Bombing of Dresden 1945. Bombing of Dresden - Memories of Hell

Bloody massacre in Dresden: burning women, ruins, children wandering among the corpses in search of parents - the first act of genocide of the future NATO (PHOTO)

14.02.2016 - 19:00

On the anniversary of the barbaric bombing of the US and British Air Forces of the German city of Dresden, a reader of Russkaya Vesna Sergey Vasilevsky, a resident of Lugansk, described in detail the nightmare of those days, based on historical sources.

We learned a lot about NATO and their satellites (I try not to use the word "sixes"). We can't tell anything.

What I would like to recall once again is that the shelling and bombing of residential areas is not an innovation. This is the original method of warfare and the introduction of "values" in the territory of the enemy.

What NATO is can be judged by what NATO has been doing since its founding. And that's not all - NATO arose as a union of states that had their own history at the time of creation.

Therefore, in order to more fully understand the essence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is necessary to consider the history of the states that created the Organization. As the Gospel says, "A good tree does not bear bad fruit." What were the "roots" of NATO?

The fact that is considered in this article is the bombing of Dresden by the US and British air forces on February 13-14, 1945. Due to the small size of the newspaper article, only some data will be given, everyone can find more detailed information on their own.

SITUATION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BOMBING:

From about the middle of 1944, the Allied Air Force, unable to cope with the task of destroying the military and transport potential of Germany, switched to massive bombing of the civilian population.

One of the significant episodes was the city of Essen in East Frisia. On September 30, 1944, due to bad weather, American bombers were unable to reach their target - a military factory. On the way back, the pilots saw a city below them and, in order not to return with a bomb load, decided to drop it on the city. The bombs hit the school exactly, burying 120 children under the rubble - half the children in the city.

Compare the emblem on the plane with the emblem on the trail. picture.

As one German fighter pilot recalled: “... At that time, a joke was popular: who can be considered a coward? Answer: a resident of Berlin who volunteered for the front ... "

By order of the commander-in-chief of the British bombers, Arthur Harris, leaflets were dropped on German cities with the following content:

Why are we doing this? Not out of a desire to take revenge, although we have not forgotten Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade (more on Belgrade - S.V.), London, Plymouth, Coventry.

We are bombing Germany, city after city, stronger and stronger, to make it impossible for you to continue the war.

Roosevelt's phrase about the planned bombing of the civilian population of Germany: “... We must be cruel to the Germans, I mean the Germans as a nation, and not just the Nazis.

Either we must castrate the German people, or treat them in such a way that they do not produce offspring capable of continuing to behave as in the past ... ".

Bomber "Lancaster" drops bombs on the civilian population.

A phrase from the rationale for the Dresden operation: “... The main goal of such bombings is primarily directed against the morality of the ordinary population and serves psychological purposes. It is very important that the entire operation starts with this goal…”.

"CITY OF REFUGEES"

At the beginning of 1945, Dresden became a "city of refugees", in which hospitals and evacuation points were concentrated. At the time of the bombing, there were up to 600,000 refugees in the city fleeing the alleged "atrocities" of the Soviet Army.

Dresden was practically not protected by anti-aircraft artillery and was covered by only one squadron of fighters (one cannot ignore the lack of aviation fuel).

On February 13, 1945, 245 Lancaster bombers took off from British airfields, they carried out the first bombardment. At midnight, another 550 bombers rose and carried out a second bombardment.

During two night raids on Dresden, 1,400 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,100 tons of incendiary bombs (2.5 kilotons - nuclear age terminology) were dropped.

When all the fires combined into one, a firestorm began. The air drawn into the funnel created a giant whirlwind that lifted people into the air and threw them into the fire.

The fires that engulfed the city were so strong that the asphalt melted and flowed through the streets. People hiding underground were suffocating - oxygen burned out in the fire of fires. The heat reached such strength that human flesh melted, and a stain remained from a person.

When the tornado gained strength, the heat increased sharply. Those who hid in shelters died relatively easily: they turned into ashes or melted, soaking the ground for a meter and a half.

Aviation of the Western Allies launched a series of bombing attacks on the capital of Saxony, the city of Dresden, which was almost completely destroyed as a result.

The Dresden raid was part of an Anglo-American strategic bombing program launched after the US and British heads of state met in Casablanca in January 1943.

Dresden is the seventh largest city in pre-war Germany with a population of 647 thousand people. Due to the abundance of historical and cultural monuments, it was often called "Florence on the Elbe". There were no significant military installations there.

By February 1945, the city was full of wounded and refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. Together with them in Dresden, there were estimated to be up to a million, and according to some sources, up to 1.3 million people.

The date of the raid on Dresden was determined by the weather: a clear sky was expected over the city.

During the first raid in the evening, 244 British Lancaster heavy bombers dropped 507 tons of explosive and 374 tons of incendiary bombs. During the second raid at night, which lasted half an hour and was twice as powerful as the first, 965 tons of high-explosive and over 800 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city by 529 aircraft.

On the morning of February 14, 311 American B-17s bombed the city. They dropped more than 780 tons of bombs into the sea of ​​fire raging below them. On the afternoon of February 15, 210 American B-17s completed the rout by dropping another 462 tons of bombs on the city.

It was the most devastating bombing strike in Europe in all the years of World War II.

The area of ​​the zone of continuous destruction in Dresden was four times larger than that in Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing by the Americans on August 9, 1945.

In most of the urban development, destruction exceeded 75-80%. Among the irreplaceable cultural losses are the ancient Frauenkirche, Hofkirche, the famous Opera and the world-famous Zwinger architectural and palace ensemble. At the same time, the damage caused to industrial enterprises turned out to be insignificant. The railway network also suffered little. The marshalling yards and even one bridge over the Elbe were not damaged, and traffic through the Dresden junction resumed a few days later.

Determining the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden is complicated by the fact that at that time there were several dozen military hospitals and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the city. Many were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings or burned in a fiery tornado.

The death toll is estimated in various sources from 25-50 thousand to 135 thousand people or more. According to an analysis prepared by the US Air Force History Department, 25,000 people died, according to official data from the British Royal Air Force History Department - more than 50 thousand people.

Subsequently, the Western Allies claimed that the raid on Dresden was a response to the request of the Soviet command to strike at the city's railway junction, allegedly made at the Yalta Conference of 1945.

As evidenced by the declassified minutes of the Yalta conference, demonstrated in the documentary film directed by Alexei Denisov "Dresden. Chronicle of the Tragedy" (2006), the USSR never asked the Anglo-American allies during World War II to bomb Dresden. What the Soviet command really asked for was to strike at the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig due to the fact that the Germans had already transferred about 20 divisions from the western front to the eastern one and were going to transfer about 30 more. It was this request that was delivered in writing like Roosevelt and Churchill.

From the point of view of domestic historians, the bombing of Dresden pursued, rather, a political goal. They attribute the bombardment of the Saxon capital to the desire of the Western Allies to demonstrate their air power to the advancing Red Army.

After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, on the site of Dresden there was only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that were here. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the rest of the parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

This post is about how and why Dresden was bombed.

On February 13, 1945, the Royal Air Force of Great Britain and the US Air Force began the bombing of Dresden, which lasted two days and claimed the lives of at least 20 thousand people. The question of whether the bombing of Dresden was due to military necessity is still a matter of controversy.

A few days later, it was decided that the best help could be the bombing of German oil plants, as well as the bombing of large German cities for "psychological pressure", including Dresden. An RAF memorandum on the eve of the bombing stated: "The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what the RAF is capable of"

It was originally planned that the operation would begin with a US Air Force raid. However, due to bad weather, American aircraft were unable to take part in the operation that day. As a result, on the evening of January 13, 796 Avro Lancaster and 9 De Havilland Mosquito aircraft took off in two waves and dropped 1478 tons of high-explosive and 1182 tons of incendiary bombs on Dresden. Three hours later, 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs.

The next day, February 14, the bombing continued with renewed vigor and with the participation of the US Air Force: 311 American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers dropped 771 tons of bombs. On February 15, American aircraft dropped 466 tons of bombs, and for the first time "targets moving along the roads" were attacked. Thus, the number of victims among civilians who tried to get out of the city increased. And although the carpet bombing was completed on the evening of February 15, the US Air Force carried out two more bombings - on March 2 and April 17

Margaret Freyer, a resident of Dresden, about the bombing of the city: “Moans and cries for help were heard in the firestorm. Everything around turned into a continuous hell. I see a woman - she is still before my eyes. In her hands is a bundle. This is a child. She runs, falls, and the baby, having described an arc, disappears in a flame. Suddenly, two people appear right in front of me. They shout, wave their hands, and suddenly, to my horror, I see how one by one these people fall to the ground (today I know that the unfortunate ones became victims of lack of oxygen). They lose consciousness and turn to ash. Crazy fear seizes me, and I keep repeating: "I don't want to burn alive!" I don't know how many other people got in my way. I only know one thing: I must not burn.”

In two days of bombing, the city was almost burned to the ground. The fact is that at first high-explosive bombs were dropped, which destroyed the roofs. They were followed by incendiary bombs and again high-explosive ones to make it difficult for the firefighters. This bombardment tactic ensured the formation of a fiery tornado, the temperature inside of which reached +1500°C.

Wolfgang Fleischer, historian at the Museum of Military History of the Bundeswehr in Dresden: “The Grossen Garten, which extended all the way to the city center, was damaged on the night of February 13-14. The inhabitants of Dresden sought salvation from the fiery tornado in it and the zoo adjacent to it. An English ace bomber, circling over the target, saw that a large area immediately near the center of the city was not on fire, like all its other parts, and called in a new column of bombers, which turned this part of the city into flames. Numerous residents of Dresden who sought refuge in the Grossen Garten were killed by high explosive bombs. And the animals that escaped from the zoo after their cages were destroyed - as the newspapers later wrote about it - wandered around the Grossen Garten.

The exact number of people killed in the bombings is unknown. Official German reports report a figure of 25,000 to 200,000 and even 500,000 dead. In 2008, German historians spoke of 25,000 deaths. The fate of some refugees is unknown because they could have been burned beyond recognition or left the city without informing the authorities.

12 thousand buildings were destroyed in the city. Local resident O. Fritz: “I also remember very well what was in the minds of the inhabitants of Dresden - it was a completely unnecessary, meaningless raid, it was a museum city that did not expect anything like this for itself. This is fully confirmed by the memories of the victims at that time.”

Goebbels decided to use Dresden for propaganda purposes. Brochures were distributed with photographs of the destroyed city, burned children. On February 25, a new document was released with photographs of two burnt children and with the title "Dresden - a massacre of refugees", which stated that the number of victims was not 100, but 100 thousand people. Much has been said about the destruction of cultural and historical values.

The UK responded to Goebbels' propaganda with a statement by RAF spokesman Colin McKay Grierson, seen as an attempt at justification: “First of all, they (Dresden and other cities) are centers where evacuees arrive. These are centers of communication through which movement is carried out towards the Russian front, and from the Western front to the Eastern, and they are located close enough to the Russian front in order to continue the successful conduct of battles. I believe that these three reasons probably explain the bombing."

The bombing of Dresden has been reflected in films and literature, including Kurt Vonnegut's anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade, which took part in clearing the city's rubble. The novel was not accepted in the US and was censored

According to the memoirs of a radio operator of the British Air Force, who participated in the raid on Dresden: “At that time, I was struck by the thought of women and children below. It seemed that we flew for hours over the sea of ​​fire that raged below - from above it looked like an ominous red glow with a thin layer of haze above it. I remember I said to the other crew members, "Oh my God, those poor fellows downstairs." It was completely unfounded. And it can't be justified."

Vitaly Slovetsky, Free Press.

Is the largest bombing of World War II recognized as a war crime?

For several decades, calls have been heard in Europe to make the bombing of the ancient city of Dresden the status of a war crime and genocide of the inhabitants. Recently, the German writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature Günter Grass and the former editor of the British newspaper The Times Simon Jenkins again demanded this.
They are supported by the American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who said that the bombing of many German cities was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could work out the practice of bombing.
The German historian Yorck Friedrich in his book noted that the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity: "... it was an absolutely unnecessary bombardment in the military sense."
The number of victims of the terrible bombing that took place from February 13 to 15, 1945, is from 25,000 to 30,000 people (many sources claim more). The city was destroyed almost completely.
After the end of World War II, the ruins of residential buildings, palaces and churches were dismantled and taken out of the city. On the site of Dresden, a site was formed with marked boundaries of former streets and buildings.
The restoration of the center lasted about 40 years. The rest of the city was built much faster.
To this day, the restoration of historic buildings on Neumarkt Square is underway.

The fiery tornado drew people in ...
Before the war, Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Tourist guides called it Florence on the Elbe. The famous Dresden Gallery, the second largest porcelain museum in the world, the most beautiful Zwinger palace ensemble, the Opera House, which competed in acoustics with the La Scala Theater, and many churches built in the Baroque style, were located here.
Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin often stayed in Dresden, and Sergei Rachmaninov prepared here for his world tours. The writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who worked on the novel "Demons", lived in the city for a long time. Here his daughter Lyubasha was born.
At the end of World War II, the locals were confident that Dresden would not be bombed. It did not have military factories. There were rumors that after the war the Allies would make Dresden the capital of a new Germany.
There was practically no air defense here, so the air raid signal sounded just a few minutes before the start of the bombing.
At 22:03 on February 13, the inhabitants of the outskirts heard the rumble of approaching aircraft. At 10:13 p.m., 244 RAF Lancaster heavy bombers dropped the first high-explosive bombs on the city.
Within minutes, the city was engulfed in flames. The light from the giant fire was visible for 150 kilometers.
One of the pilots of the British Royal Air Force later recalled: “The fantastic light around became brighter as we approached the target. At an altitude of 6000 meters, we could distinguish in an unearthly bright glow details of the terrain that we had never seen before; For the first time in many operations, I felt sorry for the people downstairs.”
The navigator-bomber of one of the bombers testified: “I confess, I glanced down when the bombs were falling, and with my own eyes I saw a shocking panorama of the city, blazing from one end to the other. Thick smoke was visible, carried by the wind from Dresden. A panorama of a brightly sparkling city opened up. The first reaction was the thought that shocked me about the coincidence of the massacre taking place below with the warnings of the evangelists in the sermons before the war.
The plan to bombard Dresden included the creation of a fiery tornado on its streets. Such a tornado appears when the scattered fires that have arisen are combined into one huge bonfire. The air above it heats up, its density decreases and it rises.
The British historian David Irving describes the firestorm created in Dresden by the British Royal Air Force pilots as follows: “... the resulting firestorm, judging by the survey, absorbed more than 75 percent of the destruction area ... Giant trees were uprooted or half broken. Crowds of fleeing people were unexpectedly caught up by a tornado, dragged through the streets and thrown directly into the fire; ripped off roofs and furniture… were thrown into the center of the burning old part of the city.
The fiery tornado reached its peak in the three-hour interval between raids, precisely at the time when the inhabitants of the city who had taken refuge in underground corridors had to flee to its outskirts.
A railroad worker who was hiding near Postal Square watched as a woman with a baby carriage was dragged through the streets and thrown into the flames. Others fleeing along the railroad embankment, which seemed to be the only way of escape not littered with debris, told how the railroad cars on the open sections of the track were blown away by a storm.
Asphalt melted on the streets, and people, falling into it, merged with the road surface.
The telephone operator of the Central Telegraph left such memories of the bombing of the city: “Some girls suggested that we go out into the street and run home. The stairs led from the basement of the telephone center building to a quadrangular courtyard under a glass roof. They wanted to get out through the main gate of the courtyard to Postal Square. I didn't like this idea; suddenly, just as 12 or 13 girls were running across the yard and fumbling with the gate, trying to open it, the red-hot roof collapsed, burying them all under it.
In a gynecological clinic, after being hit by a bomb, 45 pregnant women died. On Altmarkt Square, several hundred people who sought salvation in ancient wells were boiled alive, and the water from the wells evaporated by half.
During the bombing, approximately 2,000 refugees from Silesia and East Prussia were in the basement of the Central Station. Underground passages for their temporary residence were equipped by the authorities long before the bombing of the city. The refugees were cared for by representatives of the Red Cross, women's service units under the state labor service and employees of the National Socialist welfare service. In another city in Germany, the accumulation of such a large number of people in rooms decorated with flammable materials would not be allowed. But the Dresden authorities were sure that the city would not be bombed.
Refugees were also on the stairs leading to the platforms and on the platforms themselves. Shortly before the raid on the city by British bombers, two trains with children arrived at the station from Koenigsbrück, which was approached by the Red Army.
A refugee from Silesia recalled: “Thousands of people crowded shoulder to shoulder in the square ... Fire raged above them. At the entrances to the station, the corpses of dead children lay, they were already stacked on top of each other and taken out of the station.
According to the air defense chief of the Central Station, out of 2,000 refugees who were in the tunnel, 100 were burned alive, another 500 people suffocated in the smoke.

"The number of victims in Dresden is impossible to count"
During the first attack on Dresden, the British Lancasters dropped 800 tons of bombs. Three hours later, 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs. The losses of the Royal Air Force during the two raids amounted to 6 aircraft, 2 more aircraft crashed in France and 1 in the UK.
On February 14, 311 American bombers dropped 771 tons of bombs on the city. On February 15, American aircraft dropped 466 tons of bombs. Part of the American P-51 fighters were ordered to attack targets moving along the roads in order to increase chaos and destruction on the region's important transport network.
The commander of the Dresden rescue squad recalled: “At the beginning of the second attack, many were still crowded in tunnels and basements, waiting for the end of the fires ... The detonation hit the basement windows. Some new, strange sound was added to the roar of explosions, which became more and more muffled. Something resembling the rumble of a waterfall - it was the howl of a tornado that started in the city.
Many who were in underground shelters instantly burned out as soon as the surrounding heat suddenly increased dramatically. They either turned to ashes or melted…”
The bodies of other dead, found in the basements, shrunken from the nightmarish heat to one meter in length.
British planes also dropped canisters filled with a mixture of rubber and white phosphorus on the city. Canisters crashed on the ground, phosphorus ignited, a viscous mass fell on the skin of people and stuck tightly. It was impossible to redeem...
One of the inhabitants of Dresden said: “The tram depot had a public toilet made of corrugated iron. At the entrance, with her face buried in a fur coat, lay a woman of about thirty, completely naked. A few yards away lay two boys, about eight or ten years old. They lay down, hugging each other tightly. Also naked... Everywhere, where the eye reached, people lay suffocated from lack of oxygen. Apparently, they tore off all their clothes, trying to make it look like an oxygen mask ... ".
After the raids, a three-mile column of yellow-brown smoke rose into the sky. A mass of ash floated, covering the ruins, towards Czechoslovakia.
In some parts of the old city, such heat was created that even a few days after the bombing it was impossible to enter the streets between the ruins of houses.
According to the report of the Dresden police, compiled after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city, “... 24 banks, 26 buildings of insurance companies, 31 trading shops, 6470 shops, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges.
On March 22, 1945, the municipal authorities of Dresden issued an official report, according to which the number of deaths recorded by this date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths during the bombing was expected to be about 25,000 people.
In 1953, in the work of the German authors “Results of the Second World War”, Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “The number of victims in Dresden cannot be calculated. According to the State Department, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual figure of losses, of course, is much less; but even 60-100 thousand civilians who died in the fire in one night can hardly fit in the human mind.
In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden concluded that approximately 25,000 people died during the bombings.

“And at the same time show the Russians…”
On January 26, 1945, Air Force Secretary Archibald Sinclair suggested bombing Dresden to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in response to his dispatch with the question: “What can be done to properly finish off the Germans during their retreat from Breslau (this city is located 200 kilometers from Dresden. "SP")?
On February 8, the High Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe informed the RAF and the US Air Force that Dresden was included in the list of targets for bombing. On the same day, the US military mission in Moscow sent an official notification to the Soviet side about the inclusion of Dresden in the list of targets.
An RAF memorandum given to British pilots the night before the attack stated: “Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany… is by far the largest enemy area still un-bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, housing is in short supply as workers, refugees and troops need to be accommodated, as well as government offices evacuated from other areas. At one time widely known for its production of porcelain, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center ... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it the most, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what they are capable of Royal Air Force".
- If we talk about war crimes and genocide, then many German cities were bombed. The Americans and the British developed a plan: mercilessly bomb the cities in order to break the spirit of the German civilian population in a short time. But the country lived and worked under bombs,” says Vladimir Beshanov, author of books on the history of World War II. - I think that not only the barbaric bombing of Dresden, but also the bombing of other German cities, as well as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should be recognized as war crimes.
In Dresden, residential buildings and architectural monuments were destroyed. Large marshalling yards received almost no damage. The railway bridge over the Elbe and the military airfield, located in the vicinity of the city, remained intact.
After Dresden, the British managed to bomb the medieval cities of Bayreuth, Würzburg, Zoest, Rothenburg, Pforzheim and Welm. Only in Pforzheim, where 60,000 people lived, a third of the inhabitants died.
What will come out of another attempt to give the monstrous event the status of a war crime is unknown. So far, every year on February 13, the inhabitants of Dresden commemorate fellow citizens who died in a fiery tornado.

The Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 is still one of the most recognizable episodes of World War II, thanks in no small part to Vonnegut's book Massacre Five, or the Children's Crusade. I wanted to bring together some of the data I have and express my opinion about the causes and results of this raid. This post is quite long, mind you.

Part I. Dresden and the Nazi war economy

At the beginning of World War II, 642,000 people lived in Dresden. This made it the seventh largest German city - after Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Leipzig and Essen.

The city was an extremely important transport hub, where three major railway lines converged: Berlin-Prague-Vienna, Munich-Breslau and Hamburg-Leipzig. The importance of Dresden to the German transport network is clear from the fact that in 1939 Saxony was the seventh largest German state in terms of area and length of railways, and third in terms of total freight tonnage. Here is a map of the German railways in 1932 (click for a larger resolution):

Here is another card. It reads better than the previous one, but only those railway junctions that were bombed by Allied aircraft are shown (click for larger resolution):

According to the USAF, by 1945 there were up to 110 important factories and industrial facilities in the city. Up to fifty thousand people worked at factories related to the production of military products. In particular, in Dresden there were: distributed aircraft production, chemical weapons production (Chemische Fabric Goye & Company), X-ray machine manufacturer (Koch & Sterzel A.G.), anti-aircraft and field artillery production (Lehman), perhaps the most important optical factory in Germany (Zeiss Ikon A.G.), and electrical and mechanical engineering companies (eg Gebruder Bassler and Saxoniswerke). Also in the city there was an arsenal and barracks.

Part II. Causes of the February raid on the city

First, let's take a look at the situation on the Soviet-German front in early 1945 (click for a larger resolution):

And now let's pay attention to an excerpt from the protocol from the materials of the Yalta Conference.

Crimean conference. Recording of the meeting of heads of government
February 4, 1945, 5 p.m., Livadia Palace
Roosevelt, asks someone to report on the situation on the Soviet-German front. Stalin replies that he can propose that the report be made by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, General of the Army Antonov.
Antonov: "1. From January 12-15, Soviet troops went on the offensive on the front from the Neman River to the Carpathians, stretching 700 kilometers.
<...>
7. Probable actions of the enemy:
a) The Germans will defend Berlin, for which they will try to delay the advance of Soviet troops on the line of the Oder River, organizing defense here at the expense of retreating troops and reserves transferred from Germany, Western Europe and Italy.
For the defense of Pomerania, the enemy will try to use his Courland grouping, transferring it by sea across the Vistula.
b) The Germans will cover the Vienna sector as firmly as possible, reinforcing it with troops operating in Italy.
8. Transfer of enemy troops:
a) On our front have already appeared:
from the central regions of Germany - 9 divisions
from the Western European front - 6 divisions
from Italy - 1 division

16 divisions
Are in transit:
4 armored divisions
1 motorized division
________________________________________
5 divisions.
b) Probably, up to 30-35 divisions will be transferred (at the expense of the Western European front, Norway, Italy and reserves located in Germany).
Thus, an additional 35-40 divisions may appear on our front.
I will add on my own that
9. Our wishes:
a) Accelerate the transition of the allied forces to the offensive on the western front, for which the situation is now very favorable:
1) the defeat of the Germans on the eastern front;
2) the defeat of the German group advancing in the Ardennes;
3) the weakening of the German forces in the west due to the transfer of their reserves to the east.
It is advisable to start the offensive in the first half of February.
b) By air strikes on communications, to prevent the enemy from transferring his troops to the east from the western front, from Norway and Italy; in particular, to paralyze nodes Berlin and Leipzig.
c) Do not allow the enemy to withdraw their forces from Italy."
(The text of Antonov's message was delivered in writing to Roosevelt and Churchill.)

Western sources mention that Antonov's request for air strikes was the end result of negotiations between Stalin and Tedder on January 15, 1945, during which, among other things, the use of Allied strategic aviation for the joint purposes of the Red Army and the Western powers was discussed. Unfortunately, I could not find the minutes of this meeting on the Internet, so if someone has the text "Memorandum of Conference with Marshal Stalin, 15 January 1945" or "22378, U.S. Military Mission Moscow, 16 January 1945" - it would be very grateful. On January 31, 1945, Tedder signed a directive that made Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden the second priority target for Allied strategic bombers, in order to "hinder the transfer of reinforcements from other fronts."

The attentive reader, of course, has already noticed that Dresden did not appear in Antonov's request. But if you look at the train maps and information on rail transport in Saxony from the first part of this post, the inclusion of Dresden in the list of targets seems quite logical from the British side. After all, the essence of Antonov's request is the desire "by air strikes on communications to prevent the enemy from transferring his troops to the east from the western front," and not "in particular, to paralyze the Berlin and Leipzig nodes." All three cities, Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, are key and vital centers of railway communications in the eastern part of Germany. Knock them out and the ability of the Germans to transfer cargo will be dealt a tangible blow.

It is still unclear to me whether the Soviet side specifically asked for the bombing of the city of Dresden in addition to Leipzig and Berlin - I have no documents confirming this. But the fact that this city was included in the list of three priority goals as part of the cooperation of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, in my opinion, is obvious. Would Dresden have been bombed in the first months of 1945 without the request of the Red Army to strike at German communications? Don't know. It is quite possible that yes. In any case, this is already an alternative history. In real history, on February 8, 1945, Bomber Command and the United States Strategic Air Forces were informed by Allied High Command that Dresden was one of the targets chosen because of its importance to the Eastern Front.

Let me briefly note that other reasons for the bombing of Dresden are often mentioned (especially in Soviet historiography). One of them is an attempt to deprive the USSR of the reparations due to it. The other is "intimidation" of the Soviet leadership by demonstrating the capabilities of strategic bombers. These versions seem unconvincing to me, and below, in the fifth part of the post, I will explain in more detail why.

Part III. Plaque

The raid on the night of February 14-15 was carried out by 1299 strategic bombers: 527 American and 722 British. 3906.9 tons of bombs were dropped. The Americans dropped 953.3 tons of high-explosive and 294.3 tons of incendiary bombs, trying to get into the Dresden marshalling yards using the H2X radar. The British dropped 1,477.7 tons of high-explosive and 1,181.6 tons of incendiary bombs on urban areas, euphemistically called "industrial areas" in documents of that time. Here is a map of the city, for understanding:

1 - the Heinz-Steyer stadium, which the British bombers went out to as a landmark, and began to fan out and bomb.
2 - marshalling yard Dresden-Friedrichstadt‎
3 - train station Dresden-Neustadt‎
4 - Central Station
5 - Parliament of Saxony, town hall, etc. - city center.

How exactly the fan of British bombers was moving is not very clear. I came across such a picture, but in my opinion this is not official data, but the memories of one of the pilots.

An interesting detail: in Dresden at the time of the raid, it seems that there was not a single anti-aircraft artillery battalion at all. Back in 1944, it was all transferred to the protection of synthetic gasoline plants (for example, Leuna) and hydrogenation plants (for example, Pölitz and Böhlen). As a matter of fact, it was thanks to the absence of anti-aircraft artillery fire that a very good concentration of bombs was obtained. After all, the fire of anti-aircraft artillery forces the bombers to climb higher, worsening their accuracy; well, the anti-aircraft maneuvers of the pilots and the general jitters of accuracy do not improve.

Separately, it is worth noting that at the same time, in February, after an almost year-long break, the Americans carried out two raids on Berlin: on February 3 by forces of 1003 B-17s and on February 26 by forces of 1184 B-17s. Also, on February 27, they also carried out a raid on the railway junction in the center of Leipzig with the forces of 756 B-17s. I don't have such accurate data on the British, but I suspect that they also participated in the raids on Berlin and Leipzig.

Part IV. The consequences of the raid on Dresden

The exact number of victims of the bombing will never be known. According to the German police, on March 22, 1945, 18,375 people were found dead in the city as a result of the bombing. Between the bombings and 31 March 1945, 22,096 people were buried. By 1970, another 1,900 corpses had been found during construction work. The modern German estimate of casualties is approximately 25,000. In particular, quite recently, after six years of work, the commission of historians, established in 2004 at the insistence of local authorities, came to the same figure (report in German). It is worth mentioning that for a long time another estimate of the number of victims was called - 250,000 people. For the first time, this estimate, as far as I understand, appeared during the war - this figure was announced by the Goebbels Propaganda Ministry. Then she appeared in Irving's book and was mentioned in Soviet literature for a long time. In the fifth part of the post, I will try to explain why such a number of victims seems unlikely to me.

The raid destroyed or seriously damaged 23% of industrial buildings, 56% of non-industrial buildings (not including residential) and approximately 50% of housing units (ie apartments, single-family houses, etc.). 78,000 housing units were destroyed; 27.7 thousand units turned out to be uninhabitable with the possibility of repair; 64.5 thousand units were damaged.

USAF estimates that Dresden's military production capacity fell by about 80% in the first days after the raid. Most railway stations, cargo terminals, depots and warehouses were either completely destroyed or damaged to varying degrees of severity. The Carolabrücke bridge over the Elbe is no longer passable. Other railway bridges (notably the firebombed Marienbrücke) were closed for one to several weeks. Traffic on the bridges was considered unsafe, plus many of the bridges were already mined, and the Germans feared an accidental explosion.

Part V. Myths

"Dresden was bombed to deprive the USSR of reparations"

The USSR received reparations not from specifically agreed objects, but on the principle of "what I want." And whether or not a specific Dresden would have been bombed, it didn’t play any role. In Yalta and Potsdam, the "share" of the USSR (from which it was shared with Poland) was determined in the amount of 10 billion dollars. Along with the army trophy teams, they also attracted specialists in the "dismantling" of enterprises, where specialists from the relevant industries were involved. Not only every People's Commissariat of Industrial Profile, but also many large Soviet enterprises, as well as various institutions that had nothing to do with industry, sent their own "dismantlers" to Germany. It got to the point of a madhouse - for example, the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports instructed its teams to dismantle swimming pools. The atmosphere was well described by Chertok in Vol. 1 "Rockets and People". If anyone is interested, a good work on this subject is M. Semiryaga, "How We Ruled Germany." There is a download online.

In principle, the figure of 10 billion dollars was taken from the ceiling by the chairman of the Reparation Commission, Ambassador I.M. Maisky, who recommended this amount to Stalin, and, in the opinion of all experts, did not cover the losses of the USSR (and even taking into account the fact that much more than 10 billion were actually taken away in reparations, they still did not cover the losses from the war even close). But, on the other hand, the value of the property available in Germany many times exceeded this amount. Therefore, the Allies bombed the economy of the Reich "a lot" or "little"; Soviet reparations in absolute numbers (and in physical volumes) were not affected at all.

In general, the USSR was completely indifferent to the fact that Germany was being torn apart. Yes, and he acted accordingly. To take the same assault on Koenigsberg, which was not even particularly necessary from a military point of view, where a month before the end of the war, about half of the housing stock was smashed by artillery. Did the military worry that this city would then enter the Soviet zone of occupation? Unlikely.

"Dresden was bombed for the purpose of intimidation"

This version is simply incomprehensible to me. What a thousand strategic bombers could do to the city became very clear after Hamburg in 1943. The Soviet leadership had all the British data on the results of that raid. Dresden was nothing new here.

"250 thousand people were killed in Dresden"

This is extremely unlikely. The fact that modern German estimates are different, I have already mentioned. As additional circumstantial evidence, take a look at this table. This is Dresden, along with four other cities that have the highest percentage of deaths as a result of a single raid. In Dresden, the number of inhabitants is listed as one million due to the influx of refugees from the eastern regions of Germany. As you can see, 250 thousand victims would be extremely out of the general range.

B about a larger percentage of the population than in Dresden was killed in one raid in Darmstadt and Kassel; a larger number of victims were killed in Hamburg. This is not counting the bombings in Japan, Tokyo alone is worth something.

Regarding the area of ​​destruction, here is a list of cities in which the area of ​​destruction was 50% or more of the total area of ​​buildings (i.e. more than in Dresden):
50% - Ludwigshafen, Worms
51% - Bremen, Hannover, Nuremberg, Remscheid, Bochum
52% - Essen, Darmstadt
53% - Cochem
54% - Hamburg, Mainz
55% - Neckarsulm, Soest
56% - Aachen, Münster, Heilbronn
60% - Erkelenz
63% - Wilhelmshaven, Koblenz
64% - Bingerbrück, Cologne, Pforzheim
65% - Dortmund
66% - Crailsheim
67% - Giessen
68% - Hanau, Kassel
69% - Düren
70% - Altenkirchen, Bruchsal
72% - Geilenkirchen
74% - Donauwörth
75% - Remagen, Würzburg
78% - Emden
80% - Prüm, Wesel
85% - Xanten, Zulpich
91% - Emmerich
97% - Julich

Also, the bombing of Dresden was not exceptional either in terms of the bomb tonnage dropped or in terms of the number of aircraft involved. Here, for example, data on raids on Dresden during the war:

In addition, the total number of bombs dropped during the war

This is a difficult question in general.

In short, it was not out of innate sadism that the British set fire to German cities. The fact is that daytime raids in the first half of the war turned out to be practically impossible due to too high losses of bombers. At first, the Americans also honestly tried to bomb point targets during the day, but after terrible losses from August to October 1943 (Regensburg, Schweinfurt, Stuttgart, Bremen-Wegesack-Wanzig-Marienburg-Anklam, the second Schweinfurt) they realized that daytime point raids without fighter cover end very badly, and also switched to night raids.

And at night, on a four-engine strategic bomber of that era, even getting into the city was a relatively difficult task. In June-July 1941, the British conducted a study of the real effectiveness of night bombing (then they were still bombing point targets). It turned out that:
1) Only one of the three aircraft that reported a successful attack on the target bombed within a radius of 8 kilometers from it.
2) For French ports, this proportion was 2 out of 3, over Germany 1 out of 4, over the Ruhr 1 out of 10 (!).
3) On a full moon, this proportion (over the Ruhr) became 2 out of 5, on moonless nights - 1 out of 15.
4) These figures refer only to aircraft that reported attacking the target (see (1)); there were less than a third of those in each raid.

By the way, during the night raids on the cities of the enemy, the Soviet military aircraft had the same problem: " raids on Helsinki in February 1944 (a total of 2120 sorties) failed not so much because of losses, but because of the low accuracy of hits. In the first raid, 2100 bombs were dropped, of which only 331 fell on the city. In the second of 4200, only 130 bombs fell on Helsinki, in the third of 9000 bombs only 338 hit the city. As a result, only 134 people were killed in Helsinki. 800 bombs were dropped on Kotka, of which only 35 fell on the territory of the city. During the bombing of Oulu, most of the bombs generally fell on Swedish territory, during the raid on Turku, some of the aircraft mistakenly dropped bombs on Stockholm (!) etc.."

In general, at the beginning and even in the middle of the war, the tactics of night carpet bombing were quite justified due to the low effectiveness of high-precision raids. I recommend Murray's book "Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945", it is available on the Internet. But by the end of the war, when there were horns and legs left from the Luftwaffe and there were effective escort fighters, the British had to abandon this tactic. Unfortunately, they were influenced by the inertia of the early war years, plus the peculiar personality of Harris. Casualties during the night bombing of the Dresden railway junctions located in the city center could not be avoided - the then strategic bombers were not very accurate when bombing on the radar. However, the fact that the British, unlike the Americans, did not even try to carry out bombing on the radar, but deliberately directed their bombing stream to the residential areas of Dresden, can and should be blamed on them.