Wars should not be looked at in hindsight using the morality of peacetime. During war, if you are not giving your enemies the worst you can give them at all times, then you are giving them breathing space and perhaps a chance to recharge and regroup and come after you and yours again. Dresden, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are are emblems of the horrors of war, and are emblems for why we should prevent wars in the first place.
History is quite literally looking at things from hindsight. This is a historical documentary. We as a society can learn from these events when it’s appropriate to give your enemy your worst.
My dad, a military guy used to say you fight fire with fire. He was a somewhat passive man in heart but would say if your enemy goes to the depths of the gutter to defeat you, you better be prepared to climb in there with him or lose.
It is a part of natural morality that innocents should not directly be targeted. The war must be decided on the battlefield not on the dead corpses of innocents. They could have use the bomber resources on anything but they deliberately targeted civilians to demoralize and kill as many of them as possible. You are sick for not acknowledging these base facts of humanity.
For those who are conenming the bombings are foolish , ignorant of the attrocities comiitted by the Brainwashed Nazis. The murders they committed are the most horrific in history. these bombings stopped the war.
Very interesting program. Particularly the story of the Opera House and Zwinger Palace. My own home city in England was once a very proud beautiful historic city. Exeter. Bombed in 1942, much of the city was destroyed in the firestorm, but unlike Dersden under the Soviet occupation forces, Exeter City Council immediately flattened all the bomb damaged areas, including the once famous Bedford Circus, then a rival to the Royal Crescent in Bath. 20 years later they also flattened the western half of the city which had survived WWII, and until then had contained England's greatest concentration of urban jettied timber built mediaeval architecture. Almost all of this was callously swept away when the city council ordered the construction of the Inner bypass and the flood defence scheme on the River Exe. At the same time in 1972, the mediaeval area behind the Guildhall was also razed to make way for the Guildhall Shopping Centre. This area contained multiple mediaeval merchant's houses including minstrels galleries, roman hypocausts underneath, a roman mosaic which was smashed up and skipped, and very nearly the Saxon church of St. Pancras which they finally backed off from when they started to attract too much media attention and decided to also move one of the jettied houses on the West Quarter too. Unbelievable! But it happened. The Cathedral was damaged by a 500lb 'Hermann' bomb which stopped short by 1' of bringing down the nave roof during the blitz. I have little doubt the city council would have torn the rest of the cathedral down had this happened judging by what they did to the rest of the city. Fair play to Dresden for rebuilding to this day. It will sadly be many centuries before the Labour Party controlling Exeter City Council ever see such enlightenment.
I did my Master Degree at Exeter. My son did his first degree at Exeter, finishing two years. It’s touching to know this part of the city’s history. Thanks very much for posting
Left-wing yobbos and Party automans with only self-interest and mindless Soviet slogans in their minds..... so easy to manipulate by" foreign" developers who arrived as "refugees " but intent on destroying the very people who gave them shelter. Despicable behaviour!
Superb answer. A common answer is to mention Coventry but visited recently and the state of the place is terrible due to the actions of the local council. The irony is that when the Bath blitz occurred the German pathfinders were given a map and told to bomb on Bath so they did exactly that Bombed were the word Bath was on their maps unfortunately it was the local housing estates that were targeted and why if you visit Bath today the Rugby ground, Abbey, Roman Baths and the Crescent are all still there untouched but the areas to the west of the town are new build, plus a high casualty rate for a one off raid! I read somewhere that Exeter took a terrible pounding in WW2 because along with being targeted if the German crews missed their targets of Bristol, Cardiff or Swansea they would drop their load over a City on the way home, which was mostly Exeter!
And Budapest, locked down by the German head command despite asks of the govt to mark it a free city it was turned turned to the second most severe city battle after Stalingrad, without evacuation or preparation of food or water stocks in winter. 80% of the city was destroyed, 38.000 died within the 50 day long siege thru starvation, execution, street-by- street tanks and infantry battle, and 38000 in forced labour camps and as POWs. It was a totally unnecessary destruction, ahead of the Berlin siege.
@@katalinkozak9869 yeah I wanna learn more about the siege of Budapest, and that regions role in the war. Considering that was one of the last areas Germany tried to turn the war around and focus on
In December 1940, several years before the Dresden raid, my home was destroyed by an indiscriminately aimed parachute mine. My father, grandmother and two extended family members were killed; I spent months in hospital. Do I regret Dresden? not a chance!
Let me begin by stating that my father and grandparents were bombed out of their central Berlin home during a November 1943 Allied air raid. War is f**cking hell, and the carpet bombing of any city is horrendous and should have no place in modern warfare. This documentary begins by detailing the admittedly awful bombing raid on Cologne, without mentioning the nagging little fact that this war was started by Nazi Germany. As someone of German descent, that fact gives me immense sadness. It's also incredible how that sense of guilt always seems to be there, as though it were embedded in one's DNA, even though I(and my father, who was a child at the time) had no part in it. In February 1945, Germany was already essentially a nation in defeat, and in just a little over two months, Hitler would be dead. The Soviets were quickly closing in on its eastern flank and in the west, by October 1944, Aachen had already fallen to the western Allies. So yes, I get it that the firebombing of Dresden was an unnecessary and senseless act, particularly so near the end of the war. But also remember that British cities like Coventry, Liverpool and London had felt the wrath of the Luftwaffe, as had Warsaw and Rotterdam on the continent, so senseless acts abounded on all sides. Going back even further to 1937, the Luftwaffe Condor Legion had already experimented with the concept of carpet bombing when it devastated the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, thus foreshadowing what was to come. So the precedent for Dresden had already been well established long before February 1945. I bemoan the loss of all innocent civilians in WWII, particularly the victims of the Holocaust, but the Third Reich was never going to be defeated with insults, sanctions and 'raspberries'(though I do give Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator' an 'A' for effort!). On a much brighter note, over the last several decades, the city of Dresden has been meticulously rebuilding and restoring its devastated old town centre, including a faithful reconstruction of the destroyed Frauenkirche, and it is once again reclaiming its nickname of 'Florence on the Elbe'! It's a beautiful city and you really should see it!
Thank you for your well balanced and erudite comments, mixed with a touch of humour. I have no idea why such a monumental city should be subjected to that worst type of punishment, fire-bombing. Ghastly. Many in Britain just don't understand why Dresden was a target.
donald. The Allies did not deliberatel target civilian areas anywhere, nor, apart from the Baedeker raids, do I believe the Germans did. In fact I lived through both Blitzes, and I never thought that the attacks were directed specifically at civilians. Nobody thought that, to my recollection, as we knew that the bombing was very inaccurate. At that stage in the war Dresden was a vital strategic target, it's railway structure being a massive factor in the movement of troops across Germany to relieve the Russian assault on Berlin. It was a dreadful raid, of course, but so were all the attacks on Blitzed cities everywhere, but the war had to be finished, and wars are only won by the use of overwhelming force. Something that the modern generations do not seem to understand.
There were no winners in WW2, both sides were funded by the same people, I lost family in UK WW2, on recent close examination of my ancestry, I also lost distant cousins in Germany , so no winners , and a loss of our ancestral history so sadness for everyone 😢😢😢
Whilst condemning the bombing of the German Cities perhaps you might mention London..57 consecutive nights, Coventry, Liverpool, Glasgow etc! plus many villages and towns that were hit by bombers jettisoning their bombs..Not to mention Poland, Netherlands .In the later part of WW2 Hitlers V1 Fly Bomb, the V2.... An Aunt of mine was crippled for life when a V2 detonated in Ilford... If you're gonna make a documentary about killing civilian its important to keep a sense of proportion...The other point is Germany didn't use long range heavy Bombers so was never capable of the destruction the allies mettered out against them. If they had they would have used them, of that there is no doubt.... Both the V1 and the V2 were indiscriminate Vengeance weapons.
People who were there at the unveiling of that statue and were protesting should remember just what misery the Germans put the world through..millions dead, cities obliterated and countries devastated ..I have zero sympathy for what happened to the Germans of that generation...they got what they gave to the world... misery..
Arthur Harris was following orders from the very top as accurately documented in David Irving's book "Dresden". It's virtually impossible to get hold of that 1963 book now due to Irving being cancelled.
@@Arminius1901 ''Actors?'' Get serious. Maybe Germans should look back on their initial support for Hitler. Yes, a Great Depression was difficult, but it was difficult in America, too. So, we elected FDR instead of putting our trust in a racist dictatorship. Doubtless, there were many Dresdenders who were cheering when London, Coventry, Warsaw, Stalingrad and Belgrade (among OTHER cities) were blitzed by the Luftwaffe.
This is obviously an old documentary. it's not like someone made this as a RUclips video and put music in. Who are the people complaining about the music? Very young or very old? My ears are damaged from playing in loud bands, I guess. But this is how all the WWII documentaries and film reels sound.
The day after the raid on Dresden, Churchill summoned Harris and said, "Harris, I told you to bomb their armament factories, NOT their ornament factories"!
😱😢 It makes me extremely sad that human beings can be so hatefully cruel and destructive to their fellow humans, i will never understand why this behaviour is tolerated in our beautiful world 🙏 i pray constantly that there be no more wars and hate, in our world we need more love and tollerance to have a better world.❤
You need to think every single day 7500 Jews were exterminated and thousands of Russian troops were dying daily add to this the French civilians the British and US serviceman. So the bombing of Germany was trying to bring this to an end quickly, and by doing the RAF lost 50% of its serviceman 55000 . There was also the horrible thought that Hitler and his scientists had the Atomic bomb! Remember they had a missile to deliver a warhead to London, Paris or even Moscow the V2 rocket (which eventually put man on the moon THE SATURN V designed by Wernher von Braun). So these poor airmen who were the most intelligent people in the old British Empire and the USA were trying to bring peace to Europe, and as you see today parts of Europe are still at War and the RAF is again trying to help end the war in Ukraine
What about bombing of Croatian town of Zadar in WWII by allied air forces (mainly US air forces). Zadar has been called the 'Dresden of the Adriatics'. The city itself had no military importance whatsoever. It's said that the reason for bombing was simply as allied bombers went back to their Italian bases from raids on Austrian, Hungarian, Romainian, South German or whatever-their-primary-targets-were, they flew over Zadar and dropped whatever bombs remained in their planes on Zadar. Zadar was solitary Italian (and later German) enclave on eastern Adriatic coast, and thus was ideal as "dropping ground" for bombers on their return to Italy where the allied air forces were stationed. Allied bombs devastated a city rich in artistic and historical treasures but with no apparent industrial or military targets. 80% of this ancient city was completely erased by these bombings, and most of it was never restored. The exact number of civilian victims is unknown.
I thought I knew most/all of the allied bombing raids of historical targets, but I did not know about Zadar. I had recently learned the RAF had a few bombs left after bombing Milan, so they unloaded them on a suburb where a school was located. 1943 I believe. I do not want to mention the numbers of dead children because I do not recall, but there were many, many. I am sad to say this, but thank you for educating other readers and myself about the once amazing and marvelous Zadar that is now gone. What once was there deserves to be researched and remembered and I plan on doing that. The list of destruction of the world's heritage in World War II is apparently endless. When you read pre World War II encyclopedia articles of these cities, you read about wonderful places to see that most people living today do not even know existed. Gone.
30,000 civilians were killed when Germany bombed London. That was just one city. Germany murdered millions of innocent civilians before they were defeated. Germany is hardly the victim here.
It was learned that after the war German industry still produced 85% of their wartime needs by conflict's end despite the massive destruction of their cities, industrial parks, and population.
The war was nearly over when Desden was bombed. It was therefore unnecessary to flatten such a beautiful city. I say this as an Englishman. I visited Dresden in 2008. Fortunately, much of Dresden has been rebuilt the way it once was. It is one of the most picturesque places I have been in. The Germans did a wonderful job of rebuilding it. Rather blaming Bomber Harris though, one should blame the maniac, namely Hitler, who started the war to begin with.
@@lizabethrobison4566 Really? Are you a scholar on the matter? I strongly recommend you to open more books, like the one by Nick Kollerstrom. But things went not so well for Britain after WW2.
Curtis LeMay, commander of the Amerrican fire bombing of Japanese cities said at some point, probably many years after the end of World War II, that if Japan had won the war and the United States had lost, instead of the other way around, the Japanese would have probably charged him with war cimes.
You are absolutely right. It's just as right or wrong. So, it is a clear war crime and offense against morality. Also a breach of a sort of verbal treaty that both Hitler and the allies entered in:that no civilians areas would be bombed. Nazis did it because they didnt fear retaliation, knowing it is morally repugnant and pretty much illegal, yet did it anyway. And then the brits did it too. They also knew it is wrong having experienced it, but did it anyway. So you are right, the blitz in Britain was wrong, so was the one inflicted on Germany. Especially in bleeding spring 1945 when the allies were barely getting any resistance.
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” PAY ATTENTION to what false prophets are saying, and VOTE accordingly. It could all happen again.
The war was just about over, to me this was a pointless act. I am saddened to see so many people say it was justified because of all the wrongs that the Nazi's did. Yes the Nazi's were vile and committed so many vile and horrendous atrocities during their reign of terror, but this was no different. There was no point to this raid and it just left a terrible stain on Bomber Command. When will mankind ever learn?
The war was not over. The Nazi's were still sending V1 and V2 rockets to peacefull Antwerp. They were still murdering innocents. They were still fighting.
The Russian army was approaching Dresden. Hitler had given orders that the city was to be defended block by block and building by building. The physical structure of the city would thus be destroyed, regardless, and there would be many civilian casualties. By flattening the city ahead of time, it saved many Russian lives.
It lets people know that food lines ,rail ,air ,was impossible to deliver ,think about what the outcome of that wld be ,because it’s the biggest lie in history ,and this is the real reason ,
I am horrified as an American that some people interrupted the Queen Mother, she remembers the blitz on and how they evacuated many to the country side but still so many British died. The destruction of beautiful Dresden falls on Hitler.
Just as many forget about places like Rabaul., Nanking, The Philippines Etc. By the Japanese. Many concentrate on the bombing on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. London.
London is much older than the 13th century and more historically important and full of civilians. Did that stop the Germans from bombing it? Don’t play by your own rules and then expect them not to apply to you. They were the aggressors, they have no right to complain about how they were defeated. Just like Japan.
Harris was appointed to head Bomber Command in February 1942 specifically to turn Bomber Command into an effective fighting force , up till that time their operations were almost totally ineffective, many aircraft unable to find targets let alone hit them . In short order and with the new heavy bombers coming online, (Lancaster and Halifax) he created a capable , disciplined and effective fighting force which, at the time was the only means of hitting back with any purpose. After the war he was very unkindly and with much malice pushed aside and ignored , (as were the bomber crews) due to the political embarrassment of how well he achieved his mission.
Well, bomber command as an effective fighting force had been fought women, children and their infrastructure since beginning of 1942. Not only in germany. Furthermore 55000 of his crew men died in combat. No wonder Arthur Harris was very unkindly and with much malice pushed aside and ignored. That wasn't any popular in peace times as it had been severely hampered supply of german population after war in ruined cities. Actually all bombing of civilians and their cities was war crime.
Nach dieser mühevollen Arbeit sollte keine Stadt schon gar nicht eine schöne kulturelle Stadt mehr Opfer von Bombenangriffen sein. Denn man sieht, wie schwer und zeitaufwendig es ist, wieder etwas aufzubauen.
The Bomber offensive was carried out to try and end the war and DID attack industrial targets. Slaughtering millions of innocent people as the Germans did was NOT a war ending scheme,ergo it WAS a war crime.
The bombing offensive was am attempting to end the war. The slaughter of millions of civilians by gassing, hanging, shooting and starving was a war crime because it had nothing to do with ending the war. Reset your moral compass.
That's a sweeping cultural generalization. America starts wars every decade against poverty ridden countries. Should l bother to ask what sort of psychological torment happens to those who watch a Beatles documentaries and that part comes in about them going to Hamburg or that the artist who designed the Revolver album cover was born in Berlin in 1938, and why Hamburg was named the cradle of British Rock. Because England was stuffy and conservative and always will be.
Stop Hitler? Many of them already tried. The people in Berlin who cheered for president kennedy are by far more beautiful than any provincial minded assholes here. A country who's intellect is based in steer wresting guns 'n' ammo gunslinger Indian fighter car demolition derbies with nothing at all classical has no say at all about Germany at all.
NO it's NOT FAIR ! The nazis began the bombing with only 2-engined light bombers, & the Allies countered with 4-engined heavy bombers. UNFAIR ! The poor nazis had to make do with V1s & V2s in retaliation.
The first figures from the Higher SS and Police Leader "Elbe" on the four air raids on Dresden were 18,375 casualties, 2,212 seriously wounded, 13,718 lightly wounded and 350,000 homeless people and those relocated on a long-term basis by 10 March 1945. On 20 March, the number was increased to 20,204 and finally to 22,096 on 31 March. In the following decades, around 2,000 more bodies were discovered in buried cellars - this corresponded very closely to the estimate of 15 March 1945, which assumed a total of 25,000 dead. Even the files of the burial office discovered in the city archives in 1993 supported these figures. According to these files, around 19,000 identified dead were buried between 18 February and 17 April 1945. A further 6865 people were cremated on the Altenmarkt to avert the risk of epidemics.
Reliance on Nazi city authority statistics - is ridiculous. The RAF raid was the third in three days and the city was already very empty - free of 'refugees'. Next, RAF marker planes said they could not see a single person on the streets. Those 'civilians' still in the city - Nazi officials, thieves who's snatched Jewish-owned homes and businesses, etc, had every opportunity to leave the city - especially overnight - if they didn't they deserved their fate. The slave labourers toiling on starvation rations in the city's 141 factories making munitions - had no such luxury - and they long afterwards said they were absolutely delighted that - at last - the Germans were getting the vengeance they most richly deserved. It is irrelevant that it was a 'beautiful' city, as some claim. Is Leningrad, which suffered 100x the civilian death toll, 'beautiful' enough for you?? Don't EVER get sucked into the 'pity the Nazis' trap..
War is hell. I recall there were approximately 6 million people, civilians, killed by the Nazi regime. Approximately 40,000 civilians killed in England during the Blitzkreig. The loss of life in Dresden cannot compare.
Before dresden was bombed in Feb 1945 the city was never attacked, and the people of Dresden said it was because Churchill had an aunt living in the city.
The Fact of the matter is that Dresden by the beginning of 1945 was the nazi's last and most strategic stronghold and under the circumstances was fair game.
@@johnweber6612 thats what I thought for many many years. But new evidence has come to light that shows that Dresden was the last stronghold of the regime.
@@johnweber6612 ..Do some decent research, Dresden had over 300 small factories producing lenses for U boats and aircraft, gauges, gun sites, range finders aircraft cameras ,and hundreds of other optical equipment uses, all ( obviously) for war work, plus numerous other small factories, so yes, Dresden, like most German cities carried out important production for the military machine.
Please read your history. Churchill did know about the attack on Coventry, but apparently one of the stories I read said that if he had warned Coventry about the attack, the Germans would know that the British were capable and were indeed intercepting their messages sent on the Enigma machine, which the British (with the help of the Polish people) had broken the code of earlier.
Who ordered the bombing of Dresden (78 years ago)? The city was bombed twice on the night of 13/14 Feb 1945 by the RAF. It was then bombed on the next two days,15th and 16th Feb (in daylight), by the 8th USAAF. The USAAF then bombed the city on 2 March and again on the April 15. Harris was head of RAF Bomber Command, US General Carl Spaatz was head of the 8th USAAF. Neither had command or control over the other's forces. The order to bomb Dresden can only have come from US General Dwight D Eisenhower's headquarters, as he was appointed, Supreme Allied Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces, in December 1943. Why does everyone vilify Harris? As a side note, the USAAF had previously bombed Dresden's railway marshalling yards, twice before, on October 7, 1944 and January 16, 1945.
It s strange to see a street with UK with real English people, those images from the 80s are really really strange. Now you can see only people from Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Ironically the bombings in the early half of the half simply strengthened the resolve of the German folks to continue the struggle. And the Allies 1943 demand for unconditional surrender didn't help.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography job enabling viewers to better understand what/whom the orator was describing. Berlin didn't have any moral issues. Bombing civilian cities London/Warsaw/Stalingrad and so on. Along with using U-boats to sink unarmed merchant ships. Their diabolical 😈 act of moral turpitude. Returned to haunt them one city at a time. A telegram from Berlin to London surrendering. Would have put an immediate stop ✋ to the air raids. There fore Berlin leadership was responsible for the carnage. Not the allied bombers doing as they were ordered. It's called " casualties of war ". Harris did what needed to be done. Saving countless lives by forcefully shortening the duration of the war. Perhaps by 2 or 3 years ??? The Truman Doctrine slowly rebuilt those devastated cities like Dresden.
It has been statistically proven that the bombing of German cities had no significant influence on the course of the war. Furthermore, one should never avenge a crime with another.
Informiere dich über die Geschichte junge. Die Alliierten waren die größten Mörder und Kriegshetzer und Imperialisten. 1914 hatte Deutschland kaum Kolonien und die "netten" Engländer, Franzosen und Amerikaner haben 1/3 der gesamten Erde regiert. Die gesamten 100 Jahre sind eine Lüge. Die Deutschen wurden schon immer von ihren Nachbarn bedroht und das Versailler Verbrecherdiktat ist am Aufstieg des Faschismus schuld.
They didn't target factories but innocent civillians. The war was already decided in 1945 where most bombings happenned. They didn't target industry or military targets but innocent civillians to demoralize them. If you think that collectives can be guilty of something you are not better than hitler. That is his ideology collectivism. You deserve a court at Nuremberg.
It seems like a case could be made to compare the Bombing of Dresden to the use of the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as unnecessary since the outcome of both theaters of War were pretty much already decided by the time they were conducted. Change my mind !
There were NO innocent German. The women and old men cheered the Nazis and were very happy to partake in the loot of the wealth of the murdered Jews. They were accessories to mass murder and theft. As to the children, given how Germans had murdered millions of other people's children, WHO CARES? I certainly ndo not.
Can't say I like the narration. Yah, the kaput art and smashed buildings. How did it look at the same time around St Pauls in London. A little wacked you think?? Don't quote art Monet bla bla... you know, that Hitler guy.... Remember him... Oh yeah... People might have been a tad pissed with Germany. BTW, I wonder how many railcars came through Dresden on their way to Auschwitz? A couple perhaps... Yeah... Hope the next film is narrated a little better.
Germany got screwed after WWI. The victors squeezed every cent out of Germany, not to mention other unreasonable terms. All that even though Germany didn't actually lose the war! Today Germany has no reason to feel guilty and should rebuild their military and live the way they are supposed to and become a superpower along with Poland. The survival of Europe depends on it and so do we here in America.
The documentary itself is very informative. But was there really a need for an orchestra? Also, the dead child scene at 25:49 is just depressing to watch.
Can’t be engaged in self censoring in this instance. It’s history. Must be shown. Too many people still want to deny the holocaust. That can’t be allowed.
Dresden was carpet bombed with high explosive bombs, then bombed with incendiary bombs. Most German cities only received one treatment or the other. Dresden was destroyed to eliminate the tobacco industry. Tobacco is a high margin business and a means to extract wealth from a servile State. British Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, RJ Reynolds, Phillip Morris, Liggett and others received a big benefit from the destruction of Germany's tobacco industry. So did the British and US banks.
Berlin was the brain and Dresden was the heart of the German Nazi system. From the moment of it creation, Dresden was always No.1 in supporting the German Nazi system. Because Dresden was out of reach of British and the allays bomber airplanes, all the important military production was moved to Dresden. Dresden also was a center and played a key role in the German railroad system delivering arms to the German army in the east front. There were working thousands of slave labors, all of them were banned from using of the air raid shelters.
Everytime they mention the Bombing of Dresden I always think of what they did to Coventry and the big cities in this country and the 1000s of civilians they killed in German bombing raids
When dictators start a war they leave their country and people subject to the whims of war which is death, destruction and misery. When people protest the death and destruction they should be condemning the leaders or dictator who started the war, not those on which war was initially committed. These days Gaza comes to mind.
Well the German's didnt care what they did to Britain and the thousands of people killed by them. So who started the bloody war that killed millions, in case you dont know, GERMANY.
War only benefits the super rich. We all become fodder. May there be Peace. Some say it begins with us. Yes, we all need to open our eyes, read more and from different sources and not buy into hate. Namaste!
The Dresden bombing has not caused 25 000 dead - today the official number of victims - but 253 000 dead men, women and children, the official number of 1945. A close relative of mine has been in charge to eliminate the victims of the Dresden bombing. For the life he spoke of 300 000 dead. Remember: In February 1945 the town of Dresden had 630 000 inhabitants, further at this time the city of Dresden was overcrowded with about 500 000 refugees coming from the east. So during the night of the Dresden bombing far more than a million people were present in this town, living together in a very confined space. The official number for 1945 of 253 000 dead is distributed in the following manner: 35 000 completely identified, 50 000 partly identified, 168 000 not identified.
Extremly stupid. 630,000 inhabitants says nothing about the number of Dresden residents living there at the time of the bombing. Almost all the men were at the front. So you can deduct this from your 630,000. This is also proven by the fact that almost only women and children were among the victims. Furthermore, there is no evidence for your 500,000 refugees. The Wehrmacht was trying to divert the flow of refugees from Silesia around the "fortress city" - and if they were allowed in, they had to register, as contemporary witnesses testified. An evaluation of death declarations in the central registry office in Berlin 1 by the military historian Rüdiger Overmans showed that "the number of refugees killed in Dresden could only be a few hundred, barely thousands or even tens of thousands." This could also be statistically proven using death books and death reports from Dresden and Silesia. The firestorm only began with the 2nd wave of attacks. It can be assumed that many (if not all) refugees have fled the center. What else was supposed to keep her there? The seemingly safe harbor had also become a target. You should also keep in mind that Dresden has an area of over 300 km2. The center with an area of 12 km² was bombed. Whoever was "in Dresden" purely statistically was not at the same time in the 12 km² that were bombed. *Incidentally, around 1.5 million people lived in Hamburg in 1943 when the city was bombed for days at least as heavily as Dresden during Operation Gomorrah. Result: 35,000 victims.* 🤔🤔
@@RT-tn3pu The primary cause of of the thousands German bomb victims has not been the Nazis bigotry but the gross hatred of Winston Churchill against the German people.
I lost my family at the age of 9 months when the Bomber command under the command of Arthur Harris destroyed on december 1944 my hometown. Now I´m an old man, but the fear is still present! I cannot forgive and I hope God too! Sorry!
I'm now being taught "poorly translated" lessons from my Samsung phone while ignoring that hacker for the hacker on my government nokia phone. fascinating.
Yeah, that chicken coup being destroyed was a real tragedy, Nigel. How about taking a walk in London at night to remind yourself what your dead countrymen fought for?
Wars should not be looked at in hindsight using the morality of peacetime. During war, if you are not giving your enemies the worst you can give them at all times, then you are giving them breathing space and perhaps a chance to recharge and regroup and come after you and yours again.
Dresden, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are are emblems of the horrors of war, and are emblems for why we should prevent wars in the first place.
History is quite literally looking at things from hindsight. This is a historical documentary. We as a society can learn from these events when it’s appropriate to give your enemy your worst.
My dad, a military guy used to say you fight fire with fire.
He was a somewhat passive man in heart but would say if your enemy goes to the depths of the gutter to defeat you, you better be prepared to climb in there with him or lose.
It is a part of natural morality that innocents should not directly be targeted. The war must be decided on the battlefield not on the dead corpses of innocents. They could have use the bomber resources on anything but they deliberately targeted civilians to demoralize and kill as many of them as possible. You are sick for not acknowledging these base facts of humanity.
For those who are conenming the bombings are foolish , ignorant of the attrocities comiitted by the Brainwashed Nazis. The murders they committed are the most horrific in history. these bombings stopped the war.
The Germans said the same thing after the war at Nuremberg.
Having music background is horrible
Very interesting program. Particularly the story of the Opera House and Zwinger Palace. My own home city in England was once a very proud beautiful historic city. Exeter. Bombed in 1942, much of the city was destroyed in the firestorm, but unlike Dersden under the Soviet occupation forces, Exeter City Council immediately flattened all the bomb damaged areas, including the once famous Bedford Circus, then a rival to the Royal Crescent in Bath. 20 years later they also flattened the western half of the city which had survived WWII, and until then had contained England's greatest concentration of urban jettied timber built mediaeval architecture. Almost all of this was callously swept away when the city council ordered the construction of the Inner bypass and the flood defence scheme on the River Exe. At the same time in 1972, the mediaeval area behind the Guildhall was also razed to make way for the Guildhall Shopping Centre. This area contained multiple mediaeval merchant's houses including minstrels galleries, roman hypocausts underneath, a roman mosaic which was smashed up and skipped, and very nearly the Saxon church of St. Pancras which they finally backed off from when they started to attract too much media attention and decided to also move one of the jettied houses on the West Quarter too. Unbelievable! But it happened. The Cathedral was damaged by a 500lb 'Hermann' bomb which stopped short by 1' of bringing down the nave roof during the blitz. I have little doubt the city council would have torn the rest of the cathedral down had this happened judging by what they did to the rest of the city. Fair play to Dresden for rebuilding to this day. It will sadly be many centuries before the Labour Party controlling Exeter City Council ever see such enlightenment.
I did my Master Degree at Exeter. My son did his first degree at Exeter, finishing two years. It’s touching to know this part of the city’s history. Thanks very much for posting
Left-wing yobbos and Party automans with only self-interest and mindless Soviet slogans in their minds..... so easy to manipulate by" foreign" developers who arrived as "refugees " but intent on destroying the very people who gave them shelter. Despicable behaviour!
Great comment, thanks.
What do you expect from 1960s/1970s socialist town/city councils? They destroyed so much...
Superb answer. A common answer is to mention Coventry but visited recently and the state of the place is terrible due to the actions of the local council. The irony is that when the Bath blitz occurred the German pathfinders were given a map and told to bomb on Bath so they did exactly that Bombed were the word Bath was on their maps unfortunately it was the local housing estates that were targeted and why if you visit Bath today the Rugby ground, Abbey, Roman Baths and the Crescent are all still there untouched but the areas to the west of the town are new build, plus a high casualty rate for a one off raid! I read somewhere that Exeter took a terrible pounding in WW2 because along with being targeted if the German crews missed their targets of Bristol, Cardiff or Swansea they would drop their load over a City on the way home, which was mostly Exeter!
Sadly same happened with Rotterdam, Warsaw, and Liverpool. Prayers to all who have fallen
And Coventry and London and Moscow and Stalingrad and.......
Guernica
And Budapest, locked down by the German head command despite asks of the govt to mark it a free city it was turned turned to the second most severe city battle after Stalingrad, without evacuation or preparation of food or water stocks in winter. 80% of the city was destroyed, 38.000 died within the 50 day long siege thru starvation, execution, street-by- street tanks and infantry battle, and 38000 in forced labour camps and as POWs. It was a totally unnecessary destruction, ahead of the Berlin siege.
@@katalinkozak9869 yeah I wanna learn more about the siege of Budapest, and that regions role in the war. Considering that was one of the last areas Germany tried to turn the war around and focus on
I can barely hear the music over the chatter of the narrator.
😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
You need to listen a little louder. 😂😂😂
Ha!
In December 1940, several years before the Dresden raid, my home was destroyed by an indiscriminately aimed parachute mine. My father, grandmother and two extended family members were killed; I spent months in hospital. Do I regret Dresden? not a chance!
من أين أنت ...وكم عمرك عندما حدث هذا؟ هل كنت في الدنيا ؟😮😢
Your country shouldn’t have started WW2 then
@@GeorgRv22 What you talking about mor*n? he is British not German.
@@ChrisCrossClash Britain and France did declare war first
@@spannaspinnahitler invaded Poland and was trying to takeover Europe pretty sure he started it 😂
The background music doesn't enhance the horror of the content of the documentary but distracts from it.
Let me begin by stating that my father and grandparents were bombed out of their central Berlin home during a November 1943 Allied air raid. War is f**cking hell, and the carpet bombing of any city is horrendous and should have no place in modern warfare. This documentary begins by detailing the admittedly awful bombing raid on Cologne, without mentioning the nagging little fact that this war was started by Nazi Germany. As someone of German descent, that fact gives me immense sadness. It's also incredible how that sense of guilt always seems to be there, as though it were embedded in one's DNA, even though I(and my father, who was a child at the time) had no part in it. In February 1945, Germany was already essentially a nation in defeat, and in just a little over two months, Hitler would be dead. The Soviets were quickly closing in on its eastern flank and in the west, by October 1944, Aachen had already fallen to the western Allies. So yes, I get it that the firebombing of Dresden was an unnecessary and senseless act, particularly so near the end of the war. But also remember that British cities like Coventry, Liverpool and London had felt the wrath of the Luftwaffe, as had Warsaw and Rotterdam on the continent, so senseless acts abounded on all sides. Going back even further to 1937, the Luftwaffe Condor Legion had already experimented with the concept of carpet bombing when it devastated the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, thus foreshadowing what was to come. So the precedent for Dresden had already been well established long before February 1945. I bemoan the loss of all innocent civilians in WWII, particularly the victims of the Holocaust, but the Third Reich was never going to be defeated with insults, sanctions and 'raspberries'(though I do give Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator' an 'A' for effort!). On a much brighter note, over the last several decades, the city of Dresden has been meticulously rebuilding and restoring its devastated old town centre, including a faithful reconstruction of the destroyed Frauenkirche, and it is once again reclaiming its nickname of 'Florence on the Elbe'! It's a beautiful city and you really should see it!
Thank you for your well balanced and erudite comments, mixed with a touch of humour.
I have no idea why such a monumental city should be subjected to that worst type of punishment, fire-bombing. Ghastly. Many in Britain just don't understand why Dresden was a target.
donald. The Allies did not deliberatel target civilian areas anywhere, nor, apart from the Baedeker raids, do I believe the Germans did. In fact I lived through both Blitzes, and I never thought that the attacks were directed specifically at civilians. Nobody thought that, to my recollection, as we knew that the bombing was very inaccurate. At that stage in the war Dresden was a vital strategic target, it's railway structure being a massive factor in the movement of troops across Germany to relieve the Russian assault on Berlin. It was a dreadful raid, of course, but so were all the attacks on Blitzed cities everywhere, but the war had to be finished, and wars are only won by the use of overwhelming force. Something that the modern generations do not seem to understand.
There were no winners in WW2, both sides were funded by the same people, I lost family in UK WW2, on recent close examination of my ancestry, I also lost distant cousins in Germany , so no winners , and a loss of our ancestral history so sadness for everyone 😢😢😢
Good point! Thank God for America though… It would’ve gone on much longer without us
Whilst condemning the bombing of the German Cities perhaps you might mention London..57 consecutive nights, Coventry, Liverpool, Glasgow etc! plus many villages and towns that were hit by bombers jettisoning their bombs..Not to mention Poland, Netherlands .In the later part of WW2 Hitlers V1 Fly Bomb, the V2.... An Aunt of mine was crippled for life when a V2 detonated in Ilford... If you're gonna make a documentary about killing civilian its important to keep a sense of proportion...The other point is Germany didn't use long range heavy Bombers so was never capable of the destruction the allies mettered out against them. If they had they would have used them, of that there is no doubt.... Both the V1 and the V2 were indiscriminate Vengeance weapons.
Exactly.
Exactly chief
People who were there at the unveiling of that statue and were protesting should remember just what misery the Germans put the world through..millions dead, cities obliterated and countries devastated ..I have zero sympathy for what happened to the Germans of that generation...they got what they gave to the world... misery..
My sentiments exactly!!! What went around boomer ranged back to the original senders.
The video is about Dresden !!!
The music is too loud. You can’t hear the dialogue
RUclips:"DIE VERBORGENE GESCHICHTE" TEIL1 👍
As Bazil Faulty said, they stated it, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
Arthur Harris was following orders from the very top as accurately documented in David Irving's book "Dresden". It's virtually impossible to get hold of that 1963 book now due to Irving being cancelled.
Irving is a Nazi
Goebbels asked if Germany wanted "total war." They screamed, "Ja!" And they got it. Far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the discussion.
Literally no one wanted it except some actors that screamed yes. Stop lying
@@Arminius1901 ''Actors?'' Get serious. Maybe Germans should look back on their initial support for Hitler. Yes, a Great Depression was difficult, but it was difficult in America, too. So, we elected FDR instead of putting our trust in a racist dictatorship. Doubtless, there were many Dresdenders who were cheering when London, Coventry, Warsaw, Stalingrad and Belgrade (among OTHER cities) were blitzed by the Luftwaffe.
Thank you!
British where told of the camps with jews so this is a fuck you move
Show the jews
Gobbels cried uncontrollably when he heard of the destruction of Hamburg. I wonder what he did when he heard of Dresdens demise.
Interesting, but almost unwatchable. The background music is much too loud!
He can’t do anything about that. This isn’t a new documentary so there’s no way Vasile can edit it.
Not to mention the music was like a Disney movie, or something..
The music track at times is too loud
What about what happened in Coventry
Hull is barely mentioned ever
The totally unnecessary background music drowns your narration. Why do people feel obliged to ruin their videos with background music?
Yes terrible
This is obviously an old documentary. it's not like someone made this as a RUclips video and put music in. Who are the people complaining about the music? Very young or very old? My ears are damaged from playing in loud bands, I guess. But this is how all the WWII documentaries and film reels sound.
The day after the raid on Dresden, Churchill summoned Harris and said, "Harris, I told you to bomb their armament factories, NOT their ornament factories"!
What bad a joke....
Soar loser
He didn’t .. Churchill was ruthless for war .. what he got was Europe including England became vassals to Ford
Fuck, please let this be true....
Was this produced by Disney? The music just didn’t work at all
No, this is the kind of soundtrack that many movies had in the 20th Century. Always with the suspenseful and sharp oboes, trumpets and the like.
😱😢 It makes me extremely sad that human beings can be so hatefully cruel and destructive to their fellow humans, i will never understand why this behaviour is tolerated in our beautiful world 🙏 i pray constantly that there be no more wars and hate, in our world we need more love and tollerance to have a better world.❤
You need to think every single day 7500 Jews were exterminated and thousands of Russian troops were dying daily add to this the French civilians the British and US serviceman. So the bombing of Germany was trying to bring this to an end quickly, and by doing the RAF lost 50% of its serviceman 55000 . There was also the horrible thought that Hitler and his scientists had the Atomic bomb! Remember they had a missile to deliver a warhead to London, Paris or even Moscow the V2 rocket (which eventually put man on the moon THE SATURN V designed by Wernher von Braun). So these poor airmen who were the most intelligent people in the old British Empire and the USA were trying to bring peace to Europe, and as you see today parts of Europe are still at War and the RAF is again trying to help end the war in Ukraine
What about bombing of Croatian town of Zadar in WWII by allied air forces (mainly US air forces). Zadar has been called the 'Dresden of the Adriatics'. The city itself had no military importance whatsoever. It's said that the reason for bombing was simply as allied bombers went back to their Italian bases from raids on Austrian, Hungarian, Romainian, South German or whatever-their-primary-targets-were, they flew over Zadar and dropped whatever bombs remained in their planes on Zadar. Zadar was solitary Italian (and later German) enclave on eastern Adriatic coast, and thus was ideal as "dropping ground" for bombers on their return to Italy where the allied air forces were stationed. Allied bombs devastated a city rich in artistic and historical treasures but with no apparent industrial or military targets. 80% of this ancient city was completely erased by these bombings, and most of it was never restored. The exact number of civilian victims is unknown.
SHIT HAPPENS.😂
I thought I knew most/all of the allied bombing raids of historical targets, but I did not know about Zadar. I had recently learned the RAF had a few bombs left after bombing Milan, so they unloaded them on a suburb where a school was located. 1943 I believe. I do not want to mention the numbers of dead children because I do not recall, but there were many, many. I am sad to say this, but thank you for educating other readers and myself about the once amazing and marvelous Zadar that is now gone. What once was there deserves to be researched and remembered and I plan on doing that. The list of destruction of the world's heritage in World War II is apparently endless. When you read pre World War II encyclopedia articles of these cities, you read about wonderful places to see that most people living today do not even know existed. Gone.
I know it's taboo to say, but this was an evil thing to do and kill so many
30,000 civilians were killed when Germany bombed London. That was just one city. Germany murdered millions of innocent civilians before they were defeated. Germany is hardly the victim here.
it's not taboo, its being a human being, not a brainwashed animal.
He who wins the war, writes the history.
Can't listen Music volume too high.
I wish the music was a lot quieter.
It was learned that after the war German industry still produced 85% of their wartime needs by conflict's end despite the massive destruction of their cities, industrial parks, and population.
The war was nearly over when Desden was bombed. It was therefore unnecessary to flatten such a beautiful city. I say this as an Englishman. I visited Dresden in 2008. Fortunately, much of Dresden has been rebuilt the way it once was. It is one of the most picturesque places I have been in. The Germans did a wonderful job of rebuilding it. Rather blaming Bomber Harris though, one should blame the maniac, namely Hitler, who started the war to begin with.
No, we blame you. Brittons instigated both world wars. Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg will never be the same again. There are other opinions on the matter.
Ridiculous! Pick up a book and inform yourself.
@@lizabethrobison4566 Really? Are you a scholar on the matter? I strongly recommend you to open more books, like the one by Nick Kollerstrom. But things went not so well for Britain after WW2.
@@brazhell you’re funny
@@lizabethrobison4566 Thanks!
Curtis LeMay, commander of the Amerrican fire bombing of Japanese cities said at some point, probably many years after the end of World War II, that if Japan had won the war and the United States had lost, instead of the other way around, the Japanese would have probably charged him with war cimes.
Very good point. If one is on the winning side........If one is on the losing side........
Turn the fckn music down.
Germany was warned of every city to be bombed.
great excuse.
What about the three nights blitz on Swansea which saw the town destroyed and innocent civilians killed.
You are absolutely right. It's just as right or wrong. So, it is a clear war crime and offense against morality. Also a breach of a sort of verbal treaty that both Hitler and the allies entered in:that no civilians areas would be bombed. Nazis did it because they didnt fear retaliation, knowing it is morally repugnant and pretty much illegal, yet did it anyway. And then the brits did it too. They also knew it is wrong having experienced it, but did it anyway.
So you are right, the blitz in Britain was wrong, so was the one inflicted on Germany. Especially in bleeding spring 1945 when the allies were barely getting any resistance.
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
PAY ATTENTION to what false prophets are saying, and VOTE accordingly. It could all happen again.
The war was just about over, to me this was a pointless act. I am saddened to see so many people say it was justified because of all the wrongs that the Nazi's did. Yes the Nazi's were vile and committed so many vile and horrendous atrocities during their reign of terror, but this was no different. There was no point to this raid and it just left a terrible stain on Bomber Command. When will mankind ever learn?
The war was not over. The Nazi's were still sending V1 and V2 rockets to peacefull Antwerp. They were still murdering innocents. They were still fighting.
Do you believe the allies wanted to bomb civilians? Or was it done to maximize life?
The Russian army was approaching Dresden. Hitler had given orders that the city was to be defended block by block and building by building. The physical structure of the city would thus be destroyed, regardless, and there would be many civilian casualties. By flattening the city ahead of time, it saved many Russian lives.
@@18471902 You are absolutely right.
It lets people know that food lines ,rail ,air ,was impossible to deliver ,think about what the outcome of that wld be ,because it’s the biggest lie in history ,and this is the real reason ,
I am horrified as an American that some people interrupted the Queen Mother, she remembers the blitz on and how they evacuated many to the country side but still so many British died. The destruction of beautiful Dresden falls on Hitler.
I'm an American and it bothers me none when English nobility is called out for being the phonies that they are
Just as many forget about places like Rabaul., Nanking, The Philippines Etc. By the Japanese. Many concentrate on the bombing on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. London.
You should see what was recorded on the royals private home movies, you would wonder where their loyalty was.
@@angelacharin636well, they only changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg in 1917.
Possibly someone realised it sounded a teensy weensy German.
@@angelacharin636Such as?
London is much older than the 13th century and more historically important and full of civilians. Did that stop the Germans from bombing it? Don’t play by your own rules and then expect them not to apply to you. They were the aggressors, they have no right to complain about how they were defeated. Just like Japan.
Harris was appointed to head Bomber Command in February 1942 specifically to turn Bomber Command into an effective fighting force , up till that time their operations were almost totally ineffective, many aircraft unable to find targets let alone hit them .
In short order and with the new heavy bombers coming online, (Lancaster and Halifax) he created a capable , disciplined and effective fighting force which, at the time was the only means of hitting back with any purpose.
After the war he was very unkindly and with much malice pushed aside and ignored , (as were the bomber crews) due to the political embarrassment of how well he achieved his mission.
Well, bomber command as an effective fighting force had been fought women, children and their infrastructure since beginning of 1942. Not only in germany. Furthermore 55000 of his crew men died in combat. No wonder Arthur Harris was very unkindly and with much malice pushed aside and ignored. That wasn't any popular in peace times as it had been severely hampered supply of german population after war in ruined cities. Actually all bombing of civilians and their cities was war crime.
Stark contrast between police then and now !
Nach dieser mühevollen Arbeit sollte keine Stadt schon gar nicht eine schöne kulturelle Stadt mehr Opfer von Bombenangriffen sein. Denn man sieht, wie schwer und zeitaufwendig es ist, wieder etwas aufzubauen.
Christ, you may be the hottest German in the history of German woman. I didn't think they grew them like that over there.
Well your thumbnail pic anyway lols!
I like the music.
What comes around goes around.
That's the Joke, son.
Did Germany think they were untouchable? War is Hell.😊
By the way attacking an innocent civil population is considered a war crime…but as always, to the victors go the spoils and writing of history.
The Bomber offensive was carried out to try and end the war and DID attack industrial targets. Slaughtering millions of innocent people as the Germans did was NOT a war ending scheme,ergo it WAS a war crime.
The bombing offensive was am attempting to end the war. The slaughter of millions of civilians by gassing, hanging, shooting and starving was a war crime because it had nothing to do with ending the war. Reset your moral compass.
It wasn't back then. After ww ii because germans relished killing civilians it's stated ... so, at least on paper.
Paper also tells us Hitler commit suicide but infact the sneaked him off to Argentina
Are you referring to the holohaox?
Not saying its right or wrong, Germany started it and they could have stopped it at any point, their cry now mostly falls on deaf ears.
That's a sweeping cultural generalization. America starts wars every decade against poverty ridden countries. Should l bother to ask what sort of psychological torment happens to those who watch a Beatles documentaries and that part comes in about them going to Hamburg or that the artist who designed the Revolver album cover was born in Berlin in 1938, and why Hamburg was named the cradle of British Rock. Because England was stuffy and conservative and always will be.
Stop Hitler? Many of them already tried. The people in Berlin who cheered for president kennedy are by far more beautiful than any provincial minded assholes here. A country who's intellect is based in steer wresting guns 'n' ammo gunslinger Indian fighter car demolition derbies with nothing at all classical has no say at all about Germany at all.
NO it's NOT FAIR !
The nazis began the bombing with
only 2-engined light bombers,
& the Allies countered with 4-engined heavy bombers.
UNFAIR !
The poor nazis had to make do with V1s & V2s in retaliation.
No, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
And sat on their maginot line for eight months doing nothing!
Who was filming all of this from the air?
Our Newsreel channels to show as shorts at the movies
At the beginning of the war similar things were being shown to Axis audiences produced by that poison garden gnome, Goebells
RAF film units.
The first figures from the Higher SS and Police Leader "Elbe" on the four air raids on Dresden were 18,375 casualties, 2,212 seriously wounded, 13,718 lightly wounded and 350,000 homeless people and those relocated on a long-term basis by 10 March 1945. On 20 March, the number was increased to 20,204 and finally to 22,096 on 31 March. In the following decades, around 2,000 more bodies were discovered in buried cellars - this corresponded very closely to the estimate of 15 March 1945, which assumed a total of 25,000 dead.
Even the files of the burial office discovered in the city archives in 1993 supported these figures. According to these files, around 19,000 identified dead were buried between 18 February and 17 April 1945. A further 6865 people were cremated on the Altenmarkt to avert the risk of epidemics.
Reliance on Nazi city authority statistics - is ridiculous. The RAF raid was the third in three days and the city was already very empty - free of 'refugees'. Next, RAF marker planes said they could not see a single person on the streets.
Those 'civilians' still in the city - Nazi officials, thieves who's snatched Jewish-owned homes and businesses, etc, had every opportunity to leave the city - especially overnight - if they didn't they deserved their fate. The slave labourers toiling on starvation rations in the city's 141 factories making munitions - had no such luxury - and they long afterwards said they were absolutely delighted that - at last - the Germans were getting the vengeance they most richly deserved.
It is irrelevant that it was a 'beautiful' city, as some claim. Is Leningrad, which suffered 100x the civilian death toll, 'beautiful' enough for you??
Don't EVER get sucked into the 'pity the Nazis' trap..
@@MarktheMole
The figures have been confirmed several times and are in line with other bombing raids on other major German cities.
& you don't get sucked into anti German propaganda. @@MarktheMole
Why who else wld not be able to eat ,not get medical supplies food etc etc ,people in camps .yeagh nothing was moving ,
@@Crosshatch1212 Can't see any connection between your comment and mine. Please explain it!
War is hell. I recall there were approximately 6 million people, civilians, killed by the Nazi regime. Approximately 40,000 civilians killed in England during the Blitzkreig. The loss of life in Dresden cannot compare.
Before dresden was bombed in Feb 1945 the city was never attacked, and the people of Dresden said it was because Churchill had an aunt living in the city.
The Fact of the matter is that Dresden by the beginning of 1945 was the nazi's last and most strategic stronghold and under the circumstances was fair game.
baloney, dresden was a crowded refugee center
@@johnweber6612 thats what I thought for many many years. But new evidence has come to light that shows that Dresden was the last stronghold of the regime.
Lol sure bud
@@CB13212 It was despite what your feelings might say
@@johnweber6612 ..Do some decent research, Dresden had over 300 small factories producing lenses for U boats and aircraft, gauges, gun sites, range finders aircraft cameras ,and hundreds of other optical equipment uses, all ( obviously) for war work, plus numerous other small factories, so yes, Dresden, like most German cities carried out important production for the military machine.
The appeasement emboldened Hitler -
War is hell. I think the bombing of Coventry is so heartbreaking because Churchill knew the Germans were going to bomb it beforehand.
Please read your history. Churchill did know about the attack on Coventry, but apparently one of the stories I read said that if he had warned Coventry about the attack, the Germans would know that the British were capable and were indeed intercepting their messages sent on the Enigma machine, which the British (with the help of the Polish people) had broken the code of earlier.
The present is no way to judge the past. Instead we should learn from it.
Who ordered the bombing of Dresden (78 years ago)?
The city was bombed twice on the night of 13/14 Feb 1945 by the RAF. It was then bombed on the next two days,15th and 16th Feb (in daylight), by the 8th USAAF. The USAAF then bombed the city on 2 March and again on the April 15.
Harris was head of RAF Bomber Command, US General Carl Spaatz was head of the 8th USAAF. Neither had command or control over the other's forces.
The order to bomb Dresden can only have come from US General Dwight D Eisenhower's headquarters, as he was appointed, Supreme Allied Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces, in December 1943. Why does everyone vilify Harris?
As a side note, the USAAF had previously bombed Dresden's railway marshalling yards, twice before, on October 7, 1944 and January 16, 1945.
It s strange to see a street with UK with real English people, those images from the 80s are really really strange. Now you can see only people from Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
5-10 times the amount of people died in the atomic bombs
Slaughterhouse Five . . . by Kurt Vonnegut
Leningrad: 'Slaughterhouse One Million' ?
"Elephant in The Garden"...Michael Morpurgo
master class
For a moment there I thought that church was Coventry Cathedral but no it wasn't.The Baedeker raids dont seem.to be shown.
Remember Coventry.
Ironically the bombings in the early half of the half simply strengthened the resolve of the German folks to continue the struggle. And the Allies 1943 demand for unconditional surrender didn't help.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography job enabling viewers to better understand what/whom the orator was describing. Berlin didn't have any moral issues. Bombing civilian cities London/Warsaw/Stalingrad and so on. Along with using U-boats to sink unarmed merchant ships. Their diabolical 😈 act of moral turpitude. Returned to haunt them one city at a time. A telegram from Berlin to London surrendering. Would have put an immediate stop ✋ to the air raids. There fore Berlin leadership was responsible for the carnage. Not the allied bombers doing as they were ordered. It's called " casualties of war ". Harris did what needed to be done. Saving countless lives by forcefully shortening the duration of the war. Perhaps by 2 or 3 years ??? The Truman Doctrine slowly rebuilt those devastated cities like Dresden.
It has been statistically proven that the bombing of German cities had no significant influence on the course of the war. Furthermore, one should never avenge a crime with another.
Informiere dich über die Geschichte junge. Die Alliierten waren die größten Mörder und Kriegshetzer und Imperialisten. 1914 hatte Deutschland kaum Kolonien und die "netten" Engländer, Franzosen und Amerikaner haben 1/3 der gesamten Erde regiert. Die gesamten 100 Jahre sind eine Lüge. Die Deutschen wurden schon immer von ihren Nachbarn bedroht und das Versailler Verbrecherdiktat ist am Aufstieg des Faschismus schuld.
They didn't target factories but innocent civillians. The war was already decided in 1945 where most bombings happenned. They didn't target industry or military targets but innocent civillians to demoralize them. If you think that collectives can be guilty of something you are not better than hitler. That is his ideology collectivism. You deserve a court at Nuremberg.
Why the background music for drama..😢
Why is the thumbnail picture ,on this video, a picture of Coventry cathedral? It looks like a post war picture; the rubble has been cleared swsy.
Ever get the feeling you might have been on the wrong side in the war?
I like the Lionel Richie commercial
thank you ---- LR
It seems like a case could be made to compare the Bombing of Dresden to the use of the Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as unnecessary since the outcome of both theaters of War were pretty much already decided by the time they were conducted. Change my mind !
No, there was every reason the Nazis would fight on, especially in the 'Redoubt' Josef Goebbels often broadcast about..
We weren’t taught of dresden it had to happen to take hitler down as awful as it was. Rip all innocents 😞
Hitler was an idiot. All this was because of his arrogance and his thirst for stupid war.
Bombing major German cities shortened the war by perhaps 2 to 3 years. Saving countless 1000's of lives.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote about it, and a good movie was made..
It had to happen to Hitler even though it killed 250,000 innocent civilians ?
There were NO innocent German. The women and old men cheered the Nazis and were very happy to partake in the loot of the wealth of the murdered Jews. They were accessories to mass murder and theft.
As to the children, given how Germans had murdered millions of other people's children, WHO CARES? I certainly ndo not.
The music is hideous and too loud
30:42 "Dresden has been removed from the map of Europe" literally
U reap what u sow
Can't say I like the narration.
Yah, the kaput art and smashed buildings. How did it look at the same time around St Pauls in London. A little wacked you think??
Don't quote art Monet bla bla... you know, that Hitler guy.... Remember him... Oh yeah... People might have been a tad pissed with Germany.
BTW, I wonder how many railcars came through Dresden on their way to Auschwitz? A couple perhaps...
Yeah... Hope the next film is narrated a little better.
Well use you’re head about how they where going to transport ,food .chemicals , meds to deal with things like typhus etc etc,
Germany got screwed after WWI. The victors squeezed every cent out of Germany, not to mention other unreasonable terms. All that even though Germany didn't actually lose the war! Today Germany has no reason to feel guilty and should rebuild their military and live the way they are supposed to and become a superpower along with Poland. The survival of Europe depends on it and so do we here in America.
This stupidly over-loud music drowns out the commentary!
The documentary itself is very informative. But was there really a need for an orchestra?
Also, the dead child scene at 25:49 is just depressing to watch.
Go watch American Idol then.
child, i saw a baby! LUCKY 1945 there was no smartphone!
Can’t be engaged in self censoring in this instance. It’s history. Must be shown. Too many people still want to deny the holocaust. That can’t be allowed.
Dresden was carpet bombed with high explosive bombs, then bombed with incendiary bombs. Most German cities only received one treatment or the other. Dresden was destroyed to eliminate the tobacco industry. Tobacco is a high margin business and a means to extract wealth from a servile State. British Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, RJ Reynolds, Phillip Morris, Liggett and others received a big benefit from the destruction of Germany's tobacco industry. So did the British and US banks.
What about London? Probably older and have more history!!!
Dnt be silly
Berlin was the brain and Dresden was the heart of the German Nazi system. From the moment of it creation, Dresden was always No.1 in supporting the German Nazi system. Because Dresden was out of reach of British and the allays bomber airplanes, all the important military production was moved to Dresden. Dresden also was a center and played a key role in the German railroad system delivering arms to the German army in the east front. There were working thousands of slave labors, all of them were banned from using of the air raid shelters.
Didn't it just speed up the Russian advance, and so give less time for the western front to advance and occupy territory?
The Russians were our allies.
Everytime they mention the Bombing of Dresden I always think of what they did to Coventry and the big cities in this country and the 1000s of civilians they killed in German bombing raids
The death totals are way off.
Plus or minus??? Either way the casualty rates were in the millions.
just like the holocaust
@@asullivan4047Dresden was 250,000 approximately
@@CB13212Dresden was 25,000!
@@anthonyeaton5153 keep eating the Jewish propaganda bud , it was 250,000 do you know what a census is ?
"do you want total war"? "Ja", well, this is what you got Goebbels. Arthur, didn't speak German, but he got hos point across in the end.
The Allies did everything they could think of to STOP THE WAR!!!!!!
Sweet sweet sweet revenge.
Blame it on the russians just as they blamed Britain for the Polish uprising
Always good to have someone around to place blame on.
@@asullivan4047 Well on these threads neo Nazis are found.
Back in the day when true American force would be brought upon you. 😢
The Queen mother should have removed that 2 to Germany. After she had them jailed for 10 years.
Then Dresden , Hiroshima, London , Warsaw , etc Today Gaza
That is utter, absolute bullshit moral relativism and is not remotely supported by history or facts.
When dictators start a war they leave their country and people subject to the whims of war which is death, destruction and misery. When people protest the death and destruction they should be condemning the leaders or dictator who started the war, not those on which war was initially committed. These days Gaza comes to mind.
And on Oct 7th the Israeli towns - Be'eri, Kfar and Aza - none of whose citizens attacked Gaza..
someday --- NYC, LA, Chicago.....
Difficult to watch and know there are innocent people down there with their children. Disgusting
Well the German's didnt care what they did to Britain and the thousands of people killed by them.
So who started the bloody war that killed millions, in case you dont know, GERMANY.
The price paid for voting in a drug-ridden psychopath.
Compared to what - the millions of innocent children sent to the death camps perhaps, or the millions of children the Nazis bombed.
The ones in the gas chambers?
how many of these innocents supported adolph?
I guess a simple defense to the war crimes accusation would be "Who do you think we learned it from?"
War only benefits the super rich. We all become fodder. May there be Peace. Some say it begins with us. Yes, we all need to open our eyes, read more and from different sources and not buy into hate. Namaste!
"Bomber" Harris wasnt even British he was South Afrikan.
hitler was austrian
They did not have to build a monument to him. I’ve never seen a statue of Monty.😊
The Dresden bombing has not caused 25 000 dead - today the official number of victims - but 253 000 dead men, women and children, the official number of 1945. A close relative of mine has been in charge to eliminate the victims of the Dresden bombing. For the life he spoke of 300 000 dead. Remember: In February 1945 the town of Dresden had 630 000 inhabitants, further at this time the city of Dresden was overcrowded with about 500 000 refugees coming from the east. So during the night of the Dresden bombing far more than a million people were present in this town, living together in a very confined space. The official number for 1945 of 253 000 dead is distributed in the following manner: 35 000 completely identified, 50 000 partly identified, 168 000 not identified.
Extremly stupid. 630,000 inhabitants says nothing about the number of Dresden residents living there at the time of the bombing. Almost all the men were at the front. So you can deduct this from your 630,000. This is also proven by the fact that almost only women and children were among the victims.
Furthermore, there is no evidence for your 500,000 refugees. The Wehrmacht was trying to divert the flow of refugees from Silesia around the "fortress city" - and if they were allowed in, they had to register, as contemporary witnesses testified. An evaluation of death declarations in the central registry office in Berlin 1 by the military historian Rüdiger Overmans showed that "the number of refugees killed in Dresden could only be a few hundred, barely thousands or even tens of thousands." This could also be statistically proven using death books and death reports from Dresden and Silesia.
The firestorm only began with the 2nd wave of attacks. It can be assumed that many (if not all) refugees have fled the center. What else was supposed to keep her there? The seemingly safe harbor had also become a target.
You should also keep in mind that Dresden has an area of over 300 km2. The center with an area of 12 km² was bombed. Whoever was "in Dresden" purely statistically was not at the same time in the 12 km² that were bombed.
*Incidentally, around 1.5 million people lived in Hamburg in 1943 when the city was bombed for days at least as heavily as Dresden during Operation Gomorrah. Result: 35,000 victims.* 🤔🤔
Oh well, I say.
Too bad too sad. 35K or 500K? Nazis bigotry, pride, greed & hate brought the whirl wind.
@@RT-tn3pu The primary cause of of the thousands German bomb victims has not been the Nazis bigotry but the gross hatred of Winston Churchill against the German people.
The total amount of victims varies from 20,000 to 200,000.
Nobody really knows.
Disgusting what they did to many innocent Germans
When you blindly support a Hitler you are not innocent.
Disgusting what the Germans did to Liverpool and other British Cities first.
I lost my family at the age of 9 months when the Bomber command under the command of Arthur Harris destroyed on december 1944 my hometown. Now I´m an old man, but the fear is still present! I cannot forgive and I hope God too! Sorry!
I'm now being taught "poorly translated" lessons from my Samsung phone while ignoring that hacker for the hacker on my government nokia phone. fascinating.
Как можно было уничтожить такую архитектуру? Но нация восстановила, доказав кто они и что.🎉
Why keep participating?
I lived in the blitz of London. Am I supposed to feel sorry
for any city in Germany.
Quite, I lived in small town Grimsby which was bombed 25 times on the 25th I was bombed out.
Yeah, that chicken coup being destroyed was a real tragedy, Nigel. How about taking a walk in London at night to remind yourself what your dead countrymen fought for?
Look at Warsaw they got of lightly