QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave."
-- Patrick Henry

A Forgotten Chronicle: The Bombing of Dresden 

--Tiberman Sajiwan Ramyead 

Do you play chess? I have not played the game for a long time; when I did play it I generally ended up as the conquered. Perhaps this is why I admire the chess masters. When I zap across the websites I hover just a little longer over those that have to do with game. This year’s chess championships, the Chess Olympiad, will be held in the city of Dresden in Germany. 

Dresden is an exquisite city, perhaps less magnificent than it might have been during its earlier days of historical and cultural glory, but it now boasts at least one UNESO World Heritage Site -- the Dresden Elbe Valley. Poets do not lie or distort history. Let us savour the description of the Elbe by the poet Heinrich Von Kleist as he wrote to his sister:

“I gazed down from the elevated banks over the magnificent Elbe valley, it lay at my feet as if a painting of Claude Lorrain -- it seemed to me that a landscape had been woven to a carpet, green meadows, villages, a broad river which turns to kiss Dresden, and having stolen this kiss quickly flees once more -- and the splendid garland of hills which embraces the carpet as arabesque braiding -- and the pure blue Italic sky suspended over the whole scene…” 

That was around the eighteenth century. As civilisation marched on, and halted now and then, as it did during the Second World War in February 1945, that pristine paradise was savagely bombed and razed to the ground by the Allies – namely the British Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force. Dresden and its citizens burnt for several days.

Estimates of the number of dead German civilians, including those literally singed to death by incendiary bombs, vary very widely. Some have put it at two to three hundred thousand whilst recent figures stand at twenty to forty thousand. In comparison around 100,000 died in the Hiroshima bombing. In coming to conclusions many historians employ one method: they peruse the two extremes narrated on an event and attain ‘objectivity’ by assuming the median stance. Even this median provides an idea of the scale of the Dresden slaughter. And an unfortunate slaughter it was; an unwitting military blunder that stemmed out of retaliation and other vain strategies; the horrors of Hitler’s holocaust had begun to dawn on the Allied armies; but it would certainly not be an exaggeration to put forward the Dresden bombing as a great lesson to today’s decision makers from both sides: the military and the civil. That would go to holders of higher office in Mauritius too. 

The bombing of Dresden remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. It is said that the then British Prime Minister in 1945, Winston Churchill, tried to distance himself from the Dresden bombing facts when he was apprised of them. Of course historians continue to research on the atrocity, and the findings of an independent investigation commissioned by the city itself is expected to be released sometime this year (2008).

So my interest was triggered by a casual website zapping, then one minute on the Chess Olympiad site, and then a few bells rang; they tolled for Dresden in 1945. I looked up one or two websites on the city’s bombing and then reached for a forgotten book on my bookshelf – ‘The World’s Worst Atrocities’ (Reference). Here is the story, at least one or two sides of it, particularly of the author, Nigel Cawthorne who unhesitatingly writes: ‘Churchill was uneasy about the morality of such a wholesale onslaught on civilians (at the planning stage)… but there was no other strategy.’ 

The decision to bomb Dresden was taken over an amazingly short time in Yalta where the three great war leaders, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt had met. It was discussed, agreed upon and carried out within that same month of February 1945, just a few months before the end of the war in Europe. It was supposedly meant to facilitate the advance of the Russians (also allies) from the east, and finish off Germany. In return, Stalin, the Russian counterpart, promised to declare war on Japan once the war in Europe was over! Such was the war and the fate of countless German civilians in Dresden, human beings caught up in the midst of Hitler’s maelstrom. 

The people of Dresden, just before the bombing, were not combatants. The men were away at the front. The women, children and elderly were joined by refugees, swelling the peacetime population to one million. 

The reasoning was that Dresden was a major communications centre that must be crippled. In reality it had no such vital installations at all, apart from a railway marshalling yard that was not targeted for bombing. There were no factories either. During their briefing in England some of the aircrew had questioned their orders. They did not see Dresden as a military target; rather it was a famous centre of art. Cawthorne says that the commanders told their man ‘that the order had come from Churchill himself.’

From night time on 13 February (1945) and over the next few days, wave after wave of American and British bombers taking off from England dropped explosives and incendiaries over Dresden. 

Who has not heard of the world-famous Dresden choirboys? They were singing when the first bombs rained and were killed. Later many pregnant women were found with their bellies open and their mutilated babies literally blown out of them. That was just a small glimpse of the infernal horrors yet to strike the unprepared women, children and elderly of this undefended territory. Green and red flares dropped by reconnaissance aircrafts lit up the city with a bright eerie luminance, to facilitate the blitz; and it turned out to be a very simple task. 

Despite the complete absence of any defence action from the ground, the bombers returned again and again over the next few days, to shatter, ignite and pulverise Dresden; and they succeeded. A school converted to a makeshift military hospital – with a red cross on the roof – was strafed, killing 300 wounded men. The thick dust and smoke hindered the vision of the attacking aircrew, so they simply dumped their remaining bombs on the burning city haphazardly and turned for home. 

Nigel Cawthorne’s account gives some idea of hell: “When the sirens sounded again, the people of Dresden… could not believe that the British intended to raze their beautiful city the way they had the industrial cities to the west. Again people took refuge in the cellars. When they emerged, they found the fire had turned into a firestorm. Those stuck in the cellars suffocated; many who braved the streets were burnt alive… people passed out from oxygen deficiency… People crawled on the ground to gasp what air they could; those who fainted… were quickly charred… Temperatures at the centre of the fire reached 3,000 degrees – 1,200 degrees is the maximum sandstone can withstand, so numerous buildings collapsed… The famous Zwinger museum went up in flames. Even though its art treasures were to be moved before the Soviets arrived, they sat in a lorry outside, where they were burnt… some of the fighter escort even strafed the trails of people fleeing the city…” 

By the second or third day it rained, but even so Dresden burnt for four days. Corpses lay in the streets for days. When the weather warmed the unburied corpses became a writhing sea of maggots and the city a cloud of flies. And so the mass burials and cremations were started. In all, around 1,300 bombers of the Allied army had done the job, with several thousand tons of explosives and incendiaries.

It had been the biggest single raid of the war in Europe and Dresden, one of the loveliest cities of that part of the world had been lost forever. The city’s castle and Zwinger museum have been restored, but the rest of the city ‘was rebuilt in an undistinguished eastern European style.’ 

What else is there to remind our younger readers of? Should we discourse yet again on what is civilisation and what is not civilisation? I think we should continue doing so. That is civilisation. Earlier this year, in these same columns, I wrote on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I expressed my mixed feelings for the Germans. But we must look at both sides. Never forget that if you are engaged in the formal study of history. Hitler bombed London, which we remember as the London Blitz. Did that justify the Dresden atrocity? Have the attitude of nations towards each other changed today? Although civilisation and globalisation have still mellowed down things a bit, have the inborn attitudes changed? What lies stock on the looming food crisis? The Far East, the Middle East and the West are still at war, in a civilised way! Are the wounds of war healed yet? 

If you look up the year 1945 in ‘Maurice: Une île et son passé’ you will come across the following entries:

“8-9 Mai – Congés publics pour les bureaux et banques privés, à l’effet de célébrer la fin de la guerre en Europe”

“9-10 Mai – Congés publics pour les propriétés sucrières, à l’effet de célébrer la fin de la guerre en Europe”

So, young reader, after the Dresden story, perhaps now you will perceive and feel the dramatic volume of events, wars, blunders and human tragedies that lie behind those four lines. 

But in many other ways it is still a beautiful world. Do surf on that Chess Olympiad website (Chess-Olympiad Dresden 2008). It announces that Dresden will be the ‘Host of this worldwide major team tournament in chess… By then it will be the fifth time that a chess Olympiad will be taking place in Germany.’ A chess board and 32 pieces will reunite the children and grandchildren of the same men and women who fought that Second World War!

The last line of the website brings to the mind the sunny, hopeful side of life: ‘We do warmly welcome our guests of the Chess Olympiad 2008.’ 

Notes and References

- Websites on the Second World War, Dresden, and on the Chess Olympiad 2008

- ‘The World’s Worst Atrocities’, Nigel Cawthorne. Chancellor Press, London. First 1999. Reprinted several times, last 2007.