Between 13-15 February 1945, over a thousand heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force and the U.S. 8th Air Force struck the city of Dresden in eastern Germany. On the night of 13 February, the British bombers created a firestorm which engulfed the city's center.
The Allies saw the Dresden operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which United States Air Force reports, declassified decades later, noted as a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the German war effort.
The historic centre was destroyed in a massive firestorm, with enormous loss of life. The main aim was to help distract the Germans from the Soviet attack on the eastern front. But the bombing of Dresden, with such horrific consequences, weighed on Churchill's conscience.
Worst hit was Würzburg (75 percent destroyed), followed by Dessau, Kassel, Mainz, and Hamburg. Over 70 percent of the largest cities had their urban core destroyed. Worst cases: Dresden, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Hanover, Nuremberg, Chemnitz.
The Royal Air Force's (RAF) bombing offensive against Nazi Germany was one of the longest, most expensive and controversial of the Allied campaigns during the Second World War. Its aim was to severely weaken Germany's ability to fight, which was central to the Allies' strategy for winning the war.
British Dresden survivor: Everything was alight in 'evil' attack
Which UK city was bombed most in WWII?
While London was bombed more heavily and more often than anywhere else in Britain, the Blitz was an attack on the whole country. Very few areas were left untouched by air raids.
We did not have the capacity to do so. We lacked the transport capacity and the naval strenght to block the channel. We could not have used "little ships" to invade Britain cause the little ships could not transport heavy equipment and therefore an invasion was an illusionary plan.
A mineral contained in sandstone typical of North-Eastern Europe, in fact, oxidizes over time in contact with air, and although recently built, the buildings in Dresden have already taken on the typical black colour.
Leningrad, along with Moscow and Kiev, was one of the major objectives of the German offensive launched on 21 June 1941, but the city was not taken during the attack.
Dresden has experienced dramatic changes since the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. The city still bears many wounds from the bombing raids of 1945, but it has undergone significant reconstruction.
Hitler offers Britain 'peace or destruction' BERLIN, July 19, 1940 (UP) -- Adolf Hitler today addressed an "appeal to reason" to Great Britain to avert "destruction of a great world empire," but he made it clear that rejection would mean an attack with all of the forces at the command of the Axis powers.
For 40 years, through the Cold War, Dresden was part of communist East Germany. It was in what was called the “Valley of the Clueless” — one of the only places in East Germany that didn't get Western television.
The bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War were the longest and heaviest aerial bombardment in history. The United States Air Force, the U. S. Navy, and U. S. Marine Corps aviation dropped 7,662,000 tons of explosives. By comparison, U. S. forces dropped a total of 2,150,000 tons of bombs in all theaters of World War II.
Why did President Truman decide to drop the atomic bomb?
Truman stated that his decision to drop the bomb was purely military. A Normandy-type amphibious landing would have cost an estimated million casualties. Truman believed that the bombs saved Japanese lives as well. Prolonging the war was not an option for the President.
Which country did not want to reunite Germany after WWII?
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Thatcher told Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that neither the United Kingdom nor, according to her, Western Europe, wanted the reunification of Germany.
Battle Of Stalingrad (1942-1943) - Estimated 2.5 Million Casualties. An artist's depiction of Soviet soldiers making a desperate attempt to cross the river into Stalingrad.
Funds raised were turned over to the Frauenkirche Foundation Dresden, with the reconstruction backed by the State of Saxony, the City of Dresden and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony. The new golden tower cross was funded officially by "the British people and the House of Windsor".
Dresden is famous to the wider world for its near-complete obliteration by the British and US air forces in 1945, and for its eventual reconstruction, in the original baroque style, of its historic core.
For two or three years afterward, large numbers of British subjects remained convinced that the Nazi invasion of Britain might still happen. But the fact that the Germans never did land on England's shores, and in reality couldn't have done so, is perfectly obvious in hindsight.
Why did Britain declare war on Germany but not Russia?
The simple answer is that France and Britain feared Germany more than the Soviet Union, and if they were forced to go to war with Germany, they wanted to hedge their bets and keep the Soviets on their side rather than Hitler's.
However, as Anglo-German relations deteriorated, and the Second World War broke out, Nazi propaganda vilified the British as oppressive German-hating plutocrats. During the war, it accused "perfidious Albion" of war crimes and sought to drive a wedge between Britain and France.
