Dresden was a civilian town with no military significance. Why did we burn its people? [View all]

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11410633/Dresden-was-a-civilian-town-with-no-military-significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html

Dresden was a civilian town with no military significance. Why did we burn
its people?
If there was no good strategic reason for it, then not even the passage of time can make it
right

By Dominic Selwood
11:14AM GMT 13 Feb 2015

Today marks the 70th anniversary of “Operation Thunderclap”, one of the twentieth century’s most controversial military actions.

From 13 to 15 February 1945, British (and some American) heavy bombers dropped 2,400 tons of high explosives and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs onto the ancient cathedral city of Dresden. In just a few hours, around 25,000 to 35,000 civilians were blown up or incinerated.

Victor Gregg, a British para captured at Arnhem, was a prisoner of war in Dresden that night who was ordered to help with the clear up. In a 2014 BBC interview he recalled the hunt for survivors after the apocalyptic firestorm. In one incident, it took his team seven hours to get into a 1,000-person air-raid shelter in the Altstadt. Once inside, they found no survivors or corpses: just a green-brown liquid with bones sticking out of it. The cowering people had all melted. In areas further from the town centre there were legions of adults shrivelled to three feet in length. Children under the age of three had simply been vaporised.

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Supporters of Britain’s “area bombing” (targeting civilians instead of military or industrial sites)
maintain that it was a vital part of the war. Churchill wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland”. In another letter he called it “terror bombing”. His aim was to demoralise the Germans to catalyse regime change. Research suggests that the soaring homelessness levels and family break ups did indeed depress civilian morale, but there is no evidence it helped anyone prise Hitler’s cold hand off the wheel.

Others maintain that it was ghastly, but Hitler started it so needed to be answered in a language he understood. Unfortunately, records show that the first intentional “area bombing” of civilians in the Second World War took place at Monchengladbach on 11 May 1940 at Churchill’s orders (the day after he dramatically became prime minister), and four months before the Luftwaffe began its Blitz of British cities.

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