I had fun and games with this one a while back on the Third Reich Forum, spent ages finding the AP photograph to dispel the myth that the attack was just against refugees and therefore a warcrime (AP was the railway station – even then some Nazi apologists still weren’t happy with a comms node as target.)
Then got dragged into ‘the USAAF did precision bombing the RAF were war criminals because of area bombing’ debate – unearthed testimony from a USAAF navigator to say he dropped his bombs 23nm from Dresden that day – wasn’t intended as a criticism of individuals, just that precision bombing by main-force crews in anything than ideal conditions was a joke in 1945. The USAAF used to ‘blind bomb’ off H2X fixes for goodness sake!
The next thing was the casualty figures given for civilians – David Irving quotes 135,000+ – now you have to understand he’d working to his own Neo-Nazi agenda. At one point claiming more civilians were killed in the bombing of Dresden than in the Concentration camps, but his work on the raid has been thoroughly debunked by the German Government and subsequent historians. The Nazi propaganda ministry inserted a ‘1’ in front of the official figures (so called TB47 IIRC) to try and gain moral equivalence – seems their apologists and those attempting to discredit the Bomber Command (both RAF and USAAF) crews’ memories still like to stick to those fantasy figures. The one small victory I had in all this was that I managed to get the Spatricus history website (used as a research tool by many schools) to correct their casualty figures. ( they’d used Irving’s for some reason)
The Dresden raid was requested by Stalin and approved by Roosevelt and Churchill, only later did the US and Churchill try to distance themselves as a response to political pressure, in part generated by sympathy generated in neutral countries, and within the home populations by the high casualty figures – but they were Nazi propaganda.
Two points here – firstly, although 35,000 is a huge number and all loss of life is regrettable it’s less than the estimates for the Hamburg raids – why is Dresden made a symbol of the Allies ‘war crimes’? Was it its undefended nature? – most of the flak had been withdrawn and either sent to Berlin to bolster their defences or to the Oder front. But that was a OKW decision and to complain that attacking an undefended city (Bomber command couldn’t have known it was undefended anyway) smacks of wanting a level playing field in war.’ It’s not fair’ is a cry, as if it was somehow unsporting for the Allies to use their technological and material advantages against Nazi Germany
Secondly if the war was nearly over why hadn’t Germany surrendered? No, the National Socialists were determined to keep on to the bitter end – why should they be given any respite? If Dresden was to be avoided all they had to do was surrender- they didn’t so responsibility rests with them not the Allies.
So to get back to the original question
Yes, I could justify the sacrifices of the crews on this and any other WW2 mission – The Allies were crusading against one of the greatest menaces to civilisation the world has ever know and to denigrate their memory as many in the press seem keen to do is despicable IMO. Even worse is their memory being used as a political football by both the left and the extreme right.
Regards
-nick
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