Don't Believe the Lies About the Dresden Casualties -

At Least 250K Were Incinerated Alive

It is ironic that those who screech loudest about holocaust denial are 6 million times

guiltier of being in denial of confirmed holocausts. It is because Allied holocausts

are so undisputed that their only recourse is censorship ~ and denial.

Across Europe, especially in France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries, thousands

of cities and their unfortunate civilian populations was fireball incinerated. Dresden and

hundreds of other cities and towns in Europe were literally turned into horrific crematories.

Many metropolis never recovered from the Allied infernos. Whatever city and town

landscapes you see in Germany today is alien to what it was in our lifetime.

In respect of Dresden, the Federal Republic of Germany put the figure of dead at 35,000.

This is still not enough to fill any small city’s football arena. On February 14, 1945, the Saxon

city’s population, similar to that of say Liverpool, was teeming with refugees

fleeing the ravishing Red Army then being urged on by Winston Churchill.

It is reasonable to assume that Dresden was host to 1,500,000 doomed souls when the

first of the RAF and USAAF carpet bombing raids commenced on St Valentine’s Night 1945.

Shortly after reunification, the Dresden city administration at that time also represented

the survivors’ point of view. COMPACT presents an original document of the Landeshauptstadt Dresden

/ Stadtverwaltung from July 31, 1992, signed by the Area Manager Karin Mitscherlich. It clearly states:

In a vain attempt to provide more credible figures a document was eventually produced

that appeared to concede that 202,000 people, mostly civilians had died in the Allied crematoria: 

‘According to reliable information from the Dresden police, 202,040 dead, mostly

women and children, were recovered by March 20, 1945. Only 30% of these could

be identified. Including the missing, a figure of 250,000 to 300,000 victims is likely

to be realistic. Appalling, many of the hillocks of corpses were later

misrepresented by the Allied media as victims of German internment camps.’

 

However, scholarly revisionism has proved that this document was fake. The false document

was yet another vain attempt to sidestep the true figure of those

incinerated, which could be set at four times that number who perished.

‘Dresden 1945’, has compiled a large number of sources in the chapter ‘Facts and Figures’ 

original documents, extracts from contemporary press releases, finds in Soviet

encyclopaedias, plus testimonies from SED politicians, and in Issue published

that the overwhelming majority assume over 100,000 victims of the terrorist attack.

An exact number is simply impossible because during the holocaust many of the victims

were burned to ashes or literally evaporated in their cellars. The ludicrous spin on the

allied spun casualty figures spurred historians on to further investigations:

Corresponding new research has not yet been completed.

Concerned voices were raised about the incineration not just of this great Saxon city but

of the satanic-like scale of the holocaust that was rained down on Germany,

France, Italy and the Low Countries by the USAAF and RAF.

‘One of the most unhealthy features of the bombing offensive was that the War Cabinet –

and in particular the Secretary for Air, Archibald Sinclair, felt it necessary to repudiate

publicly the orders which they themselves had given to Bomber Command.’ 

~ R. H. S Crosman. Labour Minister of Housing. Sunday Telegraph, October 1 1961.

‘Kassel suffered over three-hundred air raids, some carrying waves of 1,000 bombers;

British by night, American by day.  When on April, 4, 1945, Kassel surrendered, of a

population of 250,000, just 15,000 were left alive.’   ~  

Jack Bell, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, Kassel, May 15 1946.

‘Countless smaller towns and villages had been razed to the ground or turned into ghost towns,

like Wiener Neustadt in Austria, which emerged from the air raids and the street fighting

with only eighteen houses intact and its population reduced from 45,000 to 860.’ 

 In the Ruins of the Reich, Douglas Botting. George, Allen & Unwin. London. 1985.

OTHER CITIES incinerated with most of their populations: Berlin, Hamburg,

Dortmund, Essen, Dresden, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Dusseldorf, Hanover, Bremen,

Wuppertal, Vienna, Duisburg. Munich, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Mannheim, Stuttgart,

Kiel, Gelsdenkirchen, Bochum, Aachen, Wurzburg, Darmstadt, Krefeld, Munster,

Munchen Gladbach, Braunschweig, Ludwishafen, Remscheid, Pforzheim, Osnabruck,

Mainz, Bielefeld, Gieben, Duren, Solingen, Wilhelmshaven, Karlsruhe, Oberhausen,

Heilbronn, Augsburg, Hamm, Knittelfeld, Luneburg, Cuxhaven, Kulmback, Hagen,

Saarbrucken, Freiburg, Graz, Koblenz, Ulm, Bonn, Bremerhaven, Wanne-Eickel,

Worms, Lubeck, Schweinfurt, Kleve, Wiener Neustadt, Wiesbaden, Paderborn, Bocholt,

Hanau, Hildesheim, Emden, Siegen, Pirmasons, Hale, Bayreuth, Kreuznach, Witten,

Aschaffenburg, Kaiserlautern, Gladbeck, Dorsten, Innsbruck, Neumunster, Linz,

Klagenfurt, Reutlingen, Recklinghausen, Reuel, Regensburg, Homberg, Elmshorn,

Wetzel, Villach, Hamelin, Konigsberg, Moers, Passau, Solbad Hall I. T, Coburg,

Attnang-Puchheim, Friedrichshafen, Frankfurt-Oder, Danzig, Bozen, Chemnitz,

Rostock,  Schwerte, Plauen, Rome, Bad Kreuznach, Neapel, Genoa, Mailand, Turin.

London Times reviewer on the British Official History of the Strategic Air Offensive: 

‘One closes these volumes feeling, uneasily, that the true heroes of the story they tell

are neither the contending air marshals, nor even the 58,888 officers and men of

Bomber Command who were killed in action

.

They were the inhabitants of the German cities under attack; the men, women and children

who stoically endured and worked on among the flaming ruins of their homes

and factories, up till the moment when the allied armies overran them.’

‘A sense of national embarrassment about the dark side of a virtuous war’ may be the

explanation for the British Bombing Survey Unit’s silence.  Such a sentiment may account

for the disdain in which ‘Bomber Harris’ was sometimes later held. Perhaps it even

explains the near silence about area bombing in the six-volume war history by

Winston Churchill.’ ~ Are We Beasts? Churchill and the Moral Question of World War 11

‘Area Bombing’ Christopher C. Harmon, Naval War College Newport, Rhode Island. The U.S.

 _____________________

How Many Germans Died under RAF Bombs at Dresden in 1945?

Introduction

      The bombing of Dresden remains one of the deadliest and morally most-problematic raids of World War II. Three factors make the bombing of Dresden unique: 1) a huge firestorm developed that engulfed much of the city; 2) the firestorm engulfed a population swollen by refugees; and 3) defenses and shelters even for the original Dresden population were minimal.[1] The result was a high death toll and the destruction of one of Europe’s most beautiful and cultural cities.

      Many conflicting estimates have been made concerning the number of deaths during the raids of Dresden on February 13-14, 1945. Historian Richard J. Evans estimates that approximately 25,000 people died during these bombings.[2] Frederick Taylor estimates that from 25,000 to 40,000 people died as a result of the Dresden bombings.[3] A distinguished commission of German historians titled “Dresden Commission of Historians for the Ascertainment of the Number of Victims of the Air Raids on the City of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945” estimates the likely death toll in Dresden at around 18,000 and definitely not more than 25,000.[4] This later estimate is considered authoritative by many sources.

      While exact figures of deaths in the Dresden bombings can never be obtained, some Revisionist historians estimate a death toll at Dresden as high as 250,000 people. Most establishment historians state that a death toll at Dresden of 250,000 is an absolute impossibility. For example, Richard Evans states:

Population of Dresden

      Historians generally agree that a large number of German refugees were in Dresden

during the night of February 13-14, 1945. However, the estimate of refugees in Dresden

that night varies widely. This is a major reason for the discrepancies in the death toll

estimates in the Dresden bombings. 

      Marshall De Bruhl states in his book Firestorm:

Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden:

      David Irving states in The Destruction of Dresden:

      A woman living on the outskirts of Dresden at the time of the bombings stated: “At the

time my mother and I had train-station duty here in the city. The refugees! They all came

from everywhere! The city was stuffed full!”[8]

      Frederick Taylor states in his book Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 that Dresden

had been accepting refugees from the devastated cities of the Ruhr, and from Hamburg

and Berlin, ever since the British bombing campaign began in earnest. By late 1943 Dresden

was already overstretched and finding it hard to accept more outsiders. By the winter of

1944-1945, hundreds of thousands of German refugees were traveling from the east in an

attempt to escape the Russian army.[9]

      The German government regarded the acceptance of Germans from the east as an

essential duty. Der Freiheitskampf, the official German organ for Saxony, urged citizens

to offer temporary accommodation:

      However, Taylor states that it was general policy in Dresden to have refugees on their

way to the west to continue onwards within 24 hours. Fleeing the Russians was not a valid

justification for seeking and maintaining residence in Dresden. Taylor states that the best

estimate by Götz Bergander, who spent time on fire-watching duties and on refugee-relief

work in Dresden, was that approximately 200,000 nonresidents were in Dresden on the

night of February 13-14, 1945. Many of these refugees would have been

living in quarters away from the targeted center of Dresden.[11]

      The Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert estimates that only 567,000 residents and

100,000 refugees were in Dresden on the night of the bombings. Reichert quotes witnesses

who state that no refugees were billeted in Dresden houses and that no billeting took place

in Dresden’s parks or squares. Thus, Reichert estimates that the number of people in

Dresden on the night of the bombings was not much greater than the official figure

of Dresden’s population before the war.[12]

      Reichert’s estimate of Dresden’s population during the bombings is almost

certainly too low. As a RAF memo analyzed it before the attack:

      Alexander McKee states in regard to Dresden:

      The report prepared by the USAF Historical Division Research Studies Institute Air University

states that “there may probably have been about 1,000,000 people in Dresden on the night of

the 13/14 February RAF attack.”[15] I think the 1 million population figure cited in this report

constitutes a realistic and conservative minimum estimate of Dresden’s population during the

Allied bombings of February 13-14, 1945. 

Did Only 25,000 People Die? 

      If the 25,000 death-toll estimate in Dresden is accurate, we are left with the odd result

that Allied air power, employed for textbook purposes to its full measure and with no

restrictions, over an especially vulnerable large city near the end of the war, when Allied

air superiority was absolute and German defenses nearly nonexistent, was less effective

than Allied air power had been in previous more-difficult operations such as Hamburg or Berlin.

I think the extensive ruins left in Dresden suggest a degree of complete destruction not seen

before in Germany[NJP1] .

      The Dresden bombings created a massive firestorm of epic proportions, and were in no

way a failed mission with only a fraction of the intended results. The fires from the first raid

alone had been visible more than 100 miles from Dresden.[16] The Dresden raid was the

perfect execution of the Bomber Command theory of the double blow: two waves of bombers,

three hours apart, followed the next day by a massive daylight raid by more bombers and

escort fighters. Only a handful of raids ever actually conformed to this double-strike theory, and

those that did were cataclysmic.[17]     

      Dresden also lacked an effective network of air-raid shelters to protect its inhabitants.

Hitler had ordered that over 3,000 air-raid bunkers be built in 80 German towns and cities.

However, not one was built in Dresden because the city was not regarded as being in danger

of air attack. Instead, the civil air defense in Dresden devoted most of its efforts to creating

tunnels between the cellars of the housing blocks so that people could escape from one

building to another. These tunnels exacerbated the effects of the Dresden firestorm by channeling

smoke and fumes from one basement to the next and sucking out the oxygen from a network

of interconnected cellars.[18]

      The vast majority of the population of Dresden did not have access to proper air-raid

shelters. When the British RAF attacked Dresden that night, all the residents and refugees

in Dresden could do was take refuge in their cellars. These cellars proved to be death traps

in many cases. People who managed to escape from their cellars were often sucked into the

firestorm as they struggled to flee the city.[19]

      Dresden was all but defenseless against air attack, and the people of Dresden suffered

the consequences. The bombers in the Dresden raids were able to conduct their attacks

relatively free from fear of harassment by German defenses. The master bombers ordered

the bombers to descend to lower levels, and the crews felt confident to do so and to

maintain a steady altitude and heading during the bombing runs. This ensured that the Dresden

raids were particularly concentrated and thus particularly effective.[20] The

RAF conducted a technically perfect fire-raising attack on Dresden.[21] 

      The British were fully aware that mass death and destruction could result from the

bombing of Germany’s cities. The Directorate of Bombing Operations predicted the following

consequences from Operation Thunderclap:

      The destruction of Dresden was so complete that major companies were reporting fewer

than 50% of their workforce present two weeks after the raids.[23] By the end of February

1945, only 369,000 inhabitants remained in the city. Dresden was subject to further American

attacks by 406 B-17s on March 2 and 580 B-17s on April 17, leaving an additional 453 dead.[24]

Comparison to Pforzheim Bombing

      A raid that closely resembles that of Dresden occurred 10 days later on February 23, 1945

at Pforzheim. Since neither Dresden nor Pforzheim had suffered much damage earlier in the war,

the flammability of both cities had been preserved.[25] A perfect firestorm was created in both

of these defenseless cities. These cities also lacked sufficient air-raid shelters for their citizens.

      The area of destruction at Pforzheim comprised approximately 83% of the city, and

20,277 out of 65,000 people died according to official estimates.[26] Sönke Neitzel also

estimates that approximately 20,000 out of a total population of 65,000 died in the raid at

Pforzheim.[27] This means that over 30% of the residents of Pforzheim died in one

bombing attack.

      The question is: If more than 30% of the residents of Pforzheim died in one bombing

attack, why would only approximately 2.5% of Dresdeners die in similar raids 10 days earlier?

The second wave of bombers in the Dresden raid appeared over Dresden at the very time

that the maximum number of fire brigades and rescue teams were in the streets of the

burning city. This second wave of bombers compounded the earlier destruction many

times, and by design killed the firemen and rescue workers so that the destruction in Dresden

could rage on unchecked.[28] The raid on Pforzheim, by contrast, consisted of only one

bombing attack. Also, Pforzheim was a much smaller target, so that it would

have been easier for the people on the ground to escape from the blaze.

      The only reason why the death-rate percentage would be higher at Pforzheim versus

Dresden is that a higher percentage of Pforzheim was destroyed in the bombings. Alan Russell

estimates that 83% of Pforzheim’s city center was destroyed versus only 59% of Dresden’s.[29]

This would, however, account for only a portion of the percentage difference in the death tolls.

Based on the death toll in the Pforzheim raid, it is reasonable to assume that a minimum of

20% of Dresdeners died in the British and American attacks on the city. The 2.5% death rate

figure of Dresdeners estimated by establishment historians is an unrealistically low figure.

      If a 20% death rate figure times an estimated population in Dresden of 1 million is used,

the death-toll figure in Dresden would be 200,000. If a 25% death-rate figure times an

estimated population of 1.2 million is used, the death toll figure in Dresden would be 300,000.

Thus, death-toll estimates in Dresden of 250,000 people are quite plausible when

compared to the Pforzheim bombing.

How Were the Dead Disposed Of? 

      Historian Richard Evans asks:

      Richard Evans does not recognize that the incineration of corpses on the Dresden market

square, the Altmarkt, was not the only means of disposing of bodies at Dresden.

A British sergeant reported on the disposal of bodies at Dresden:

     Historians also differ on whether or not large numbers of bodies in Dresden were so

incinerated in the bombing that they could no longer be recognized as bodies. Frederick

Taylor mentions Walter Weidauer, the high burgomaster of Dresden in the postwar period, as stating

      Other historians cite evidence that bodies were incinerated beyond recognition.

Alexander McKee quotes Hildegarde Prasse on what she saw at the Altmarkt after

the Dresden bombings: 

      Marshall De Bruhl cites a report found in an urn by a gravedigger in 1975 written on

March 12, 1945, by a young soldier identified only as Gottfried. This report states:

      The incineration of large numbers of people in Dresden is also indicated by estimates

of the extreme temperature reached in Dresden during the firestorm. While no survivor

has ever reported the actual temperature reached during the Dresden firestorm, many historians

estimate that temperatures reached 1,500° Centigrade (2,732° Fahrenheit).[35] Since

temperatures in a cremation chamber normally reach only 1,400 degrees to 1,800 degrees

Fahrenheit[36], large numbers of people in Dresden would have been incinerated from the

extreme heat generated in the firestorm.   

      Historians also differ on whether or not bodies are still being recovered in Dresden.

For example, Frederick Taylor states: “Since 1989—even with the extensive excavation

and rebuilding that followed the fall of communism in Dresden—no bodies have been

recovered at all, even though careful archaeological investigations have accompanied

the redevelopment.”[37]

      Marshall De Bruhl does not agree with Taylor’s statement. De Bruhl notes that numerous

other skeletons of victims were discovered in the ruins of Dresden as rubble

was removed or foundations for new buildings were dug. De Bruhl states:

Conclusion

      The destruction from the Dresden bombings was so massive that exact figures of deaths

will never be obtainable. However, the statement from the Dresden Commission of Historians

that “definitely no more than 25,000” died in the Dresden bombings is probably inaccurate.

An objective analysis of the evidence indicates that almost certainly far more than 25,000

people died from the bombings of Dresden. Based on a comparison to the Pforzheim bombing

and the other similar bombing attacks, a death toll in Dresden of 250,000 people is easily possible.

ENDNOTES   

The Blood of Dresden

Following is an extract from Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut in which

he describes the scenes  of ‘obscene brutality’ he witnessed as a prisoner

of war in Dresden which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

It was a routine speech we got during our first day of basic training, delivered by a

wiry little lieutenant: “Men, up to now you’ve been good, clean, American boys

with an American’s love for sportsmanship and fair play. We’re here to change that.

“Our job is to make you the meanest, dirtiest bunch of scrappers in the history of the world.

From now on, you can forget the Marquess of Queensberry rules and every other

set of rules. Anything and everything goes.

“Never hit a man above the belt when you can kick him below it. Make the

bastard scream. Kill him any way you can. Kill, kill, kill – do you understand?”

His talk was greeted with nervous laughter and general agreement that he was right.

“Didn’t Hitler and Tojo say the Americans were a bunch of softies? Ha! They’ll find out.”

And of course, Germany and Japan did find out: a toughened-up democracy poured forth

a scalding fury that could not be stopped. It was a war of reason against barbarism, supposedly,

with the issues at stake on such a high plane that most of our feverish fighters had no idea

why they were fighting – other than that the enemy was a bunch of bastards. A new kind of war,

with all destruction, all killing approved.

A lot of people relished the idea of total war: it had a modern ring to it, in keeping

with our spectacular technology. To them it was like a football game.

[Back home in America], three small-town merchants’ wives, middle-aged and plump, gave

me a ride when I was hitchhiking home from Camp Atterbury. “Did you kill a lot of them

Germans?” asked the driver, making cheerful small-talk. I told her I didn’t know.

This was taken for modesty. As I was getting out of the car, one of the ladies patted me

on the shoulder in motherly fashion: “I’ll bet you’d like to get over and kill some of them

dirty Japs now, wouldn’t you?”

We exchanged knowing winks. I didn’t tell those simple souls that I had been captured after

a week at the front; and more to the point, what I knew and thought about killing dirty Germans,

about total war. The reason for my being sick at heart then and now has to do with an

incident that received cursory treatment in the American newspapers. In February 1945,

Dresden, Germany, was destroyed, and with it over 100,000 human beings. I was there.

Not many know how tough America got.

I was among a group of 150 infantry privates, captured in the Bulge breakthrough and

put to work in Dresden. Dresden, we were told, was the only major German city to have

escaped bombing so far. That was in January 1945. She owed her good fortune to her

unwarlike countenance: hospitals, breweries, food-processing plants, surgical supply houses,

ceramics, musical instrument factories and the like.

Since the war [had started], hospitals had become her prime concern. Every day hundreds

of wounded came into the tranquil sanctuary from the east and west. At night, we would hear

the dull rumble of distant air raids. “Chemnitz is getting it tonight,” we used to say, and speculated

what it might be like to be the bright young men with their dials and cross-hairs.

“Thank heaven we’re in an ‘open city’,” we thought, and so thought the thousands of

refugees – women, children and old men who came in a forlorn stream from the smouldering

wreckage of Berlin, Leipzig, Breslau, Munich. They flooded the city to twice its normal population.

There was no war in Dresden. True, planes came over nearly every day and the sirens wailed,

but the planes were always en route elsewhere. The alarms furnished a relief period in a tedious

work day, a social event, a chance to gossip in the shelters. The shelters, in fact, were not much

more than a gesture, casual recognition of the national emergency: wine cellars and basements

with benches in them and sandbags blocking the windows, for the most part. There were a few

more adequate bunkers in the centre of the city, close to the government offices, but nothing

like the staunch subterranean fortress that rendered Berlin impervious to her daily pounding.

Dresden had no reason to prepare for attack – and thereby hangs a beastly tale.

Dresden was surely among the world’s most lovely cities. Her streets were broad, lined

with shade-trees. She was sprinkled with countless little parks and statuary. She had marvellous

old churches, libraries, museums, theatres, art galleries, beer gardens, a zoo and a

renowned university.

It was at one time a tourist’s paradise. They would be far better informed on the city’s delights

than am I. But the impression I have is that in Dresden – in the physical city – were the

symbols of the good life; pleasant, honest, intelligent. In the swastika’s shadow, those

symbols of the dignity and hope of mankind stood waiting, monuments to truth. The accumulated

treasure of hundreds of years, Dresden spoke eloquently of those things excellent in European

civilisa-tion wherein our debt lies deep.

I was a prisoner, hungry, dirty and full of hate for our captors, but I loved that city

and saw the blessed wonder of her past and the rich promise of her future.

In February 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers;

disembowelled her with high explosives and cremated her with incendiaries.

The atom bomb may represent a fabulous advance, but it is interesting to note that primitive

TNT and thermite managed to exterminate in one bloody night more people than died in the

whole London blitz. Fortress Dresden fired a dozen shots at our airmen. Once back at their

bases and sipping hot coffee, they probably remarked: “Flak unusually light tonight.

Well, guess it’s time to turn in.” Captured British pilots from tactical fighter units (covering frontline

troops) used to chide those who had flown heavy bombers on city raids with:

“How on earth did you stand the stink of boiling urine and burning perambulators?”

A perfectly routine piece of news: “Last night our planes attacked Dresden. All planes returned

safely.” The only good German is a dead one: over 100,000 evil men, women, and children

(the able-bodied were at the fronts) forever purged of their sins against humanity. By chance,

I met a bombardier who had taken part in the attack. “We hated to do it,” he told me.

The night they came over, we spent in an underground meat locker in a slaughterhouse.

We were lucky, for it was the best shelter in town. Giants stalked the earth above us.

First came the soft murmur of their dancing on the outskirts, then the grumbling of their

plodding towards us, and finally the ear-splitting crashes of their heels upon us –

and thence to the outskirts again. Back and forth they swept: saturation bombing.

“I screamed and I wept and I clawed the walls of our shelter,” an old lady told me. “I prayed

to God to ‘please, please, please, dear God, stop them’. But he didn’t hear me. No power

could stop them. On they came, wave after wave. There was no way we could surrender; no

way to tell them we couldn’t stand it any more. There was nothing anyone could

do but sit and wait for morning.” Her daughter and grandson were killed.

Our little prison was burnt to the ground. We were to be evacuated to an outlying camp

occupied by South African prisoners. Our guards were a melancholy lot, aged Volkssturmers

and disabled veterans. Most of them were Dresden residents and had friends and families

somewhere in the holocaust. A corporal, who had lost an eye after two years on the Russian

front, ascertained before we marched that his wife, his two children and both

of his parents had been killed. He had one cigarette. He shared it with me.

Our march to new quarters took us to the city’s edge. It was impossible to believe that

anyone had survived in its heart. Ordinarily, the day would have been cold, but occasional

gusts from the colossal inferno made us sweat. And ordinarily, the day would have

been clear and bright, but an opaque and towering cloud turned noon to twilight.

A grim procession clogged the outbound highways; people with blackened faces streaked

with tears, some bearing wounded, some bearing dead. They gathered in the fields.

No one spoke. A few with Red Cross armbands did what they could for the casualties.

Settled with the South Africans, we enjoyed a week without work. At the end of it,

communications were reestablished with higher headquarters and we were ordered

to hike seven miles to the area hardest hit.

Nothing in the district had escaped the fury. A city of jagged building shells, of splintered statuary

and shattered trees; every vehicle stopped, gnarled and burnt, left to rust or rot in the path of

the frenzied might. The only sounds other than our own were those of falling plaster and their echoes.

I cannot describe the desolation properly, but I can give an idea of how it made us feel, in

the words of a delirious British soldier in a makeshift POW hospital: “It’s frightenin’, I tell you.

I would walk down one of them bloody streets and feel a thousand eyes on the back of me

’ead. I would ’ear ’em whis-perin’ behind me. I would turn around to look at ’em and there

wouldn’t be a bloomin’ soul in sight. You can feel ’em and you can ’ear ’em

but there’s never anybody there.” We knew what he said was so.

For “salvage” work, we were divided into small crews, each under a guard. Our ghoulish

mission was to search for bodies. It was rich hunting that day and the many thereafter.

We started on a small scale – here a leg, there an arm, and an occasional baby –

but struck a mother lode before noon.

We cut our way through a basement wall to discover a reeking hash of over 100 human

beings. Flame must have swept through before the building’s collapse sealed the exits,

because the flesh of those within resembled the texture of prunes. Our job, it was explained,

was to wade into the shambles and bring forth the remains. Encouraged by cuffing and

guttural abuse, wade in we did. We did exactly that, for the floor was covered with

an unsavoury broth from burst water mains and viscera.

A number of victims, not killed outright, had attempted to escape through a narrow emergency

exit. At any rate, there were several bodies packed tightly into the passageway. Their leader

had made it halfway up the steps before he was buried up to his neck in falling brick and plaster.

He was about 15, I think.

It is with some regret that I here besmirch the nobility of our airmen, but, boys, you killed

an appalling lot of women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others

like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral

pyres in the parks, so I know.

The funeral pyre technique was abandoned when it became apparent how great was the toll.

There was not enough labour to do it nicely, so a man with a flamethrower was sent down

instead, and he cremated them where they lay. Burnt alive, suffocated, crushed – men,

women, and children indiscriminately killed.

For all the sublimity of the cause for which we fought, we surely created a Belsen of our own.

The method was impersonal, but the result was equally cruel and heartless. That, I am

afraid, is a sickening truth.

When we had become used to the darkness, the odour and the carnage, we began musing

as to what each of the corpses had been in life. It was a sordid game: “Rich man, poor man,

beggar man, thief . . .” Some had fat purses and jewellery, others had precious foodstuffs.

A boy had his dog still leashed to him.

Renegade Ukrainians in German uniform were in charge of our operations in the shelters

proper. They were roaring drunk from adjacent wine cellars and seemed to enjoy their

job hugely. It was a profitable one, for they stripped each body of valuables before we

carried it to the street. Death became so commonplace that we could joke

about our dismal burdens and cast them about like so much garbage.

Not so with the first of them, especially the young: we had lifted them on to the stretchers

with care, laying them out with some semblance of funeral dignity in their last resting place

before the pyre. But our awed and sorrowful propriety gave way, as I said, to rank callousness.

At the end of a grisly day, we would smoke and survey the impressive heap of dead accumulated.

One of us flipped his cigarette butt into the pile: “Hell’s bells,” he said, “I’m ready for Death any

time he wants to come after me.”

A few days after the raid, the sirens screamed again. The listless and heartsick survivors

were showered this time with leaflets. I lost my copy of the epic, but remember that it

ran something like this: “To the people of Dresden: we were forced to bomb your city

because of the heavy military traffic your railroad facilities have been carrying. We realise

that we haven’t always hit our objectives. Destruction of anything other

than military objectives was unintentional, unavoidable fortunes of war.”

That explained the slaughter to everyone’s satisfaction, I am sure, but it aroused no little

contempt. It is a fact that 48 hours after the last B-17 had droned west for a well-earned

rest, labour battalions had swarmed over the damaged rail yards and restored them

to nearly normal service. None of the rail bridges over the Elbe was knocked out of commission.

Bomb-sight manufacturers should blush to know that their marvellous devices laid

bombs down as much as three miles wide of what the military claimed to be aiming for.

The leaflet should have said: “We hit every blessed church, hospital, school, museum,

theatre, your university, the zoo, and every apartment building in town, but we honestly

weren’t trying hard to do it. C’est la guerre. So sorry. Besides, saturation bombing is all

the rage these days, you know.”

There was tactical significance: stop the railroads. An excellent manoeuvre, no doubt,

but the technique was horrible. The planes started kicking high explosives and incendiaries

through their bomb-bays at the city limits, and for all the pattern their hits presented, they

must have been briefed by a Ouija board.

Tabulate the loss against the gain. Over 100,000 noncombatants and a magnificent city

destroyed by bombs dropped wide of the stated objectives: the railroads were knocked

out for roughly two days. The Germans counted it the greatest loss of life suffered in

any single raid. The death of Dresden was a bitter tragedy, needlessly and wilfully executed.

The killing of children – “Jerry” children or “Jap” children, or whatever enemies the future may

hold for us – can never be justified.

The facile reply to great groans such as mine is the most hateful of all clichés,

“fortunes of war”, and another: “They asked for it. All they understand is force.”

Who asked for it? The only thing who understands is force? Believe me, it is not easy

to rationalise the stamping out of vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored when

gathering up babies in bushel baskets or helping a man dig where he thinks his wife

may be buried.

Certainly, enemy military and industrial installations should have been blown flat, and woe

unto those foolish enough to seek shelter near them. But the “Get Tough America” policy,

the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, have earned us a name

for obscene brutality.

Our leaders had a carte blanche as to what they might or might not destroy. Their mission

was to win the war as quickly as possible; and while they were admirably trained to do

just that, their decisions on the fate of certain priceless world heirlooms – in one case,

Dresden – were not always judicious. When, late in the war, with the Wehrmacht breaking

up on all fronts, our planes were sent to destroy this last major city, I doubt if the question

was asked: “How will this tragedy benefit us, and how will that benefit compare with the

ill-effects in the long run?”

Dresden, a beautiful city, built in the art spirit, symbol of an admirable heritage, so anti-Nazi

that Hitler visited it but twice during his whole reign, food and hospital centre

so bitterly needed now – ploughed under and salt strewn in the furrows.

World war two was fought for near-holy motives. But I stand convinced that the brand of

justice in which we dealt, wholesale bombings of civilian populations, was blasphemous.

That the enemy did it first has nothing to do with the moral problem. What I saw of our air

war, as the European conflict neared an end, had the earmarks of being an irrational war

for war’s sake. Soft citizens of the American democracy had learnt to kick a man below the belt

and make the bastard scream.

The occupying Russians, when they discovered that we were Americans, embraced us

and congratulated us on the complete desolation our planes had wrought. We accepted

their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now,

that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the world’s generations to come.

That is how everyone should feel about every city on earth.

© Kurt Vonnegut Jr Trust 2008

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dresden 1945: The Devil's Tinderbox

Reviewed by Charles Lutton

The destruction of the virtually undefended German city of Dresden by bombers of the

Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force, in mid-February, 1945, remains one of the

most controversial episodes of the Second World War. In 1963, British historian David

Irving published a pathbreaking study on this topic. Another widely-published British

military historian, Alexander McKee, has produced a new account of the Dresden bombing,

based in part upon an examination of official records recently declassified, as well

as interviews from survivors of the attack and Allied airmen who flew in the raids.

McKee had doubts about the efficacy of area bombing when, as a soldier with the 1st

Canadian Army, he witnessed the results of the Allied bombing of "friendly" French towns.

Following visits to the cities of Caen and Lisieux, he wrote in his personal war diary:

"Lisieux and Caen are examples of the inflexibility of the four-motor heavy bombers:

it cannot block a road without bringing down a city. I'm not surprised that our troops

advancing between Caen and Lisiel=c were fired on by French civilians. No doubt

many Frenchmen found it hard to be liberated by a people who seem,

by their actions, to specialise in the mass murder of their friends."

McKee was an eye-witness to the final destruction of the towns of Emmerich and Arnhem.

He related that, "In Emmerich I saw no building whatever intact .... This process, when

the town was an Allied one, we referred to with bitter mockery as 'Liberation.' When you

said that such-and-such a place had been 'liberated,' you meant that hardly one stone

still stood upon another."

The bombing of urban areas which might contain targets of military importance was

a policy advocated by leading British air strategists long before the outbreak of the war.

McKee reviewed the writings of the air power theorists of the 1920s and 30s, observing

that "retreading them now is like browsing through a British Mein Kampf. The horror to

come is all there between the lines. What they are really advocating is an all-out

attack on non-combatants, men, women, and children, as a deliberate policy of terror?"

After sifting through the evidence, the author refers to these proferred justifications as

the "standard white-wash gambit." There was a military barracks in Dresden, but it was

located on the out skirts of the "New Town," miles away from the selected target area.

There were some hutted camps in the city-full of starving refugees who had fled from the

advancing Red Terror in the East. The main road route passed on the west outside the

city limits. The railway network led to an important junction, but this, too, passed outside

the center of the "Old City," which was the focal point for the bombing attacks. No railway

stations were on the British target maps, nor, apparently, were bridges, the destruction of

which could have impeded German communications with the Eastern Front. And despite

the claims of U.S. Air Force historians, writing in 1978, that "The Secretary of War had to

be appraised of ... the Russian request for its neutralization," the author has unearthed

no evidence of such a Soviet request.

What the author has discovered about the attack is that:

Once word leaked out that the Dresden raids were generally viewed as terrorist attacks

against civilians, those most responsible for ordering the bombings

tried to avoid their just share of the blame. McKee points out that:

"In both the UK and the U.S.A. a high level of sophistication was to be employed in order to

excuse or justify the raids, or to blame them on someone else. It is difficult to think of any

other atrocity -- and there were many in the Second World War -- which has produced

such an extraordinary aftermath of unscrupulous and mendacious polemics."

Who were the men to blame for the attacks? The author reveals that:

"It was the Prime Minister himself who in effect had signed the death warrant for Dresden,

which had been executed by Harris [chief of RAF Bomber Command]. And it was Churchill,

too, who in the beginning had enthusiastically backed the bomber marshals in carrying

out the indiscriminate area bombing policy in which they all believed. They were all in it

together. Portal himself [head of the RAF, Harris of course, Trenchard [British

air theorist] too, and the Prime Minister most of all. And many lesser people."

An aspect of the Dresden bombing that remains a question today is how many people

died during the attacks of February 13-14, 1945. The city was crammed with uncounted

refugees and many POWs in transit. when the raids took place. The exact number of

casualties will never be known. McKee believed that the official figures were understated,

and that 35,000 to 45,000 died, though "the figure of 35,000 for one night's massacre

alone might easily be doubled to 70,000 without much fear of exaggeration, I feel."

Alexander McKee has written a compelling account of the destruction of Dresden. Although

the author served with the British armed forces during the war, his attitude toward the

events he describes reminds this reviewer of McKee's fellow Brit, Royal Navy Captain

Russell Grenfell, who played a key role in the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, but who,

after the war, wrote a classic of modern revisionism, Unconditional Hatred: German War

Guilt and the Future of Europe (1953). Likewise, Dresden 1945, deserves a place in

any revisionist's library.

From The Journal of Historical Review,

Summer 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 2), pages 247-250.

______________________________________________________________________

The ‘Dehousing Paper’ 

The Real Extermination Policy –

How to Murder 25 Million Germans and get away with it

 On 30 March 1942, Professor Frederick Lindemann – Baron Cherwell, the British government’s

Chief Scientific Adviser (appointed by Churchill), who wielded more influence than any other

civilian adviser and was said to have “an almost pathological hatred for Germany, and an

almost medieval desire for revenge” as part of his character – sent to the British

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a memorandum, which after it had been

accepted by the Cabinet, became known as the ‘Dehousing Paper.’

The paper was delivered during a debate within the British government about the most

effective use of the nation’s resources in waging war on Germany. Should the Royal Air Force

(RAF) be reduced to allow more resources to go to the British Army and Royal Navy,

or should the strategic bombing option be expanded to civilian targets?

The paper argued that the demolition of people’s houses (containing mostly women and children,

as men were absent on military duties) was the most effective way to affect the

German morale, even more effectively than killing their relatives.

Given the known limits of the RAF in locating targets in Germany at the time and providing

that the planned resources were made available to the RAF in the near future, destroying

about thirty percent of the “Housing Stock” of Germany’s fifty-eight largest towns was

considered the most effective use of the aircraft of RAF Bomber Command,

because it would “Break the spirit of the Germans.”

After a heated debate by the government’s military and scientific Advisers, the Cabinet

voted for the “Expanded” strategic bombing campaign, over the other options available to

them… in complete violation and defiance of all International Humanitarian Laws,

the Hague Conventions, Laws of War and the Geneva Conventions – essentially,

voted to approve of committing War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

Since November 1941 the RAF had been husbanding its resources and awaiting the

introduction of large numbers of four-engined “heavy” bombers and the

GEE radio-navigational device into front-line service.

Bombing policy had, in actuality, already moved

away from attempts at precision bombing.

The paper was produced by Cherwell and the information was given

by the researchers in response to questions posed by Cherwell.

Excerpt:

“The following seems a simple method of estimating

what we could do by bombing Germany.

We know from our experience that we can count on nearly fourteen operational sorties

per bomber produced. The average lift of the bombers we are going to produce over the

next fifteen months will be about 3 tons. It follows that each of these bombers will in its

life-time drop about 40 tons of bombs. If these are dropped on built-up areas they will

make 4000–8000 people homeless.

In 1938 over 22 million Germans lived in fifty-eight towns of over 100,000 inhabitants,

which, with modern equipment, should be easy to find and hit. Our forecast output of

heavy bombers (including Wellingtons) between now and the middle of 1943 is about

10,000. If even half the total load of 10,000 bombers were dropped on the built-up areas

of these fifty-eight German towns, the great majority of their inhabitants (about one-third

of the German population) would be turned out of house and home…

[that is political linguistics for saying, mass murder, terrorism or genocide]

Investigation seems to show that having one’s home demolished is most damaging to

morale. People seem to mind it more than having their friends or even relatives killed.

At Hull signs of strain were evident, though only one-tenth of the houses were demolished.

On the above figures we should be able to do ten times as much harm to each of the

fifty-eight principal German towns. There seems little doubt that this would break

the spirit of the people.

Our calculation assumes, of course, that we really get one-half of our bombs into

built-up areas. On the other hand, no account is taken of the large promised American

production (6,000 heavy bombers in the period in question). Nor has regard been paid

to the inevitable damage to factories, communications, etc, in these towns and

the damage by fire, probably accentuated by breakdown of public services.”

Stated in British Parliament 1943 

Lindemann believed that a small circle of the intelligent and the aristocratic should run

the world, resulting in a peaceable and stable society, “led by supermen and served by helots.”

Many sources say he was Jewish (HE WAS), others do not, but for an immigrant born in Germany

and the son of a wealthy banker, to hold such hated toward Germans, one can only surmise.

Sometimes considered to be anti-democratic, insensitive and elitist, Lindemann was in

complete support and promotion of eugenics, he held the working class, homosexuals,

Germans and blacks in contempt and, supported sterilisation of who he saw as mentally

incompetent. Referring to Lindemann’s lecture on Eugenics, Mukerjee concluded science

could yield a race of humans blessed with “the mental make-up of the worker bee”

….At the lower end of the race and class spectrum, one could remove the ability to

suffer or to feel ambition….Instead of subscribing to what he called “the fetish of equality,”

Lindemann recommended that human differences should be accepted and indeed enhanced

by means of science. It was no longer necessary, he wrote, to wait for “the haphazard process

of natural selection to ensure that the slow and heavy mind gravitates to the lowest form of activity.”

Pictures: Lindemann’s “Housing Stock” turned
“Out of House and Home”
“Dehoused”

Holocaust: (frm Greek) Holos Kaustos – ‘Whole Burnt’

Declassified documents confirm the horror of this policy and that Winston Churchill

finds this kind of wanton destruction and terror “Impressive” – see here

“The destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized

community life throughout Germany is the goal… It should be emphasized that the destruction

of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an

unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts

by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. 

They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.”

Air Marshal Arthur Harris (aka ‘Bomber Harris’), Bomber Commander, British R.A.F.,

October 25, 1943 – Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, Tammi Biddle

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 220.

“Will there be room [for the German refugees, fleeing before the Red army] in what is

left of Germany? We have killed six or seven million Germans and

probably there will be another million or so killed before the end of the war.”

– Winston Churchill, as noted by James F. Byrnes‘ at the Plenary Session at Yalta,

February 7, 1945 – 5 days before the Dresden Holocaust –

(H. S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri)

“The Prime Minister said that we hoped to shatter twenty German cities as we had shattered

Cologne, Lubeck, Dusseldorf, and so on. More and more aeroplanes and bigger and bigger

bombs. Marshal Stalin had heard of 2-ton bombs. We had now begun to use 4-ton bombs,

and this would be continued throughout the winter. If need be, as the war went

on, we hoped to shatter almost every dwelling in almost every German city.”

– Official transcript of the meeting at the Kremlin between Winston

Churchill and Josef Stalin on Wednesday, August 12, 1942, at 7 P.M.

“The destruction of factories, which was nevertheless on an enormous scale, could be

regarded as a bonus.  The aiming-points were usually right in the center of the town.”

– Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (London: HarperCollins, 1947), p. 147.

Somehow, War Criminals who, in complete contravention of every International Convention

and Treaty they were signatory to; intentionally planned, voted for and physically conducted

one of, if not the biggest Crimes Against Humanity ever committed… then exhalted

themselves into a position of Prosecution against the defeated at the Nuremberg

Show Trials, while proclaiming themselves exempt from the so-called law which they

administered – in the biggest spectacle of ‘Conflict of Interest‘ the world has ever been

subjected to!

Therefore, legally speaking, all findings of the Nuremberg Show Trials should be revoked

and a new trial convened, in order to bring light to; the true crimes and partied criminals –

who have never been brought to accountability – public acknowledgement of the true

victims, posthumous exoneration for those convicted at the Show Trials and in the very

least… an apology!

“We should never allow ourselves to apologize for what we did to Germany.” –

Winston Churchill to John Lawrence, quoted in Max Hastings, Bomber Command

(NY: Dial Press, 1979), p. 107.

Watch ‘Hellstorm’ – the documentary film exposing the
Real Genocide of WWII Germany“The millions of Jews living in America, England, France,

North Africa and South, not forgetting Palestine, have decided to carry on the war in

Germany to the very end. It is to be a war of extermination.” ~ ‘The Jewish newspaper,

‘Central Blad Voor Israeliten’ in Nederlands (13 September 1939)

In a BBC interview, allied witness and British POW, Victor Gregg, confirms the genocidal

Western policy as “Pure Evil” – 70 years after he survived the unnecessary Holocaust of

Dresden in February, 1945… at wars end, when German defeat was clearly evident and

All-lied victory was already in sight – none of these people were a threat to anybody.

Victor Gregg speaks of the RAF Bomber Pilots who were just “Doing their job” and

“Following orders” – they are not to be blamed?

History should not be judged by double standards!