Bombing Dresden facts
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When Kurt Vonnegut served in WW2 he was captured by Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was a POW in Dresden and survived the bombing of the city by hiding in a meat locker in a slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. This inspired him to write the anti-war novel Slaughter-House Five.
how many died in dresden bombing?
The Leningrad siege in WW2 has been classified as an genocide by some historians. American estimates the death toll was higher than combined american and British losses in the war, "The Siege of Leningrad killed more civilians than bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."
What happened during the bombing of dresden?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what happened to dresden after the bombing. Here are 28 of the best facts about Bombing Dresden Film and Was Bombing Dresden Necessary I managed to collect.
what did the bombing of dresden achieve?
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During the Allied bombing of Dresden in WW2, temperatures in the centre of the city reached 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, creating a vortex which dragged people into the firestorm
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The attacks on the first day took place in two waves. The second wave came three hours after the first as German responders were putting out fires and helping civilians.
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The British were still upset over the Battle of Britain and the Blitz years earlier, so those reasons also played a role in the heavy bombings.
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The operation was led by the RAF under the guise of giving support to the advancing Red Army in the east.
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Before the bombings, Dresden was Germany's seventh largest city and the largest unbombed area of the country.
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Prior to the bombing of Dresden, Polish pilots found out the terms of the Yalta agreement, which involved handing over Poland to the USSR. They almost mutinied, and had to be disarmed by their superiors.
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The bombs were a combination of high explosives and incendiaries. Most planes would drop one large high explosive bomb and several smaller incendiary bombs.
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It was later claimed that while at the Yalta Conference, Joseph Stalin personally asked for the British to bomb Dresden.
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Almost as soon as news about the bombing became public, debate raged in the West about the morality and ethics of the operation.
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Although the high explosive bombs did most of the damage to the structures in Dresden, the incendiary bombs were responsible for most of the deaths.
Why did the bombing of dresden happen?
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The fire bombing of Tokyo in WWII was the single deadliest air raid of the war; deadlier than Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki.
Dresden had no anti-aircraft guns and very few air raid shelters.
The Dresden attacks are still a point of controversy in the West. Members of German far-right political groups often march to a monument to commemorate the bombings every year, which is accompanied by a heavy police presence to separate the marchers from far-left protesters.
Dresden was a center of German culture in the nineteenth century, where some of the country's best musical composers, such as Richard Wagner, regularly performed.
At least 100,000 German refugees who were fleeing the Soviet advance were in Dresden at the time.
When did the bombing of dresden happen?
British revisionist historian, David Irving, wrote The Destruction of Dresden where he claims the number of civilians killed was closer to what the Nazis claimed immediately after the attacks.
How many civilians died in the bombing of dresden?
Today is the 70th anniversary of the Allied Bombing of Dresden.
In response to annual neo-Nazi commemorations of the firebombing of Dresden, German leftists adopted slogans praising British aircrews, and asked the UK to bomb the city again
On Valentine day, 1945 the US Air Force accidentally bombed the city Prague. The raid was originally intended for Dresden in Germany, but a navigation error combined with bad weather and the cities similarities lead to the mistake.
The drafts of large firestorms can be strong enough to suck in a person e.g. the bombing of Dresden, Germany during WWII
Winston Churchill stated that the bombing of Dresden was undertaken to increase terror.
