[gatagato]

Originally Posted by LadyCPlum ↗

Christ, it took them that long to getting around to rebuilding Dresden?

Glad you noticed that detail, i pointed it out by purpose:
The photographer had settled in Dresden after the end of WWI, he used to publish his photos mostly in left-wing publications and because of this he got banned from publishing as a press photographer when nazis took the rule of Germany, but he could keep on publishing in advertising, though, until he was called to serve during WWII:
after the end of WWII (Sept. 1945), he returned to Dresden and found out that his archives and equipments were completely destroyed (like the rest of the town) so he had to start over literally from the scratch, borrowing equipment left & right. He started documenting the horror and the devastation caused by the raids, there were about 25,000 dead bodies in the town, nobody would take care of them because the priority was to take care of those still alive, who were much more. This explains why it took to him so much time; that work was published in a book tiled Dresden, eine Kamera klagt an ("Dresden, a photographic accusation").

[William May]

Also, a lot of the bodies were not recovered for years. The commies were very slow in rebuilding, and it wasn't until the 70's that the last victims were unearthed. A lot of them were asphyxiated in their bomb shelters, which is what apparently happened to this woman.
The raid on Dresden did not have to happen, in fact it was not even because Dresden was a military target. It was NOT a military target. It was simply selected to inflict the maximum misery on the German people. There was no war industry there. The city was packed with refugees fleeing from the Russian advance in the east, along with thousands of wounded troops wjp were being cared for.
This is one of the few raids for which I have no pride at all as an American. It was inhumane, it was a mistake, and it never should have happened.
I don't feel that way about very many American bombing missions, (I'm perfectly fine with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think the A-bombs were bad, you wouldn't believe what the massacre would have been if we had had to invade Japan. For their sake and ours, it worked out very well!)
Even the aircrews and intelligence people had reservations about the raid.
When it came time to bomb places like Ploesti, our airmen went in without reservation and did the job. But no one could ever give a good explanation about why Dresden was bombed.
This would constitute one of the (very) rare cases of American wartime atrocities. We didn't do very many, but this was certainly one of them. Discuss it with any historian or WWII Air Force vet and they will have the same opinion. This wasn't a case of knocking out a panzer division. It was a case of incinerating women and children in basements.

[LadyCPlum]

Originally Posted by William May ↗

Also, a lot of the bodies were not recovered for years. The commies were very slow in rebuilding, and it wasn't until the 70's that the last victims were unearthed. A lot of them were asphyxiated in their bomb shelters, which is what apparently happened to this woman.
The raid on Dresden did not have to happen, in fact it was not even because Dresden was a military target. It was NOT a military target. It was simply selected to inflict the maximum misery on the German people. There was no war industry there. The city was packed with refugees fleeing from the Russian advance in the east, along with thousands of wounded troops wjp were being cared for.
This is one of the few raids for which I have no pride at all as an American. It was inhumane, it was a mistake, and it never should have happened.
I don't feel that way about very many American bombing missions, (I'm perfectly fine with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think the A-bombs were bad, you wouldn't believe what the massacre would have been if we had had to invade Japan. For their sake and ours, it worked out very well!)
Even the aircrews and intelligence people had reservations about the raid.
When it came time to bomb places like Ploesti, our airmen went in without reservation and did the job. But no one could ever give a good explanation about why Dresden was bombed.
This would constitute one of the (very) rare cases of American wartime atrocities. We didn't do very many, but this was certainly one of them. Discuss it with any historian or WWII Air Force vet and they will have the same opinion. This wasn't a case of knocking out a panzer division. It was a case of incinerating women and children in basements.

I didn't want to get political, but I'm going to have to agree, what the Allies did to Dresden made them no different than when the Luftwaffe decided to demoralise the British by switching from military targets to hitting the cities. Dresden was of no strategic value whatsoever. The city was overflowing with refugees, they had to have known this. So they pulled the whole "eye-for-an-eye" thing. Same thing when the American troops who liberated Dachau shot a pretty decent amount of the SS guards who had already surrendered.