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Should Dresden have been bombed?

By the end of today’s lesson you should be able to….

•Explain what happened to Dresden during the Second World war.

•Analyse why Dresden was targeted.

•Analyse why the bombing of Dresden was and still is controversial

Pre-war Dresden was known as

‘Florence on the Elbe’ because of its great beauty,

reputation for culture and or the

number of art treasures in the

city.

At 10p.m. On Tuesday 13

February 1945 almost 800 RAF bombers headed towards the city

Each Lancaster Bomber carried 1.5 tonnes of high explosive bombs and 2.25 tonnes of

incendiaries

These bombs could cause a deadly ‘firestorm’ with

temperatures of over 1000˚C.These firestorms would suck the oxygen from the air at

ground level and any civilians who survived the fire would die

of suffocation.

We do not know exactly how many people died in the bombing raid. Estimates range from 25,000 to

100,000 men, women, and children.

Should Dresden have been bombed?

Dresden’s rail yards were well away from the centre of the city

Dresden was a very important rail centre for moving troops,

concentration camp prisoners and

materials of war.

Most factories were in the outskirts of the city, well away from the historic centre actually bombed

Many industrial workers lived in the

very centre of the city

Dresden contained factories that produced

shells, lenses for submarine periscopes, aircraft radios, fuses for anti-aircraft shells

and engines for fighter aircraft

Dresden was a city of great beauty

Dresden held many priceless art treasures

By February 1945, Germany had no

realistic prospect of winning the war

German troops were still fighting in defence

of their country

The Russians were advancing swiftly into

Germany

In 1934, Germany withdrew from the

Geneva Disarmament Conference, refusing to

support a British proposal that aerial bombing be banned

The Russians were asking for help from Britain and the USA

Day bombing of precise targets had been tried and had

resulted in huge casualties among air

crews

The war factories of Dresden employed

around 10,000 people

Dresden was very close to the Russian

front line

The Nazis had designated Dresden as

a defence zone meaning it would be defended street by street if necessary

The number of casualties were a

direct result of the Nazi failure to provide air-

raid shelters

The British deliberately tried to start a fire

storm

So many bodies were left in Dresden that

over 7,000 had to be cremated on the market square

So many people died in the basements of

collapsed houses that the Germans called recovery workers ‘corpse miners’

The gap between the British raids lured

many German rescue services back out into

the open

German bombers had devastated many cities

in Europe such as Rotterdam, Warsaw,

Birmingham, and Plymouth

In November and December 1940 the centre of Coventry and the City of

London had very nearly been engulfed by

firestorms as the Luftwaffe (German air force) dropped

incendiaries. Only the small bomb loads prevented this.

Should Dresden have been bombed?In History you need to learn to write balanced answers. These are answers to a question which look at BOTH sides of the argument. This sheet is designed to help you to answer the question above.

On the one hand Dresden should have been bombed because.... On the other hand Dresden should not have been bombed because....

Now for YOUR opinion. On balance I think Dresden should/should not have been bombed because.....

‘If tonight our people were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered

into to stop the bombing of cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, ‘No, we will

mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meeted out

to us’.’Winston Churchill 14th July 1941

‘The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale (confidence and determination to continue the war) of the population. To ensure this we must achieve two

things: first we must make the town physically uninhabitable and second we must make the people

conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim therefore is to produce i) Destruction ii) Fear of death.

Paper distributed by British Air Staff on 23 September 1941