Allied Bombing of Dresden Justified?

Was the allied bombing of Dresden Justified during World War 2?

  • Yes

    Votes: 11 73.3%

  • No

    Votes: 3 20.0%

  • I don't know, other

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • Total voters
    15
Ryan Miller

Ryan Miller

Active member
During the last year of World War 2 in Europe, the already crumbling German army was struggling to fight against the United States, British, Soviet, and French forces as Germany was surrounded on two fronts. At the same time, the Allies in Europe had a race to see who would reach Berlin first. Knowing that the United States was a democratic capitalist nation and the Soviet Union being a authoritarian communist nation, it would make sense to capture as much land in Europe under your influence.

The ways the United States and Britain would do was to conduct strategic bombings all throughout Germany. Operations conducted by the US Air Force and Royal Air Force would bomb factories and other targets in Germany to cripple their economy. One of the most infamous of these raids was the allied bombing of Dresden where US Air Force and the RAF would bomb Dresden. The raid was a victory for the United States and Britain as strategic targets were destroyed, however they also bombed civilians along the way. Around 20,000 Germans were killed as a result of the bombing.

One of the arguments for stating that the bombing was justified was that if would speed up the end of the war by crippling the German economy and moral. The United States wanted to make sure that most of Europe wouldn't be occupied and/or influenced by the Soviet Union. However, the counter argument would be that the war was already easy to win in the first place and carpet bombing a city was unnecessary. The raid also targeted innocent civilians along the way.

What do you think? Do you think that the allied bombing of Dresden was justified because it would speed up the end of the war, or not because thousand of innocent civilians were killed as a result?

 
Saying civilians were "targeted" is a bit of a stretch. Bombers then didn't have anything near the kind of precision targeting we have now. The only real way to make sure you hit your target was to drop bombs over the whole area and hope a few hit what you wanted to be destroyed. 

I think most of this bombing was done to minimize casualties of allied forces ("better them than us"). 

The National WW2 Museum site claims: 

Battle Deaths

15,000,000

Battle Wounded

25,000,000

Civilian Deaths

45,000,000

Total War was waged by all sides on all fronts; England, as well as many other countries, saw their cities and towns destroyed by air raids.

Was it justified? None of us can really say. 

Was WW2 horrific and claimed more lives than it ever should have? Yes. 

The bombing of Dresden very well could have been an excuse to rain some terror on the German (Nazi) people in revenge, since their treatment of the Jewish (and others) had been discovered the year prior. Or it could have really been what the Allied forces thought was the best option in an already shitty situation. 

All in all, I pray a Total War is never waged again. 60,000,000 deaths will seem like a minor impact if we see another, total, world war. 

edit: 10/10 poll topic.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Carpet bombing is generally really bad. Like people keep saying nukes are bad but these things kill more people and infra.

But again, in retrospect you can say that something is a bad or good idea. They don't really know what would happen next. What other fronts would they lose or win? What if the Germans retake the city? They might not even know that the war was "easy to win".

p/s make more polls

 
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now, they are going to reap the whirlwind - Sir Arthur Harris;  Marshal of the Royal Air Force. 

Pretty much sums up my feelings. Besides more died in the Allied Raids on Hamburg And Tokyo so not sure what the fixation on Dresden is.

 
Ya man, Nazis had it coming. It wasn't nice but its war. I think the idea of putting rules in war to make it civilized is a nice idea, but morals yield to necessity and people will do crazy things when pushed to the brink. 

 
Back
Top