The bombing of Dresden is well known in the historian community and misinterpreted in the public. While portrayed as a devastating bombing on an unsuspecting population of refugees, this isn’t the case. In fact, most of the bombing has been overhyped and surrounded in lies and myth.
We need to first establish what the bombing was meant to accomplish. By February of 1945, Germany was going to lose. With it’s failed offensive in the West, and with the Russians launching the Vistula-Oder offensive, the Germans had no hope of winning. However that didn’t mean it wasn’t capable of fighting and inflicting casualties on the Allies. The Western Allies planning to support the Russians, decided to strike at Dresden which lied at the heart of a transportation hub. Alongside a industrial center and an assembly area to send troops to the front, this city needed to be neutralized. The attacks made by the West would neutralize the city as a strategic asset. While devastating the city and inflicting large casualties on the population, these number only amounted to a 18,000-35,000 death toll by modern estimates. While the firebombing and the effects of said bombing real, much of the casualty list and status as a “cultural city” is propaganda and lies.
While trying to reason whether the bombing was justified or not, much of the evidence and statistics comes from one man who forged and lied about the bombing. David Irving was the historian who brought Dresden to popular attention in the 1960s. With his infamous book Destruction of Dresden , the Bombing of Dresden had become known as an Allied atrocity. The book has claimed more people had died in Dresden than at Auschwitz and the city had no strategic importance. Alongside the description of the bombing and the large amount of people who had died which numbered around 250,000-350,000. While many believed these statistics, there were some who question the validity of the sources and where Irving got said information. Irving at the time had a reputation of getting information on Nazis and other Germans that no one else could get. This book would also be referenced by Kurt Vonnegut when he wrote Slaughterhouse Five , and Kurt was actually at Dresden as a POW after he was captured by the Germans. While his questionable sources were a concern, he was a reliable source at the time and many believed him. For Destruction of Dresden he uses Document TB-47 and a Deputy Chief Medical Officer Funfack who validated said document as his main source. TB-47 was the casualty report of the bombing, when it was first presented it stated the casualty list was around 250,00-350,000. Combined with Funfack backing up the document, this was supposedly a well credited source. However this would not be the case
In the early 1970s another TB-47 surfaced and was later proven to be the authentic copy. This one stated the casualty was nowhere near the original number, it was listed as 25,000-35,000. Irving refuted this and stated his casualty list alongside his TB-47 were the real document and source. But soon another hole in source would come up. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Funfack would come out and say he did not certify TB-47 nor was he a Deputy Chief Medical Officer. The reality was he was a urologist and a civilian at that. He had no authority or experience in causality list or over anything during the aftermath of the bombing. Funfack constantly reaches out to Irving to stop using him as a source as he had no involvement with it. While he was present in Dresden, that’s as far as he got with the bombing. Since then and Irving’s Holocaust denier trial, Destruction of Dresden has been not used as a reliable source in years. While many history books and historians still used the inflated numbers and “cultural city” excuse, most contemporary historians agree that the city was a justified attack alongside a lower casualty list in the tens of thousands instead of hundred of thousands.
While the attack on Dresden was devastating to the city and the inhabitants, it was no different from the dozens of bombings that happened during the war. And while in some minds this has become an “Allied War Crime”, this isn’t really the case. Much of the information has been muddled in Nazi Propoganda presented as fact by Irving. And while Irving’s name has been stricken from every credible source for historians, the damage has been done. While it is your choice if you still decide it was not justified to bomb the city, this was in retaliation for the Germans bombing English cities during the Blitz. This bombing gets overhyped and overblown by many and while the real history is getting revealed and told more, the Destruction of Dresden is still presented as a fact.
Source:
Evans, Richard J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. Basic Books, 2002.
Irving, David, and Robert Saundby. The Destruction of Dresden. Kimber, 1964.