Posted on 03/18/2010 6:08:22 AM PDT by decimon
“It was more like continually kicking someone who was laying down on the ground.”
War is brutal, dirty business and you don’t want to be the loser. You should throw EVERYTHING you have against the enemy, from nukes to spitballs. Hurt him, demoralize him, obliterate him, as fast as you can. It isn’t over until he is isn’t moving. Hesitating will get you killed.
The Red Army was doing about 90% of the fighting and dying at that point in the war. The US and UK were still regrouping after the Battle of the Bulge, where the Nazis almost broke out.
The Red Army needed to make sure that the rail links between the eastern and western command elements of the Wehrmacht were broken up as much as possible, to diminish the Nazi advantage of better internal lines.
Dresden was packed with refugees from the east, including eastern Europeans fleeing the Russians.
A common claim, but not really substantiated. Who would be refugees from the Russians? German nationals settled in Slavic territory - most of whom were making their way to Berlin, not Dresden. Perhaps also Slavic collaborators from the Balkans - except that the Nazis had destroyed all the rail lines and bridges in their retreat from those areas.
Yes, there was a rail head there but by the time the city was bombed most of the train traffic was at a standstill.
Completely untrue - the Nazis were repairing rail lines around the clock and routing combat elements very efficiently through their remaining rail network. Vienna hung on for two months after Dresden because the Nazis were able to rout several divisions to the city by rail.
It was more like continually kicking someone who was laying down on the ground.
After the Dresden bombing, the Nazis had 1 million men still under arms and inflicted 360,000 casualties on the Red Army between February and April 1945. That's hardly lying down.
The war was at its end, it would have ended even if they ignored Dresden and left it as a pocket.
The war was far from over - after Dresden there was still the battle for Vienna and for Berlin. If Dresden - strategically located between the two - had been fully operational as a supply and transport link, those battles would have taken far longer. One of the main reasons why Berlin fell when itr did was because the Nazi forces fleeing Vienna could not effectively link up with the defenders of Berlin. They wound up wasting energy in useless breakouts, or lost unit integrity or surrnedered piecemeal.
If they could have been routed north by rail to Berlin, it's likely that Japan would have fallen before Germany did.
The Red Army was already beyond reliable lines of supply.
The B-29 Group that was training stateside to drop the bomb was the only unit so capable. British Bomber Command and 8th Air Force wouldn’t necessarily have known the details of the Bomb, but they may have been told that certain targets were “off limits” with no reasons given. Said targets might have come off that list but not been struck for weeks, months. At that point allied bomber attacks were massive.
All speculation on my part. But it fits the strategy.
Good points. Lotta fighting between Budapest & Vienna between the fall of '44 and spring of '45 which isn't really much covered in the Western Histories of the War.
Supposedly Stalin demanded it.
Anyway, I don’t care, the old saying applies, reap what you sow.
After the Dresden bombing, the Nazis had 1 million men still under arms and inflicted 360,000 casualties on the Red Army between February and April 1945. That’s hardly lying down......................... The majority being lost in Berlin which was almost surrounded. Had they encircled Berlin, the resistance would have pretty much ended. The 9th German Army had enough trouble trying to get out of there. 24hr bombing, food and water supplies dwindling, ammo running out, the top leadership knew it was over, and the Bohemian Corporal committed suicide, yeah they would have held out for months. While that was happening we were cutting through Germany like a knife cuts through butter. LOL
Lotta fighting between Budapest & Vienna between the fall of ‘44 and spring of ‘45 ........................... The Arrow Cross was defending its territory from the Russians. They were the last to surrender. The heaviest fighting towards the end were mostly SS units. Some made up of volunteers from outside of Germany that had nothing left to live for, as they would have been sentenced to death in their own countries. Elements of the Viking SS division fought to the last man in the streets of Berlin. Lots of stuff out there not covered in history books.
Again, your analysis assumes that the Allies could just have encircled Berlin - whjich they could not do as long as vital rail links and internal lines of communication existed for the Nazis to move troops through the Berlin-Vienna corridor.
In order for that corridor to be cut in two and for Berlin to be encircled Dresden needed to be neutralized.
The 9th German Army had enough trouble trying to get out of there. 24hr bombing, food and water supplies dwindling, ammo running out, the top leadership knew it was over, and the Bohemian Corporal committed suicide, yeah they would have held out for months.
The 9th Army is kind of a cherry-picked unit for your argument because they had just spent months slowing the Russian advance through the Minsk corridor.
There were fresher and better equipped units still operational between Vienna and Berlin in February 1945.
Hitler committed suicide because he knew Berlin was encircled. The inhabitants of Berlin were running out of ammunition, food and water because they were encircled.
If, in February, the Nazis had routes through Dresden from Western to Eastern to Southern fronts to efficiently move troops as needed then Berlin would not have been cut off and on April 30 the inhabitants of Berlin would have had access to water and food and ammunition and Hitler would still have been alive - the Nazis would have fought on for months.
As you pointed out, there were thousands of starving deadenders still fighting in the streets of Berlin in May - had they been well-fed and well-supplied through the rail links of the Vienna-Berlin corridor they would have been fighting with full bellies and guns in May and might have lasted months longer.
Who knows how many more Allied troops would have died - they wetre dying at a rate of more than 100,000 a month at that point.
Another point: the volume oif Dresden casualties were a sheer accident - peculiarities of weather and housing construction killed 25,000 in Dresden when the bombardment of Leipzig, which surpassed Dresden in tonnage and intensity, killed less than a third of that number.
Too many people discuss Dresden as if that death toll were calculated according to plan - no one involved had any inkling that the death toll would reach that high.
The commission seems to be relying to a large extent on historical records for their numbers. There is a good chance that they are missing most of the deceased since they would have been incinerated leaving no trace. Many others, as can be seen from the pictures of piles of naked dead, certainly could not be identified, especially in the chaos resulting from the fire and war.
It would be interesting to know how the report handles the refugee situation: Where were they staying? Were they camped out in the central park? How can their number be accurately estimated? Also of interest would be how the three quarter million residents of the destroyed metropolitan area escaped and where they went.
The British bombed twice during the night from a relatively low altitude with blockbuster bombs and incineriries. The US bombers came in the daylight and dropped many bombs in the rubble from a higher altitude. The British/US bombing altitude came about due to the use of the Norton bomb sight by the US.
The British have always lowballed any estimate of fatalitiesin Dresden, probably because they felt some pangs of conscience for firebombing the historic city, especially since the rail system suffered little damage from the whole operation. To some degree, the same might be said for the US, especially since it seems that the US may have been a reluctant participant. The Nazis would not be interested in publicizing large undefended losses. The Soviets did not occupy Dresden until the last day of the war (May 8) and were not interested in German civilian causalities. Thus I find that any documentation that this commission used needs to be closed examined.
That said, in the overall scheme of things, it is likely that the bombing of Dresden did not do too much to end the war, but we are all Monday morning quarterbacks and there is no way to change the past. The war needed to be won and over with. We may regret what happened, but it is not for us to stand in judgement of those who relieved us from the tyranny of the past.
By the time I get over celebrating Hiroshima and Nagasaki every year, I’m too fatigued to throw the Dresden party but I’ll knock one back tonight and celebrate the Allied victory.
Pop would have died flying fighter planes over Japan if not for the A-bombs, those cute little nuclear-fission devices.
Still, I loved the story about the Japanese guy who died at 96 last year after surviving both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Those men would have been in the Japanese islands invasion force had the bombs not been dropped. So every St. Patrick's day I hoist a Sapporo beer and say "Viva fission!"
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Thanks decimon.Germany's far-right groups claim that up to 500,000 people died. They say the bombing -- which unleashed a firestorm in the historic city when Nazi Germany was already close to defeat -- constituted a war crime.Dear Skinheads: to quote Andrew 'Dice' Clay, "if you can't party with the big boys, don't show up." |
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VolksWhiners
BTTT to read later
At least with the corpses all burned up, you don't get Nazi zombies.
By this time the Germans HAD IN FACT bombed civilians in several places, most notably London.
I’m glad we helped the Brits, and I wouldn’t care if it had been ten or a hundred times as many as it was died at Dresden, whatever the number.
Same with nukes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Anything ending the war was a humanitarian act.
Not possible without the USA.
Truman did good.
Germany and Japan taken to their knees. Since they have come up a long way, to our credit and theirs as well.
(Compared to countries permanently on their knees; mainly Africa and islamic world.)
This is just when I was starting to anguish over this too...
The Germans knew the war was lost. Most German army units were trying to make it west to surrender to the Americans. The Russians wanted to capture as many German Soliders and ordered the British and the Americans to hold the line and not advance. They also told us to refuse the surrender of any Whermacht soliders who may have fought on the east front as well as any Waffen SS troops. Also They wanted to stop the flow of Civilians fleeing to the west as well.
No love for the Nazis’s, But you kind of have to pity the Whermacht Generals and regular foot solider who just wanted to make it to us instead of ending up in a Russian Gulag for decades.
The way FDR layed down for Stalin and giving them Poland and other east bloc country was horrible. FDR sold them into slavery for appeasement sake. FDR should be rotting in hell for what he did to those poor people.
Add to that Operation Keelhaul, most of the Russians we sent back weren’t fighting for the Nazi’s as much as they were fighting against the Communists. Patton may have been right in his assessment, to continue east.
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