Vitaly Slovetsky, Free Press.

Is the largest bombing of World War II recognized as a war crime?

For several decades, calls have been heard in Europe to make the bombing of the ancient city of Dresden the status of a war crime and genocide of the inhabitants. Recently, the German writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature Günter Grass and the former editor of the British newspaper The Times Simon Jenkins again demanded this.
They are supported by the American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, who said that the bombing of many German cities was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could work out the practice of bombing.
The German historian Yorck Friedrich in his book noted that the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity: "... it was an absolutely unnecessary bombardment in the military sense."
The number of victims of the terrible bombing that took place from February 13 to 15, 1945, is from 25,000 to 30,000 people (many sources claim more). The city was destroyed almost completely.
After the end of World War II, the ruins of residential buildings, palaces and churches were dismantled and taken out of the city. On the site of Dresden, a site was formed with marked boundaries of former streets and buildings.
The restoration of the center lasted about 40 years. The rest of the city was built much faster.
To this day, the restoration of historic buildings on Neumarkt Square is underway.

The fiery tornado drew people in ...
Before the war, Dresden was considered one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Tourist guides called it Florence on the Elbe. The famous Dresden Gallery, the second largest porcelain museum in the world, the most beautiful Zwinger palace ensemble, the Opera House, which competed in acoustics with the La Scala Theater, and many churches built in the Baroque style, were located here.
Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin often stayed in Dresden, and Sergei Rachmaninov prepared here for his world tours. The writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who worked on the novel "Demons", lived in the city for a long time. Here his daughter Lyubasha was born.
At the end of World War II, the locals were confident that Dresden would not be bombed. It did not have military factories. There were rumors that after the war the Allies would make Dresden the capital of a new Germany.
There was practically no air defense here, so the air raid signal sounded just a few minutes before the start of the bombing.
At 22:03 on February 13, the inhabitants of the outskirts heard the rumble of approaching aircraft. At 10:13 p.m., 244 RAF Lancaster heavy bombers dropped the first high-explosive bombs on the city.
Within minutes, the city was engulfed in flames. The light from the giant fire was visible for 150 kilometers.
One of the pilots of the British Royal Air Force later recalled: “The fantastic light around became brighter as we approached the target. At an altitude of 6000 meters, we could distinguish in an unearthly bright glow details of the terrain that we had never seen before; For the first time in many operations, I felt sorry for the people downstairs.”
The navigator-bomber of one of the bombers testified: “I confess, I glanced down when the bombs were falling, and with my own eyes I saw a shocking panorama of the city, blazing from one end to the other. Thick smoke was visible, carried by the wind from Dresden. A panorama of a brightly sparkling city opened up. The first reaction was the thought that shocked me about the coincidence of the massacre taking place below with the warnings of the evangelists in the sermons before the war.
The plan to bombard Dresden included the creation of a fiery tornado on its streets. Such a tornado appears when the scattered fires that have arisen are combined into one huge bonfire. The air above it heats up, its density decreases and it rises.
The British historian David Irving describes the firestorm created in Dresden by the British Royal Air Force pilots as follows: “... the resulting firestorm, judging by the survey, absorbed more than 75 percent of the destruction area ... Giant trees were uprooted or half broken. Crowds of fleeing people were unexpectedly picked up by a tornado, dragged through the streets and thrown directly into the fire; ripped off roofs and furniture… were thrown into the center of the burning old part of the city.
The fiery tornado reached its peak in the three-hour interval between raids, precisely at the time when the inhabitants of the city who had taken refuge in underground corridors had to flee to its outskirts.
A railroad worker who was hiding near Postal Square watched as a woman with a baby carriage was dragged through the streets and thrown into the flames. Others fleeing along the railroad embankment, which seemed to be the only way of escape not littered with debris, told how the railroad cars on the open sections of the track were blown away by a storm.
Asphalt melted on the streets, and people, falling into it, merged with the road surface.
The telephone operator of the Central Telegraph left such memories of the bombing of the city: “Some girls suggested that we go out into the street and run home. The stairs led from the basement of the telephone center building to a quadrangular courtyard under a glass roof. They wanted to get out through the main gate of the courtyard to Postal Square. I didn't like this idea; suddenly, just as 12 or 13 girls were running across the yard and fumbling with the gate, trying to open it, the red-hot roof collapsed, burying them all under it.
In a gynecological clinic, after being hit by a bomb, 45 pregnant women died. On Altmarkt Square, several hundred people who sought salvation in ancient wells were boiled alive, and the water from the wells evaporated by half.
During the bombing, approximately 2,000 refugees from Silesia and East Prussia were in the basement of the Central Station. Underground passages for their temporary residence were equipped by the authorities long before the bombing of the city. The refugees were cared for by representatives of the Red Cross, women's service units under the state labor service and employees of the National Socialist welfare service. In another city in Germany, the accumulation of such a large number of people in rooms decorated with flammable materials would not be allowed. But the Dresden authorities were sure that the city would not be bombed.
Refugees were also on the stairs leading to the platforms and on the platforms themselves. Shortly before the raid on the city by British bombers, two trains with children arrived at the station from Koenigsbrück, which was approached by the Red Army.
A refugee from Silesia recalled: “Thousands of people crowded shoulder to shoulder in the square ... Fire raged above them. At the entrances to the station, the corpses of dead children lay, they were already stacked on top of each other and taken out of the station.
According to the air defense chief of the Central Station, out of 2,000 refugees who were in the tunnel, 100 were burned alive, another 500 people suffocated in the smoke.

"The number of victims in Dresden is impossible to count"
During the first attack on Dresden, the British Lancasters dropped 800 tons of bombs. Three hours later, 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs. The losses of the Royal Air Force during the two raids amounted to 6 aircraft, 2 more aircraft crashed in France and 1 in the UK.
On February 14, 311 American bombers dropped 771 tons of bombs on the city. On February 15, American aircraft dropped 466 tons of bombs. Part of the American P-51 fighters were ordered to attack targets moving along the roads in order to increase chaos and destruction on the region's important transport network.
The commander of the Dresden rescue squad recalled: “At the beginning of the second attack, many were still crowded in tunnels and basements, waiting for the end of the fires ... The detonation hit the basement windows. Some new, strange sound was added to the roar of explosions, which became more and more muffled. Something resembling the rumble of a waterfall - it was the howl of a tornado that started in the city.
Many who were in underground shelters instantly burned out as soon as the surrounding heat suddenly increased dramatically. They either turned to ashes or melted…”
The bodies of other dead, found in the basements, shrunken from the nightmarish heat to one meter in length.
British planes also dropped canisters filled with a mixture of rubber and white phosphorus on the city. The canisters broke on the ground, the phosphorus ignited, the viscous mass fell on the skin of people and stuck tightly. It was impossible to redeem...
One of the inhabitants of Dresden said: “The tram depot had a public toilet made of corrugated iron. At the entrance, with her face buried in a fur coat, lay a woman of about thirty, completely naked. A few yards away lay two boys, about eight or ten years old. They lay down, hugging each other tightly. Also naked... Everywhere, where the eye reached, people lay suffocated from lack of oxygen. Apparently, they tore off all their clothes, trying to make it look like an oxygen mask ... ".
After the raids, a three-mile column of yellow-brown smoke rose into the sky. A mass of ash floated, covering the ruins, towards Czechoslovakia.
In some parts of the old city, such heat was created that even a few days after the bombing it was impossible to enter the streets between the ruins of houses.
According to the report of the Dresden police, compiled after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city, “... 24 banks, 26 buildings of insurance companies, 31 trading shops, 6470 shops, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges.
On March 22, 1945, the municipal authorities of Dresden issued an official report, according to which the number of deaths recorded by this date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths during the bombing was expected to be about 25,000 people.
In 1953, in the work of the German authors “Results of the Second World War”, Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “The number of victims in Dresden cannot be calculated. According to the State Department, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual figure of losses, of course, is much less; but even 60-100 thousand people of the civilian population, who died in the fire in one night, hardly fit in the human mind.
In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden concluded that approximately 25,000 people died during the bombings.

“And at the same time show the Russians…”
On January 26, 1945, Air Force Secretary Archibald Sinclair suggested bombing Dresden to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in response to his dispatch with the question: “What can be done to properly finish off the Germans during their retreat from Breslau (this city is located 200 kilometers from Dresden. "SP")?
On February 8, the High Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe informed the RAF and the US Air Force that Dresden was included in the list of targets for bombing. On the same day, the US military mission in Moscow sent an official notification to the Soviet side about the inclusion of Dresden in the list of targets.
An RAF memorandum given to British pilots the night before the attack stated: “Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany… is by far the largest enemy area still un-bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, housing is in short supply as workers, refugees and troops need to be accommodated, as well as government offices evacuated from other areas. At one time widely known for its production of porcelain, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center ... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it the most, behind a partially collapsed front ... and at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what they are capable of Royal Air Force".
- If we talk about war crimes and genocide, then many German cities were bombed. The Americans and the British developed a plan: mercilessly bomb the cities in order to break the spirit of the German civilian population in a short time. But the country lived and worked under bombs,” says Vladimir Beshanov, author of books on the history of World War II. - I think that not only the barbaric bombing of Dresden, but also the bombing of other German cities, as well as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should be recognized as war crimes.
In Dresden, residential buildings and architectural monuments were destroyed. Large marshalling yards received almost no damage. The railway bridge over the Elbe and the military airfield, located in the vicinity of the city, remained intact.
After Dresden, the British managed to bomb the medieval cities of Bayreuth, Würzburg, Zoest, Rothenburg, Pforzheim and Welm. Only in Pforzheim, where 60,000 people lived, a third of the inhabitants died.
What will come out of another attempt to give the monstrous event the status of a war crime is unknown. So far, every year on February 13, the inhabitants of Dresden commemorate fellow citizens who died in a fiery tornado.

Bombing of Dresden

Destroyed Dresden. Photo from German archives, 1945

The charred corpses of the dead inhabitants. Photo from the German archives, February 1945

Bombing of Dresden(German Luftangriff auf Dresden, English Bombing of Dresden) - a series of bombings of the German city of Dresden, carried out by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain and the United States Air Force on February 13-15, 1945 during World War II. As a result of the bombing, about a quarter of the city's industrial enterprises and about half of the remaining buildings (urban infrastructure and residential buildings) were destroyed or seriously damaged. According to the US Air Force, traffic through the city was paralyzed for several weeks. Estimates of the number of dead varied from 25,000 in official German wartime reports to 200,000 and even 500,000. In 2008, a commission of German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden estimated the death toll at between 18,000 and 25,000. On March 17, 2010, the official report of the commission, which has been operating since 2004, was presented. According to the report, the bombing of Dresden by Allied aircraft in February 1945 killed 25,000 people. The official report of the commission was made publicly available on the Internet.

Whether the bombing of Dresden was due to military necessity is still a matter of controversy. The bombing of Berlin and Leipzig was agreed with the Soviet side; according to the explanation of the Anglo-American allies, Dresden, as an important transport center, was bombed by them in order to make it impossible for traffic to bypass these cities. According to the US Air Force, which carried out the bombing, the significance of disabling the transport hubs of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden is confirmed by the fact that it was near Leipzig, in Torgau, on April 25 that the advanced units of the Soviet and American troops met, cutting the territory of Nazi Germany in two. Other researchers call the bombing unjustified, believing that Dresden was of low military importance, and the destruction and civilian casualties were highly disproportionate to the military results achieved. According to a number of historians, the bombing of Dresden and other German cities retreating to the Soviet zone of influence was not aimed at helping the Soviet troops, but exclusively for political purposes: a demonstration of military power to intimidate the Soviet leadership in connection with the planned Operation Unthinkable. According to historian John Fuller, it was enough to continuously bomb the exits of the city to block communications, instead of bombarding Dresden itself.

The bombing of Dresden was used by Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes, while the death toll was inflated by Goebbels to 200 thousand people, and the bombing itself seemed completely unjustified. In the USSR, an estimate of the victims was 135 thousand people.

The reasons

On December 16, 1944, German troops on the Western Front launched an offensive in the Ardennes, the purpose of which was to defeat the Anglo-American forces in Belgium and the Netherlands and free up German units for the Eastern Front. In just 8 days, the Wehrmacht offensive in the Ardennes as a strategic operation ended in complete failure. By December 24, the German troops advanced 90 km, but their offensive fizzled out before reaching the Meuse River, when the American troops launched a counteroffensive, attacked from the flanks and stopped the German advance, and the Wehrmacht, defeated in the Ardennes, finally lost the strategic initiative on the Western Front and started to recede. To facilitate their retreat, on January 1, 1945, the Germans launched a local counteroffensive, conducted by small forces, this time in Strasbourg in the Alsace region, in order to divert the Allied forces. These local counterattacks could no longer change the strategic situation on the Western Front, moreover, the Wehrmacht was experiencing a critical shortage of fuel caused by strategic bombing by Allied aircraft, which destroyed the German oil refining industry. By the beginning of January 1945, the position of the Wehrmacht on the Western Front, especially in the Ardennes, became hopeless.

In connection with these events, on January 12-13, the Red Army launched an offensive in Poland and East Prussia. On January 25, in a new report, British intelligence noted that “the success of the current Russian offensive will apparently have a decisive influence on the duration of the war. We consider it expedient to urgently consider the issue of assistance that can be provided to the Russians by the strategic aviation of Great Britain and the United States over the next few weeks. In the evening of the same day, Winston Churchill, having read the report, addressed the Secretary of the Air Force Archibald Sinclair (Eng. Archibald Sinclair ) a dispatch asking what can be done to “how the Germans should be treated during their retreat from Breslau” (200 km east of Dresden).

On January 26, Sinclair noted in his reply that “the best use of strategic air power seems to be the bombing of German oil refineries; German units retreating from Breslau must be bombed by front-line aircraft (from low altitudes), and not by strategic ones (from high altitudes)”; noting, however, that "under favorable weather conditions, one can consider the bombing of large cities in eastern Germany, such as Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz" . Churchill expressed dissatisfaction with the restrained tone of the response and demanded that the possibility of bombing Berlin and other major cities in East Germany be considered. Churchill's wish for concrete plans for strikes against the cities of eastern Germany, Sinclair forwarded to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Charles Portal (Eng. Charles Portal ), who in turn forwarded it to his second in command, Norman Bottomley. Norman Bottomley ).

On 27 January, Bottomley sent the Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, an order to launch bombing raids on Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, as soon as weather conditions allowed. Sinclair reported to Churchill on the measures taken, noting that "a sudden massive bombardment will not only bring confusion to the evacuation from the east, but also make it difficult to transfer troops from the west." On January 28, Churchill, having read Sinclair's reply, made no further comments.

An RAF memorandum which was made known to British pilots the night before the attack (13 February) stated that:

Dresden, the 7th largest city in Germany... by far the largest enemy area still un-bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, housing is in short supply as workers, refugees, and troops need to be accommodated, as well as government offices evacuated from other areas. Once widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where they feel it most, behind a partially collapsed front... and at the same time show the Russians when they arrive in the city what the Royal Air Force is capable of. .

bombing

The tonnage of bombs dropped by the Allies on the 7 largest cities in Germany, including Dresden, is shown in the table below.

Moreover, as the table below shows, by February 1945, the city was practically not bombed.

the date	Target	Who spent	Participated aircraft	Tonnage of bombs dropped
				high-explosive	incendiary	Total
07.10.1944	Sort Facility	USAF	30	72,5		72,5
16.01.1945	Sort Facility	USAF	133	279,8	41,6	321,4
14.02.1945	Through city squares	Royal Air Force	772	1477,7	1181,6	2659,3
14.02.1945	Sort Facility	USAF	316	487,7	294,3	782,0
15.02.1945	Sort Facility	USAF	211	465,6		465,6
02.03.1945	Sort Facility	USAF	406	940,3	140,5	1080,8
17.04.1945	Sort Facility	USAF	572	1526,4	164,5	1690,9
17.04.1945	industrial zones	USAF	8	28,0		28,0

The operation was supposed to begin with an air raid by the US Air Force's 8th Air Force on February 13, but bad weather over Europe prevented the participation of American aircraft. In this regard, the first blow was delivered by British aircraft.

On the evening of February 13, 796 Avro Lancasters and 9 De Havilland Mosquitos took off in two waves and dropped 1,478 tons of explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs. The first attack was carried out by the 5th RAF Group, which used its own targeting methods and tactics. Guidance planes marked the stadium Ostragehege as a starting point. All bombers passed through this point, fanning out along predetermined trajectories and dropping bombs after a certain time. The first bombs were dropped at 22:14 CET by all but one bomber, which dropped the bombs at 22:22. At this point, clouds were covering the ground, and the attack, during which 244 Lancasters dropped 800 tons of bombs, was a moderate success. The bombed zone was fan-shaped, 1.25 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

Three hours later, a second attack took place, carried out by the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th RAF groups, the latter providing guidance by standard methods. The weather had improved by then, and 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs between 01:21 and 01:45. .

After that, the US Air Force carried out two more bombing raids. On March 2, 406 B-17 bombers dropped 940 tons of explosive and 141 tons of incendiary bombs. On 17 April, 580 B-17 bombers dropped 1,554 tons of high explosive and 165 tons of incendiary bombs.

The bombing was carried out according to the methods adopted at the time: first high-explosive bombs were dropped to destroy the roofs and expose the wooden structures of buildings, then firebombs, and again high-explosive bombs to hamper the work of firefighting services. As a result of the bombing, a fiery tornado was formed, the temperature in which reached 1500 ° C.

Destruction and casualties

Type of destruction. Photo from German archives, 1945

According to a Dresden police report compiled shortly after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city. The report stated that "24 banks, 26 insurance company buildings, 31 trading shops, 6470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 brothels, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, 1 zoological garden, 1 waterworks, 1 railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges. In addition, the destruction of military targets was reported: the command post in the palace Taschenberg, 19 military hospitals and many smaller military service buildings. Nearly 200 factories were damaged, of which 136 suffered major damage (including several Zeiss optics factories), 28 moderate damage and 35 minor damage.

The US Air Force documents say: “British estimates ... conclude that 23% of industrial buildings and 56% of non-industrial buildings (not counting residential buildings) were seriously damaged. Of the total number of residential buildings, 78,000 are considered destroyed, 27,700 are considered unfit for habitation, but repairable, 64,500 are considered slightly damaged and repairable. This later assessment shows that 80% of the city's buildings suffered damage of varying degrees and 50% of residential buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged", "heavy damage was caused as a result of raids on the city's railway infrastructure, which completely paralyzed communications", "railway bridges over the Elbe River - vital for the movement of troops - remained inaccessible to movement for several weeks after the raid.

The exact number of deaths is unknown. Estimates are difficult to make due to the fact that the population of the city, which in 1939 numbered 642 thousand people, increased at the time of the raids due to the arrival of at least 200 thousand refugees and several thousand soldiers. The fate of some refugees is unknown because they could have been burned beyond recognition or left the city without informing the authorities.

Currently, a number of historians estimate the number of victims in the range of 25-30 thousand people. According to the American Air Force, from these estimates it would be clear that the losses during the bombing of Dresden are similar to the losses during the bombing of other German cities. Higher figures were reported by other sources, the reliability of which was questioned.

A chronology of claims by various sources on the number of deaths is given below.

On March 22, 1945, an official report was issued by the municipal authorities of the city of Dresden Tagesbefehl no. 47(also known as TV-47), according to which the number of deaths recorded by this date was 20,204, and the total number of deaths during the bombing was expected to be about 25 thousand people.

In 1953, in the work of German authors “Results of the Second World War”, Major General of the Fire Service Hans Rumpf wrote: “It is impossible to calculate the number of victims in Dresden. According to the State Department, 250,000 people died in this city, but the actual number of casualties is, of course, much less; but even 60-100 thousand civilians who died in the fire in one night can hardly fit in the human mind.

In 1964, US Air Force Lieutenant General Ira Eaker ( English) also estimated the number of victims at 135,000 dead .

In 1970, the American magazine Time estimated the number of victims from 35,000 to 135,000 people.

In 1977, the Soviet Military Encyclopedia listed the death toll at 135,000.

In 2000, according to the decision of the British court, the figures given by Irving for the number of deaths in the bombing of Dresden (135 thousand people) were called unreasonably high. The judge found no reason to doubt that the death toll differs from the 25-30 thousand people indicated in official German documents.

In 2005, an article on the official website of the British Air Force noted that, according to accepted estimates, the death toll was at least 40 thousand people, and possibly more than 50 thousand.

In the encyclopedias "Columbia" ( English) and Encarta provides data on the death toll from 35 thousand to 135 thousand people.

In 2006, Russian historian Boris Sokolov noted that the death toll from the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 ranged from 25,000 to 250,000 people. In the same year, in the book of the Russian journalist A. Alyabyev, it was noted that the number of deaths, according to various sources, ranged from 60 to 245 thousand people.

In 2008, a commission of 13 German historians commissioned by the city of Dresden estimated the death toll to be between 18,000 and 25,000. Other estimates of the number of victims, reaching up to 500 thousand people, were called by the commission exaggerated or based on dubious sources. The commission was created by state bodies after the right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany, having won seats in the Saxon parliament in the 2004 elections, began publicly comparing the bombing of German cities with the Holocaust, citing figures of up to 1 million victims.

The tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden was less than in the bombing of other cities. However, favorable weather conditions, buildings with wooden structures, passages connecting the basements of adjacent houses, as well as the unpreparedness of the city for the consequences of air raids, contributed to the fact that the results of the bombing were more destructive. In late 2004, an RAF pilot who took part in the raids told the BBC that another factor was the weak barrage of air defense forces, which made it possible to hit targets with high accuracy. According to the authors of the Dresden Drama documentary, the firebombs dropped on Dresden contained napalm.

According to the US Air Force, which carried out the bombing, in the post-war period, the bombing of Dresden was used "by the communists for anti-Western propaganda."

The total number of victims of the Allied bombing among the civilian population of Germany is estimated at 305-600 thousand people. Whether these bombings contributed to a speedy end to the war is debatable.

Anglo-American aviation losses

The losses of the Royal Air Force during two raids on Dresden on February 13-14, 1945 amounted to 6 aircraft, in addition, 2 aircraft crashed in France and 1 in England.

Available sources provide details of the loss of 8 aircraft (including five British, one Australian, one Canadian, one Polish):

During the raid on Dresden and additional targets, American aviation irrevocably lost 8 B-17 bombers and 4 P-51 fighters.

eyewitness accounts

Dresden resident Margaret Freyer recalled:

“Moans and cries for help were heard in the firestorm. Everything around turned into a continuous hell. I see a woman - she is still before my eyes. In her hands is a bundle. This is a child. She runs, falls, and the baby, having described an arc, disappears in a flame. Suddenly, two people appear right in front of me. They shout, wave their hands, and suddenly, to my horror, I see how one by one these people fall to the ground (today I know that the unfortunate ones became victims of lack of oxygen). They lose consciousness and turn to ash. Crazy fear seizes me, and I keep repeating: “I don’t want to burn alive!” I don’t know how many other people got in my way. I know only one thing: I must not burn.

The dancer and dance teacher Grete Palucca founded a modern dance school in Dresden in 1925 and has since lived in Dresden:

“Then I experienced something terrible. I lived in the center of the city, in the house where I lived, almost everyone died, including because they were afraid to go out. After all, we were in the basement, about sixty-three people, and there I said to myself - no, you can die here, because it was not a real bomb shelter. Then I ran straight into the fire and jumped over the wall. Me and another schoolgirl, we were the only ones who got out. Then I experienced something terrible, and then in the Grossen Garten (a park within the city) I experienced an even greater horror, and it took me two years to overcome it. At night, if in a dream I saw those pictures, I always started screaming.

According to the memoirs of a radio operator of the British Air Force, who participated in the raid on Dresden:

“At the time, I was struck by the thought of the women and children below. It seemed that we flew for hours over the sea of ​​fire that raged below - from above it looked like an ominous red glow with a thin layer of haze above it. I remember I said to the other crew members, “Oh my God, those poor fellows downstairs.” It was completely unreasonable. And it can't be justified."

Reaction

Ruined opera house. Photo from German archives, 1945

On February 16, a press release was issued, where the German side stated that there were no military industries in Dresden, it was the location of cultural property and hospitals. On February 25, a new document was released with photographs of two burnt children and with the title "Dresden - a massacre of refugees", which stated that the number of victims was not one hundred, but two hundred thousand people. March 4 in the weekly newspaper Das Reich published an article devoted exclusively to the destruction of cultural and historical values.

Historian Frederick Taylor notes that German propaganda was successful, not only forming a position in neutral countries, but also reaching the British House of Commons, where Richard Stokes ( English) operated on the reports of the German news agency.

Churchill, who had previously supported the bombing, distanced himself from them. On March 28, in a draft memorandum sent by telegram to General Hastings Ismay, he said: “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the bombing of German cities, carried out under various pretexts for the sake of increasing terror, should be reconsidered. Otherwise, we will get a completely ruined state under our control. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious pretext against Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that henceforth military objectives should be determined more strictly in our own interests than in the interests of the enemy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs informed me of this problem and I believe that it is necessary to focus more carefully on such military targets as oil and communications immediately behind the war zone, rather than on clear acts of terror and senseless, albeit impressive, destruction.

After reviewing the contents of Churchill's telegram, on March 29, Arthur Harris sent a reply to the Air Ministry, where he stated that the bombing was strategically justified and "all the remaining German cities are not worth the life of one British grenadier." After protests from the military, on April 1, Churchill wrote a new text in a relaxed form.

The issue of war crimes

Square Altmarkt before destruction. Photo taken in 1881., Library of Congress

There are different opinions as to whether the bombing should be considered a war crime.

The American journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens expressed the opinion that the bombing of many German residential areas that served as human targets was carried out solely so that new aircraft crews could work out the practice of bombing. In his opinion, the Allies burned German cities in 1944-1945 only because they were able to do it.

In his book, the German historian Jörg Friedrich ( English) noted that, in his opinion, the bombing of cities was a war crime, since in the last months of the war they were not dictated by military necessity. In 2005, Friedrich noted that "it was an absolutely unnecessary bombing in the military sense", "an act of unjustified terror, mass destruction of people and terrorization of refugees" . The German historian Joachim Fest also believes that the bombing of Dresden was not militarily necessary.

Representatives of right-wing parties at a demonstration on February 13, 2005. The inscription on the banner "Never again bombing terror!"

Nationalist politicians in Germany use the expression bombenholocaust("bomb holocaust") in relation to the bombing of German cities by the allies. The leader of the National Democratic Party of Germany, Holger Apfel, called the bombings "a cold-bloodedly planned industrial-mass destruction of the Germans."

The question of classifying the bombing of Dresden as a war crime does not make sense without considering, together with the facts of the bombing of cities such as Würzburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn, Pforzheim, which had no military significance, committed according to an identical scheme, and also almost completely destroyed. The bombing of these and many other cities was carried out after the bombing of Dresden.

Reflection in culture

Memory

On February 13, 2010, on the Day of Remembrance for those killed in the bombing, between 5,000 and 6,700 neo-Nazis (3,000 fewer than expected) who planned to demonstrate in Altstadt - the historical center of Dresden, were blocked on the opposite bank of the Elbe by left-wing demonstrators. According to the newspapers Morgen Post and Sächsische Zeitung, between 20,000 and 25,000 residents and visitors took to the streets of Dresden to oppose the far right. The “human chain”, which stretched around the historic center of the city, where the Dresden synagogue is located, consisted, according to various sources, of 10 to 15 thousand people. To maintain order, the Ministry of the Interior of Saxony (as well as other federal lands) deployed about seven and a half thousand policemen (initially it was planned to six thousand) with armored vehicles and helicopters.

Some facts

The area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in Dresden was 4 times the area of ​​the zone of complete destruction in Nagasaki. The population before the raid was 629,713 people (excluding refugees), after - 369,000 people.

Notes

1. German historians have established the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden (March 18, 2010). Archived
2. Official report on the victims of the bombing, published 03/17/2010 (German) (PDF). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012.
3. Historical Analysis of the 14-15 February 1945 Bombings of Dresden(English) . USAF Historical Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University. Retrieved March 14, 2009.
4. “The history of the raid by Gotz Bergander, first published in 1977…, provided the most balanced account of the attack, but Bergander, though he thought there were grounds for regarding the city as a completely legitimate bombing target, found the means used were "bizarrely out of proportion" to any expected gain." Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A. (eds.) Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden. - Pimlico, 2006. - p. 126. - ISBN 1-8441-3928-X
5. Shepova N. Bomb Germany out of the war. Military Industrial Courier, No. 21 (137) (June 07-13, 2006). archived
6. Fuller J.F.C. World War II 1939-1945 Strategic and Tactical Review. - M .: Foreign Literature, 1956.
7. “Following the deliberate leaking oa TB-47 by Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, a third Swedish paper, Svenska Dagbladet, wrote on 25 February 1945 that… according to the information compiled a few days after the destruction the figure is closer to 200,000 than to 100,000” Richard J Evans(((title))) = Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial. - Verso, 2002. - S. 165. - 326 p. - ISBN 1859844170
8. Soviet military encyclopedia. - T. 3. - S. 260.
9. Taylor, p. 181: "The degree of success achieved by the present Russian offensive is likely to have a decisive effect on the length of the war. We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end”, quoted from the report “Strategic Bombing in Relation to the Present Russian Offensive" prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee of Great Britain on January 25, 1945
10. Taylor, p. 181
11. Taylor, p. 184-185
12. Taylor, p. 185. Churchill's reply: “I asked whether Berlin, and now doubt other large cities in East Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets. I am glad that this is "under consideration". Pray report to me tomorrow what is to be done.
13. Taylor, p. 186
14. Taylor, p. 217-220
15. Addison (2006), p. 27.28
16. Ross (2003), p. 180. See also Longmate (1983) p. 333.
17. RAF: Bomber Command: Dresden, February 1945 ((in English)). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 14, 2009.
18. Gotz Bergander.= Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen. - Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1977.
19. Richard J. Evans.= The Bombing of Dresden in 1945: Misstatement of circumstances: low-level strafing in Dresden.
20. Taylor, p. 497-8.
21. Taylor, p. 408-409
22. Taylor, p. 262-4. The number of refugees is unknown, but some historians put it at 200,000 on the first night of the bombing.
23. "Following the deliberate leaking oa TB-47 by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, a third Swedish paper, Svenska Dagbladet, wrote on 25 February 1945 that … according to the information compiled a few days after the destruction the figure is closer to 200,000 than to 100,000" Richard J. Evans.= Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial. - Verso, 2002. - S. 165. - 326 p. - ISBN 1859844170
24. p. 75, Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A., Pimlico, 2006
25. Taylor, p. 424
26. Another report, prepared on 3 April, put the number of dead bodies at 22,096 - See p. 75, Addison, Paul & Crang, Jeremy A., Pimlico, 2006
27. Rumpf G. Air war in Germany // = Results of the Second World War. Conclusions of the vanquished. - M., St. Petersburg: AST, Polygon, 1988.
28. Foreword to the original edition of David Irving's famous bestseller: The Destruction of Dresden (English). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
29. Maksimov M. War without rules // Around the world, No. 12 (2771), December 2004 (eng.) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
30. Dresden Rebuilt // Time, Feb. 23, 1970 (English) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
31. cm.
32. World War II: Arthur Harris // BBC Russian Service, April 21, 2005 (Russian). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
33. Obituary: Kurt Vonnegut // BBC, April 12, 2007 (English) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
34. Sokolov B. How to calculate losses in World War II // Continent, 2006, No. 128 (eng.) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
35. Alyabiev A. Chronicle of the air war. Strategy and tactics. 1939-1945 - M .: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006.
36. Sven Felix Kellerhoff Bombardement 1945: Zahl der Dresden-Toten viel niedriger als vermutet // Die Welt, 1. Oktober 2008 (Georgian) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
37. (cargo). (unavailable link - ) Retrieved March 15, 2009.
38. Pancevski B. Dresden bombing death toll lower than thought // The Telegraph, 3 Oct 2008 (eng.) . Retrieved March 15, 2009.
39. Cleaver H. German says ruling Dresden was a holocaust // The Telegraph , 12 Apr 2005 (English) . Retrieved March 15, 2009.
40. Rising D. Report: Dresden bombing killed fewer than thought // USA Today, Oct 1. 2008 (English) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
41. Connolly K. Dresden bombing horrors divisive in Germany // The Daily Telegraph, February 11, 2005
42. 550 Squadron Photos. F/O Allen & Crew
43. The Merlin. Dumfries & Galloway Aviation Museum Newsletter, Easter 2008, p. 2.
44. , With. 125.
45. 463 SQUADRON RAAF WORLD WAR 2 FATALITIES
46. List of dead members of the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II, p. 248.
47. KNIGHTS, P/O John Kingsley; Air Force Association of Canada
48. Lost information on the Pathfinder Squadron RAF website
49. Lost Bombers Fiskerton Airfield Database - PD232
50. Crash du Avro Lancaster - type B.I - s/n PB686 KO-D
51. WWII 8th AAF COMBAT CHRONOLOGY: JANUARY 1945 THROUGH AUGUST 1945
52. Kantor Yu. Pepel on the Elbe // Vremya Novostei, No. 26, February 16, 2009
53. Peter Kirsten. The Bombing of Dresden - Memories of Hell (Translated from German by Natalia Pyatnitsyna) (Russian) (December 22, 2006). archived
54. Roy Akehurst. Bombing of Dresden. Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2009.
55. Taylor, p. 420-6.
56. Taylor, p. 421.
57. Taylor, p. 413.
58. Longmate, p. 344.
59. Longmate, p. 345.
60. Taylor, p. 431.
61. British Bombing Strategy in World War Two, Detlef Siebert, 2001-08-01, BBC History . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
62. Taylor, p. 430.
63. Taylor, p. 432.
64. Dresden: Time to Say We're Sorry by Simon Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal February 14, 1995, originally published The Times and The Spectator
65. Gregory H Stanton. How can we prevent genocide? (unavailable link - story) Retrieved March 15, 2009.
66. Christopher Hitchens. Was Dresden a war crime? // National Post, September 6, 2006 (eng.) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
67. February 13 will mark exactly 60 years since the powerful bombing of the city of Dresden by British aircraft // Radio Liberty, February 11, 2005
68. Historian Joachim Fest: A Senseless and Devastating Strike // Repubblica, February 9, 2005] (English) . Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
69. The German prosecutor's office recognized the bombing of Dresden as the Holocaust // Lenta.ru, 2005/04/12] (English). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
70. Sergei Berets. Dresden. Afterword to Yalta" // BBC, February 13, 2005 (Russian). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
71. Sergei Sumlenny. Year of burned children // Expert, July 28, 2008 (Russian) (July 28, 2009). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
72. Gleb Borisov. Kurt is alive // ​​Country. Ru, April 12, 2007 (Russian) . archived
73. Vladimir Kikilo. Kurt Vonnegut knew what was worth living for // Echo of the Planet, 2006 (Russian) . Archived from the original on February 17, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2009.
74. David Crossland. German Film Recalls Dresden Bombing // Spiegel Online (English) (02/13/2006). Archived from the original on May 21, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2009.
75. Secret protocols of the Yalta conference. They didn't ask to bomb Dresden // RIA Novosti, May 9, 2006 RTR Dresden - Chronicle of the Tragedy (Russian) (May 2006). - documentary. Retrieved 31 January 2009.
76. Olaf Sundermeyer (Der Spiegel, 13. Februar 2010): Bomben-Gedenken in Dresden: Neonazis scheitern mit Propagandamarsch
77. Morgen Post. 25,000 zeigen Gesicht gegen Rechts(German)
78. "Sachsische Zeitung", Dresden hallt zusammen gegen Rechts. February 15, 2010 (German)
79. Dresden-Lexikon, Population development

Literature

• Dresden Bombing 1945 //

On February 13-15, 1945, one of the worst crimes in the entire Second World War was committed. Terrible primarily for their senseless cruelty. The whole city was literally burned out. Hiroshima and Nagasaki after that were only a natural continuation of barbarism, and not recognized as a crime against humanity. This city turned out to be Dresden, the cultural center of Germany, which did not have military production and was guilty of only one thing - the Russians approached it. Only one squadron of the Luftwaffe was located for some time in this city of artists and artisans, but even that was gone by 1945, when the end of Nazi Germany was a foregone conclusion. The British Royal Air Force and the US Air Force wanted to find out if they could create a fire wave ... The victims of the experiment were the inhabitants of Dresden.
"Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany, is not much smaller than Manchester. It is the largest enemy center that has not yet been bombed. In the middle of winter, when refugees are streaming west and troops need houses to stay and rest, every roof counts. Target attacks - to hit the enemy in the most sensitive place, behind the line of the already broken front, and prevent the use of the city in the future; and at the same time show the Russians, when they come to Dresden, what Bomber Command is capable of."
From an RAF memorandum for official use, January 1945.

Thousands of buildings were destroyed in the city, tens of thousands of inhabitants died. These raids have gained a steady reputation as "the largest experience of mass destruction with the help of military equipment during the Second World War." The raid, which destroyed almost the entire old center of the architectural pearl of Europe, is still one of the most controversial pages in the history of the Second World War. What was it: a war crime against humanity or a legitimate act of retribution against the Nazis? But then it would be more logical to bomb Berlin.

“We will bomb Germany, one city after another. We will bombard you harder and harder until you stop waging war. This is our goal. We will pursue her relentlessly. City after city: Lübeck, Rostock, Cologne, Emden, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Duisburg, Hamburg - and this list will only grow, ”the British bomber commander Arthur Harris addressed the people of Germany with these words. It was this text that was distributed on the pages of millions of leaflets scattered over Germany.

The words of Marshal Harris were invariably put into practice. Day after day, newspapers issued statistical reports. Bingen - 96% destroyed. Dessau - 80% destroyed. Chemnitz - 75% destroyed. Small and large, industrial and university, full of refugees or clogged with military industry - German cities, as the British marshal promised, one after another turned into smoldering ruins. Stuttgart - 65% destroyed. Magdeburg - 90% destroyed. Cologne - 65% destroyed. Hamburg - 45% destroyed. By the beginning of 1945, the news that another German city had ceased to exist was already perceived as commonplace.

“This is the principle of torture: the victim is tortured until she does what is asked of her. The Germans were required to throw off the Nazis. The fact that the expected effect was not achieved and the uprising did not happen was explained only by the fact that such operations had never been carried out before. No one could have imagined that the civilian population would choose bombing. It’s just that, despite the monstrous scale of destruction, the likelihood of dying under bombs until the very end of the war remained lower than the likelihood of dying at the hands of an executioner if a citizen showed dissatisfaction with the regime, ”reflects Berlin historian Jörg Friedrich.

The carpet bombing of German cities was neither an accident nor the whim of individual pyromaniac fanatics in the British or American military. The concept of a bomb war against the civilian population, successfully used against Nazi Germany, was only a development of the doctrine of the British Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, developed by him during the First World War.

According to Trenchard, in the course of an industrial war, residential areas of the enemy should become natural targets, since the industrial worker is just as much a participant in the hostilities as a soldier at the front.

Such a concept was in rather obvious contradiction with international law in force at that time. Thus, articles 24-27 of the 1907 Hague Convention expressly prohibited the bombing and shelling of undefended cities, the destruction of cultural property, as well as private property. In addition, the belligerent side was instructed to, if possible, warn the enemy about the beginning of the shelling. However, the convention did not clearly spell out a ban on the destruction or terrorization of the civilian population, apparently, they simply did not think about this method of waging war.

An attempt to prohibit the conduct of hostilities by aviation against the civilian population was made in 1922 in the draft of the Hague Declaration on the rules of air warfare, but failed due to the unwillingness of European countries to join the harsh terms of the treaty. Nevertheless, already on September 1, 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt appealed to the heads of states that entered the war with a call to prevent “shocking violations of humanity” in the form of “deaths of defenseless men, women and children” and “never, under any circumstances, bombard from the air of the civilian population of undefended cities. The fact that "Her Majesty's Government will never attack civilians" was announced in early 1940 by the then British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain.

Joerg Friedrich explains: “Throughout the first years of the war, there was a bitter struggle among the Allied generals between the supporters of point bombing and carpet bombing. The first believed that it was necessary to strike at the most vulnerable points: factories, power plants, fuel depots. The latter believed that the damage from pinpoint strikes could be easily compensated, and relied on the carpet destruction of cities, on the terrorization of the population.

The concept of carpet bombing looked very advantageous in light of the fact that it was for such a war that Britain had been preparing for the entire pre-war decade. Lancaster bombers were designed specifically to attack cities. Specially for the doctrine of total bombing in Great Britain, the most perfect production of incendiary bombs among the warring powers was created. Having established their production in 1936, by the beginning of the war, the British Air Force had a stock of five million of these bombs. This arsenal had to be dropped on someone's head - and it is not surprising that already on February 14, 1942, the British Air Force received the so-called "Area Bombing Directive".

The document, which granted then Bomber Commander Arthur Harris unlimited rights to use bombers to suppress German cities, said in part: “From now on, operations should be focused on suppressing the morale of the enemy civilian population - in particular, industrial workers.”

On February 15, RAF Commander Sir Charles Portal was even less ambiguous in a note to Harris: that the targets should be housing estates, not shipyards or aircraft factories." However, it was not worth convincing Harris of the benefits of carpet bombing. As early as the 1920s, while commanding British air power in Pakistan and then in Iraq, he gave orders to firebomb unruly villages. Now the bombing general, who received the nickname of the Butcher from his subordinates, had to run the machine of aerial killing not on the Arabs and Kurds, but on the Europeans.

In fact, the only opponents of the raids on cities in 1942-1943 were the Americans. Compared to the British bombers, their planes were better armored, had more machine guns and could fly farther, so the American command believed that they were able to solve military problems without the massacre of the civilian population. “American attitudes changed dramatically after the raid on the well-defended Darmstadt, as well as on the bearing factories in Schweinfurt and Regensburg,” says Joerg Friedrich. — You see, there were only two bearing production centers in Germany. And the Americans, of course, thought that they could strip the Germans of all their bearings with one blow and win the war. But these factories were so well protected that during a raid in the summer of 1943, the Americans lost a third of the machines. After that, they simply did not bomb anything for six months. The problem was not even that they could not produce new bombers, but that the pilots refused to fly. A general who loses more than twenty percent of his personnel in a single sortie begins to experience problems with the morale of the pilots. This is how the school of area bombing began to win." The victory of the school of total bomb war meant the rise of the star of Marshal Arthur Harris. Among his subordinates, there was a popular story that once the car of Harris, who was driving at an excess of speed, was stopped by a policeman and advised to observe the speed limit: “Otherwise you can accidentally kill someone.” “Young man, I kill hundreds of people every night,” Harris allegedly replied to the policeman.

Obsessed with the idea of ​​bombing Germany out of the war, Harris spent days and nights in the Air Ministry, ignoring his ulcer. For all the years of the war, he was only on vacation for two weeks. Even the monstrous losses of his own pilots - during the war years, the loss of British bomber aircraft amounted to 60% - could not make him retreat from the idefix that had engulfed him.

“It is ridiculous to believe that the largest industrial power in Europe can be brought to its knees by such a ridiculous tool as six hundred or seven hundred bombers. But give me thirty thousand strategic bombers and the war will end tomorrow morning,” he told Prime Minister Winston Churchill, reporting on the success of another bombing. Harris did not receive thirty thousand bombers, and he had to develop a fundamentally new way of destroying cities - the "firestorm" technology.

“Theorists of the bomb war have come to the conclusion that the enemy city is a weapon in itself - a structure with a gigantic potential for self-destruction, you just need to put the weapon into action. It is necessary to bring the wick to this barrel of gunpowder, says Jörg Friedrich. German cities were extremely susceptible to fire. The houses were mostly wooden, the attic floors were dry beams ready to catch fire. If you set fire to the attic in such a house and knock out the windows, then the fire that has arisen in the attic will be fueled by oxygen penetrating into the building through the broken windows - the house will turn into a huge fireplace. You see, every house in every city was potentially a fireplace - you just had to help it turn into a fireplace.
The optimal technology for creating a "firestorm" was as follows. The first wave of bombers dropped so-called air mines on the city - a special type of high-explosive bombs, the main task of which was to create ideal conditions for saturating the city with incendiary bombs. The first air mines used by the British weighed 790 kilograms and carried 650 kilograms of explosives. The following modifications were much more powerful - already in 1943, the British used mines that carried 2.5 and even 4 tons of explosives. Huge cylinders three and a half meters long poured onto the city and exploded on contact with the ground, tearing tiles from the roofs, as well as knocking out windows and doors within a radius of up to a kilometer. "Loosened" in this way, the city became defenseless against a hail of incendiary bombs that fell on it immediately after being treated with air mines. With sufficient saturation of the city with incendiary bombs (in some cases, up to 100 thousand incendiary bombs were dropped per square kilometer), tens of thousands of fires broke out simultaneously in the city. Medieval urban development with its narrow streets helped the fire to spread from one house to another. The movement of fire brigades in the conditions of a general fire was extremely difficult. Particularly well engaged were cities in which there were no parks or lakes, but only dense wooden buildings dried up for centuries. Simultaneous fires of hundreds of houses created a thrust of unprecedented force over an area of ​​several square kilometers. The whole city turned into a furnace of unprecedented dimensions, sucking in oxygen from the surroundings. The resulting thrust, directed towards the fire, caused a wind blowing at a speed of 200-250 kilometers per hour, a giant fire sucked oxygen from bomb shelters, dooming even those people who were spared by the bombs to death.

Ironically, the concept of "firestorm" Harris peeped from the Germans, Jörg Friedrich continues to tell with sadness. “In the autumn of 1940, the Germans bombed Coventry, a small medieval town. During the raid, they covered the city center with incendiary bombs. The calculation was that the fire would spread to the motor factories located on the outskirts. In addition, fire trucks were not supposed to be able to drive through the burning city center. Harris took this bombing as an extremely interesting innovation. He studied its results for several months in a row. No one had carried out such bombings before. Instead of bombarding the city with land mines and blowing it up, the Germans carried out only a preliminary bombardment with land mines, and the main blow was inflicted with incendiary bombs - and achieved fantastic success. Encouraged by the new technique, Harris attempted a completely similar raid on Lübeck, a city almost the same as Coventry. Small medieval town,” says Friedrich.

It was Lübeck that was destined to become the first German city to experience the "firestorm" technology. On the night of Palm Sunday 1942, 150 tons of high-explosive bombs were poured into Lübeck, cracking the tiled roofs of medieval gingerbread houses, after which 25,000 incendiary bombs rained down on the city. The Lübeck firefighters, who understood the scale of the disaster in time, tried to call for reinforcements from neighboring Kiel, but to no avail. By morning the center of the city was a smoking ashes. Harris was triumphant: the technology he had developed had borne fruit.

The logic of the bomb war, like the logic of any terror, required a constant increase in the number of victims. If until the beginning of 1943 the bombing of cities did not take away more than 100-600 people, then by the summer of 1943 the operations began to sharply radicalize.

In May 1943, four thousand people died during the bombing of Wuppertal. Just two months later, during the bombing of Hamburg, the number of victims crept up to 40 thousand. The chances for city dwellers to perish in the fiery nightmare increased at an alarming rate. If earlier people preferred to hide from the bombings in the basements, now, with the sounds of air raids, they increasingly ran to the bunkers built to protect the population, but in few cities the bunkers could accommodate more than 10% of the population. As a result, people fought in front of bomb shelters not for life, but for death, and those killed by the bombs were added to those crushed by the crowd.

The fear of being bombed reached its peak in April-May 1945, when the bombings reached their peak intensity. By this time, it was already obvious that Germany had lost the war and was on the verge of surrender, but it was during these weeks that the most bombs fell on German cities, and the number of deaths among the civilian population in these two months amounted to an unprecedented figure - 130 thousand people.

The most famous episode of the bombing tragedy in the spring of 1945 was the destruction of Dresden. At the time of the bombing on February 13, 1945, there were about 100,000 refugees in the city with a population of 640 thousand people.

All other large cities in Germany were terribly bombed and burned. In Dresden, not even a single glass had cracked before. Every day, sirens howled like hell, people went into the basements and listened to the radio there. But the planes always went to other places - Leipzig, Chemnitz, Plauen and all sorts of other points.
The steam heating in Dresden was still whistling merrily. The trams rang. The lights came on when the switches were flipped. There were restaurants and theaters. The zoo was open. The city mainly produced drugs, canned food and cigarettes.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.

“Most Americans have heard a lot about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but few know that more people died in Dresden than were destroyed in any of these cities. Dresden was an Allied “experiment”. They wanted to find out if it was possible to create a firestorm by dropping thousands of incendiary bombs on the city center. Dresden was a city of priceless cultural treasures that were untouched until this point in the war. The bombardment set the entire city on fire, creating hurricane winds that fanned the flames even more. The asphalt melted and floated through the streets like lava. When the air attack was over, it was found that about 100,000 people had died. To prevent the spread of disease, the authorities burned the remains of tens of thousands of people in grotesque funeral pyres. Dresden had no military significance, and when it was bombarded, the war was almost already won. The bombing was only strengthened the German opposition and cost more Allied lives I sincerely ask myself if Was the bombing of Dresden a war crime? Was it a crime against humanity? What were ... guilty of the children who died the most terrible of deaths - burning alive.
David Duke, American historian.

The victims of the barbaric bombardments were by no means only and not so much Wehrmacht soldiers, not SS troops, not NSDAP activists, but women and children. By the way, Dresden at that time was flooded with refugees from the eastern parts of Germany, which had already been captured by the Red Army. People who feared the "barbarism of the Russians" rushed to the West, relying on the humanism of the other members of the anti-Hitler coalition. And they died under the bombs of the allies. If it was still possible to calculate the number of Dresdeners killed during the bombing with relative accuracy, based on the records of house books and passport offices, then it was not at all possible to identify the refugees and find out their names after the raids, which led to great discrepancies. An international research group of historians in 2006-2008 was the last to conduct a "verification of numbers". According to the data they published, as a result of the bombings of February 13-14, 1945, 25 thousand people died, of which about 8 thousand were refugees. More than 30,000 people received injuries and burns of varying severity.

According to Allied intelligence, by February 1945, 110 Dresden enterprises served the needs of the Wehrmacht, thus being legitimate military targets that were to be destroyed. More than 50 thousand people worked for them. Among these goals are various enterprises for the production of components for the aircraft industry, a poison gas factory (Hemische fab Goye), a Lehmann anti-aircraft and field guns plant, Zeiss Ikon, the largest optical-mechanical enterprise in Germany, as well as enterprises that produced X-ray machines and electrical equipment (“ Koch and Sterzel"), gearboxes and electrical measuring instruments.

The operation to destroy Dresden was to begin with an air raid by the 8th US Air Force on 13 February, but bad weather over Europe prevented American aircraft from participating. In this regard, the first blow was delivered by British aircraft.

On the evening of February 13, 796 Lancaster aircraft and nine Haviland Mosquitos bombed in two waves, dropping 1,478 tons of high-explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs. The first attack was carried out by the 5th RAF Group. The guidance planes marked the orientation point - the football stadium - with burning checkers. All bombers flew through this point, then fanned out along predetermined trajectories and dropped bombs after a certain time. The first bombs fell on the city at 22.14 CET. Three hours later, a second attack took place, carried out by the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th groups of the British Air Force. The weather had improved by then, and 529 Lancasters dropped 1,800 tons of bombs between 1:21 and 1:45. Smoke and flames filled our basement, the lights went out, the wounded screamed terribly. Overwhelmed by fear, we began to make our way to the exit. Mom and older sister were carrying a large basket with twins. I held my younger sister with one hand, grabbed my mother's coat with the other ... It was impossible to recognize our street. Everywhere you look, fire is raging. The fourth floor where we lived was no more. The ruins of our house were burning with might and main. In the streets, refugees with carts, some other people, horses rushed past burning cars, and everyone was screaming. Everyone was afraid to die. I saw wounded women, children and old people who were trying to get out of the fire and rubble ... We burst into some kind of basement, chock-full of wounded and simply terrified women and children. They moaned, wept, they prayed. And then the second raid began,” recalls Lothar Metzger, who turned 12 on the day of the bombing of Dresden.

On February 14, from 12.17 to 12.30, 311 American Boeing B-17 bombers dropped 771 tons of bombs, targeting railroad depots. On February 15, another 466 tons of American bombs fell on Dresden. But this was not the end. On March 2, 406 B-17 bombers dropped 940 tons of explosive and 141 tons of incendiary bombs. On April 17, 580 B-17 bombers dropped 1,554 tons of explosive and 165 tons of incendiary bombs.

“Moans and cries for help were heard in the firestorm. Everything around turned into a continuous hell. I see a woman - she is still before my eyes. In her hands is a bundle. This is a child. She runs, falls, and the baby, having described an arc, disappears in a flame. Suddenly, two people appear right in front of me. They shout, wave their hands, and suddenly, to my horror, I see how one by one these people fall to the ground (today I know that the unfortunate ones became victims of lack of oxygen). They lose consciousness and turn to ash. Crazy fear seizes me, and I keep repeating: "I do not want to burn alive!" I don't know how many other people got in my way. I know only one thing: I must not burn out, ”these are the memories of Margaret Freyer, a resident of Dresden. From the heavy fire that raged in the rooms and courtyards, glass burst, copper melted, marble turned into lime chips. People in houses and a few bomb shelters, in basements died of suffocation, burned alive. While dismantling the ruins that smoldered even a few days after the raids, rescuers here and there stumbled upon “mummified” corpses, which crumbled to dust when touched. Melted metal structures retained dents, contours reminiscent of human bodies.

Those who managed to escape from the multi-kilometer fire engulfed in flames rushed to the Elbe, to the water, to coastal meadows. “Sounds like the clatter of giants were heard above. It exploded multi-ton bombs. The giants stomped and stomped... A fiery hurricane raged above. Dresden has become a complete conflagration. The flame devoured all living things and in general everything that could burn ... The sky was completely covered with black smoke. The angry sun looked like a nail head. Dresden was like the moon - only minerals. The stones were hot. Death was all around. Everywhere lay something that looked like short logs. These were people caught in a fiery hurricane... It was assumed that the entire population of the city, without any exception, should be destroyed. Anyone who dared to stay alive spoiled the case ... The fighters emerged from the smoke to see if anything was moving below. The planes saw that some people were moving along the river bank. They poured them with machine guns... All this was conceived to end the war as soon as possible," Kurt Vonnegut describes the events of February 13-14, 1945 in Slaughterhouse Five.

This documentary and largely autobiographical novel (Vonnegut, who fought in the American army, was in a prisoner of war camp near Dresden, from where he was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945) was not published in the United States for a long time, being censored.

According to a Dresden police report compiled shortly after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city. The report stated that "24 banks, 26 insurance company buildings, 31 trading shops, 6470 stores, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 63 administrative buildings, three theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals, 39 schools, one railway depot, 19 ships and barges. In addition, the destruction of military targets was reported: the command post at the Taschenberg Palace, 19 military hospitals and many less significant military buildings. Almost 200 factories suffered damage, of which 136 suffered serious damage (including several Zeiss enterprises), 28 medium damage and 35 minor damage.

The US Air Force documents say: “23% industrial buildings and 56% non-industrial buildings (excluding residential). Of the total number of residential buildings, 78 thousand are considered destroyed, 27.7 thousand are considered uninhabitable, but repairable ... 80% of city buildings were destroyed to varying degrees and 50% of residential buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged ... "In As a result of the raids on the railway infrastructure of the city, heavy damage was inflicted, which completely paralyzed communications, railway bridges over the Elbe, vital for the transfer of troops, remained inaccessible for several weeks after the raid, official allied reports state.

The old market square, which for centuries was a place of trade and mass celebrations, then became a giant crematorium. There was no time and no one to bury and identify the dead, besides, the threat of an epidemic was high. Therefore, the remains were burned using flamethrowers. The city was covered with ashes, like snow. "Hoarfrost" lay on gentle banks, he sailed on the waters of the luxurious Elbe. Every year, since 1946, on February 13, throughout East and Central Germany, church bells rang in memory of the victims of Dresden. The chime lasted 20 minutes - exactly the same as the first attack on the city lasted. This tradition soon spread to West Germany, the zone of occupation of the Allies. In an attempt to reduce the undesirable morale effect of these actions, On February 11, 1953, the US State Department issued a report that the bombing of Dresden was allegedly undertaken in response to persistent requests from the Soviet side. during the Yalta Conference. (The Conference of the Allied Powers was held on February 4-11, 1945 - the second of three meetings of the leaders of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, the USSR, the USA and Great Britain, dedicated to the establishment of the post-war world order. At it, a fundamental decision was made to divide Germany into occupation zones.) Assume that the action, which has no analogues in terms of power and quantity of equipment, requiring the most precise coordination and careful planning, was an “improvisation” born during the Yalta negotiations and implemented in a few days, only a biased amateur can.

The decision to carpet bomb Dresden was made in December 1944. (In general, coordinated Allied raids were planned in advance, with all the details discussed.) The USSR did not ask the Anglo-American allies to bomb Dresden. This is evidenced by the declassified minutes of the meetings of the Yalta Conference, demonstrated in the documentary "Dresden. Chronicle of the Tragedy", filmed in 2005 - on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the capital of Saxony by the Rossiya TV channel. In the minutes of the conference, Dresden is mentioned only once - and then in connection with the drawing of a dividing line between the Anglo-American and Soviet troops. But what the Soviet command really asked for was to strike at the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig due to the fact that the Germans had already transferred about 20 divisions against the Red Army from the western front and were going to transfer about 30 more. It was this request that was presented in writing to Roosevelt and Churchill. At the conference in Yalta, the Soviet side asked to bomb railway junctions, not residential areas. This operation was not even coordinated with the Soviet command, whose forward units were in the immediate vicinity of the city.

“It is characteristic that in the school textbooks of the GDR and the FRG, the “Dresden theme” was presented in different ways. In West Germany, the fact of the destruction of the Saxon capital by Allied air raids is presented in the general context of the history of the Second World War and is interpreted as an inevitable consequence of the struggle against National Socialism and did not stand out, so to speak, in a special page in the study of this period of the war...”, - says expert of the Ministry of Culture and Science of Saxony Dr. Norbert Haase.

In the historical center of Dresden there is no single monument dedicated to the events of February 13-14, 1945. But many of the restored buildings have plaques and other “identification marks” telling about what happened. The restoration of the ensemble of old Dresden began shortly after the war with the active participation of Soviet specialists and partly with Soviet money . “The Dresden Opera House, the Dresden Gallery - Zwinger, the famous Brühl Terrace, the Albertinum and dozens of other architectural monuments have risen from the ruins. It can be said that the most important historical buildings on the banks of the Elbe and in the Old Town were built anew during the existence of the GDR. Restoration continues to this day,” says Norbert Haase.

Aviation of the Western Allies launched a series of bombing attacks on the capital of Saxony, the city of Dresden, which was almost completely destroyed as a result.

The Dresden raid was part of an Anglo-American strategic bombing program launched after the US and British heads of state met in Casablanca in January 1943.

Dresden is the seventh largest city in pre-war Germany with a population of 647 thousand people. Due to the abundance of historical and cultural monuments, it was often called "Florence on the Elbe". There were no significant military installations there.

By February 1945, the city was full of wounded and refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. Together with them in Dresden, there were estimated to be up to a million, and according to some sources, up to 1.3 million people.

The date of the raid on Dresden was determined by the weather: a clear sky was expected over the city.

During the first raid in the evening, 244 British Lancaster heavy bombers dropped 507 tons of explosive and 374 tons of incendiary bombs. During the second raid at night, which lasted half an hour and was twice as powerful as the first, 965 tons of high-explosive and over 800 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city by 529 aircraft.

On the morning of February 14, 311 American B-17s bombed the city. They dropped more than 780 tons of bombs into the sea of ​​fire raging below them. On the afternoon of February 15, 210 American B-17s completed the rout by dropping another 462 tons of bombs on the city.

It was the most devastating bombing strike in Europe in all the years of World War II.

The area of ​​the zone of continuous destruction in Dresden was four times larger than that in Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing by the Americans on August 9, 1945.

In most of the urban development, destruction exceeded 75-80%. Among the irreplaceable cultural losses are the ancient Frauenkirche, Hofkirche, the famous Opera and the world-famous Zwinger architectural and palace ensemble. At the same time, the damage caused to industrial enterprises turned out to be insignificant. The railway network also suffered little. The marshalling yards and even one bridge over the Elbe were not damaged, and traffic through the Dresden junction resumed a few days later.

Determining the exact number of victims of the bombing of Dresden is complicated by the fact that at that time there were several dozen military hospitals and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the city. Many were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings or burned in a fiery tornado.

The death toll is estimated in various sources from 25-50 thousand to 135 thousand people or more. According to an analysis prepared by the US Air Force History Department, 25,000 people died, according to official data from the British Royal Air Force History Department - more than 50 thousand people.

Subsequently, the Western Allies claimed that the raid on Dresden was a response to the request of the Soviet command to strike at the city's railway junction, allegedly made at the Yalta Conference of 1945.

As evidenced by the declassified minutes of the Yalta conference, demonstrated in the documentary film directed by Alexei Denisov "Dresden. Chronicle of the Tragedy" (2006), the USSR never asked the Anglo-American allies during World War II to bomb Dresden. What the Soviet command really asked for was to strike at the railway junctions of Berlin and Leipzig due to the fact that the Germans had already transferred about 20 divisions from the western front to the eastern one and were going to transfer about 30 more. It was this request that was delivered in writing like Roosevelt and Churchill.

From the point of view of domestic historians, the bombing of Dresden pursued, rather, a political goal. They attribute the bombardment of the Saxon capital to the desire of the Western Allies to demonstrate their air power to the advancing Red Army.

After the end of the war, the ruins of churches, palaces and residential buildings were dismantled and taken out of the city, on the site of Dresden there was only a site with marked boundaries of the streets and buildings that were here. The restoration of the city center took 40 years, the rest of the parts were restored earlier. At the same time, a number of historical buildings of the city located on Neumarkt Square are being restored to this day.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

February 13, 1945 entered the annals of World War II and will forever remain in it and in the memory of generations as a day of close, difficult (war!), But hardly correlated events.

Then, after long and bloody street battles, the Soviet troops completely captured Budapest. And now it is celebrated as the day of the liberation of the Hungarian capital from Nazism. On the same evening of February 13, three armadas of bombers from the UK with a total of 1335 aircraft turned Dresden into flaming ruins, dropping 4560 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city in three passes. Following, on February 14 and 15, another 1237 tons of TNT were brought down on the smoking city by crews of the American Air Force.

It is now established that the bombardment was carried out according to a predetermined plan: first high-explosive bombs were dropped to destroy roofs and expose the wooden structures of buildings, then incendiary bombs, and again high-explosive ones in order to impede the work of fire fighting services. As a result of such methods of massive bombing, a fiery tornado was created, the temperature in which reached 1500 degrees. On the ground and from above, from the cockpit of a bomber, it looked different.

“In the midst of a flurry of fire, there were groans and cries for help,” recalls the miraculously surviving Margaret Freyer. “Everything around turned into a continuous hell. I see a woman - she is still in front of my eyes. She has a bundle in her hands. falls, and the baby arcs and disappears in flames. Suddenly, two people appear right in front of me. They scream, wave their hands, and suddenly, to my horror, I see how one by one these people fall to the ground and lose consciousness. Today I I know that the unfortunate ones became victims of a lack of oxygen. Crazy fear seizes me - I don’t want to burn alive like them ... "

"We seemed to be flying for hours over a sea of ​​fire raging below - this is the radio operator of the British Air Force who participated in the raid on Dresden. - From above it looked like an ominous red glow with a thin layer of haze above it. I remember I said to other crew members:" My God, those poor fellows downstairs…” It was completely unreasonable. And it can’t be justified.”

According to the report of the Dresden police, compiled shortly after the raids, 12,000 buildings burned down in the city. Including "24 banks, 26 buildings of insurance companies, 31 trading shops, 6470 shops, 640 warehouses, 256 trading floors, 31 hotels, 26 taverns, 63 administrative buildings, 3 theaters, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 60 chapels, 50 cultural and historical buildings, 19 hospitals (including auxiliary and private clinics), 39 schools, 5 consulates, a zoological garden, a waterworks, a railway depot, 19 post offices, 4 tram depots, 19 ships and barges.

The number of dead in different sources is different - from 20 to 340 thousand. Reliable calculations, according to historians, are difficult to make due to the fact that the population of the city, which in 1939 numbered 642 thousand people, at the time of the raids increased due to refugees by at least 200 thousand. The fate of many thousands is unknown, because they could be burned beyond recognition or leave the city without informing the authorities.

The question whether such a bombing of Dresden was due to military necessity was controversial seventy years ago, and today there are almost no those left who would dare to justify it. Revenge taken out on the civilian population, even in response to the monstrous atrocities of the Nazis themselves, including in response to the bombing and rocket attacks of the same London, cannot be considered a method of warfare.

However, the Memorandum of the Royal Air Force, which the British pilots were acquainted with on the night before the attack on February 13, did not allow such reasoning and interpreted the task utilitarianly: "Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany, is currently the largest enemy area that has not yet been bombed. In the middle of winter, with refugees heading west and troops having to be quartered somewhere, and living quarters are in short supply as not only workers, refugees and troops need to be accommodated, but also government offices evacuated from other areas. Widely known for its porcelain production, Dresden has developed into a major industrial center... The purpose of the attack is to strike the enemy where he feels it most, behind a partially collapsed front... And thereby show the Russians, when they arrive in the city, what the Royal Air Force is capable of. ".

But what about the Russians themselves? They stubbornly, regardless of losses, gnawed through the front and attacked the stubbornly resisting enemy units in the east and southeast of Dresden. Including near Budapest. Here is one of the reports of the Soviet Information Bureau for the same February days. “A month and a half ago, on December 29, 1944, the Soviet command, wishing to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, to save the civilian population from suffering and victims, to prevent the destruction of the Hungarian capital, sent truce envoys to the command and all officers of the German troops surrounded in the Budapest region with ultimatums on surrender. Hitler's provocateurs and bandits killed Soviet parliamentarians. From that moment on, our troops launched systematic operations to eliminate the enemy group ... ".

And now, from Budapest itself, their front-line correspondent reports to Izvestia: “Commander Podshivailov’s infantry attacked quarter after quarter. Organizing an assault on the last defensive belt around the largest buildings of the center, he gave his soldiers the order: “Be careful with the house of the Academy of Sciences. If possible, save it "... On the second floor of the museum building, on the floor among the scattered exhibits, in lime dust on pieces of plaster, we saw a dead German. He and 4 other soldiers did not let our infantrymen approach the building with their fire. Machine gunner Ivan Kuznetsov entered the museum through corner tower and opened fire from the balcony. A Russian soldier withstood a hot fight with five Germans. He killed one, captured two, and the third ran away ... ".

In the battles for the liberation of Hungary and its capital, more than 80 thousand soldiers and commanders of the Red Army laid down their lives. The losses of the British Air Force during the two bombing of Dresden on February 13-14, 45th amounted to six aircraft. Another one or two crashed in France and one in England. American aviation in the same operation irrevocably lost eight bombers and four fighters. The total losses of the allies amounted to about 20 aircraft, while about a hundred people were killed or captured.

Verbatim

The bombing of Dresden, according to the Russian Military Historical Society, demonstrated the willingness of the West to violate any principles of humanity in order to achieve its goals.

February 13 marks the 70th anniversary of one of the monstrous events of World War II - the bombing of Dresden by Anglo-American aircraft. Then, 1,478 tons of high-explosive and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on a peaceful city overflowing with refugees. A firestorm arose that swallowed up tens of thousands of women and children, 19 hospitals, 39 schools, 70 churches and chapels ... The fiery whirlwind literally sucked the unfortunate - the air flow towards the fire moved at a speed of 200-250 kilometers. Today, the bombing of Dresden, which lasted 3 days, is perceived as a war crime, a rehearsal for Hiroshima.

The manufacturability of the perfect is terrifying. 800 British and American bombers that passed over Dresden at night, first opened the wooden structures of medieval houses with land mines, and then bombarded them with lighter bombs, simultaneously causing tens of thousands of fires. This was the firestorm technology that the Germans had previously used against Coventry. The bombing of this British city is considered one of the well-known crimes of Nazism. Why did our allies need to stain their hands with the blood of Dresden, turn civilians into ashes? After 70 years, the motive of revenge recedes into the background.

In February 1945, it was already known that Dresden was falling into the Soviet zone of occupation. After the bombardment on February 13, the Russians got only charred ruins and piles of blackened corpses, resembling, according to eyewitnesses, short logs. But even more significant was the motive of intimidation. Just like Hiroshima, Dresden was supposed to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the firepower of the West. Power - and willingness to trample on any principles of humanity in order to achieve their goals. Today Dresden and Hiroshima, and tomorrow Gorky, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk - is everything clear, Mr. Stalin? Today we see the same cynicism in its concrete embodiment in rocket attacks on cities in eastern Ukraine.

Of course, everything was clear to the Soviet Union. After the Great Patriotic War, we had to not only rebuild destroyed cities and burned villages, but also create a defensive shield. And the most important lesson of the war was the commitment of our country and its people to humanism. The orders of the commanders of the fronts and the Supreme High Command demanded not to take revenge on the Germans. Shortly before the bombing of Dresden, thanks to the heroism of our fighters, an equally ancient city, Krakow, was saved from destruction. And the most symbolic act was the rescue of the collection of the Dresden Gallery by Soviet soldiers. Her paintings were carefully restored in the USSR and returned to Dresden - restored with the active help of Soviet specialists and partly for our money.

People of the 21st century have no right to forget about the ashes of Khatyn and tens of thousands of other Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian villages, about Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima. Their ashes still beat on our hearts. As long as mankind remembers, it will not allow a new war.

Help "RG"

In Moscow (Small Manege, Georgievsky lane, 3/3) RVIO holds an exhibition "Remember", which presents Dresden and Krakow in 1945. The entrance is free.