruction was intended to overwhelm German authorities and services and clog all transportation routes with throngs of refugees. The Allied assault came a less than a month after some 19,000 U.S. troops were killed in Germany's last-ditch offensive at the Battle of the Bulge, and three weeks after the grim discovery of the atrocities committed by Nazi forces at Auschwitz.


In an effort to force a surrender, the Dresden bombing was intended to terrorize the civilian population locally and nationwide. It certainly had that effect."

Much more at article

[Chipper Chat]

1. I learned what a "firestorm" was

Because of Dresden.

[Wounded Bear]

2. A main reason they bombed Dresden was that it was the only city left...

All of the other German major cities had been more or less destroyed by then. Dresden was virtually untouched, mainly because there were no known industries there, or at least the industries that supported the German war effort.