Apocalypse 1945. The Destruction of Dresden

337 Pages·0.953 MB·German

by  Charles Irving

THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN 1
APOCALYPSE 1945
The Destruction of Dresden
F
FOCAL POINT
2 THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN
David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. Educated at
Imperial College of Science & Technology and at University College
London, he subsequently spent a year in Germany working in a steel
mill and perfecting his fluency in the language. Among his thirty books
the best-known include Hitler’s War, The Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field-
Marshal Rommel, Accident, the Death of General Sikorski, The Rise and Fall of
the Luftwaffe and Göring: a Biography. He has translated several books by
other authors. He lives in Grosvenor Square, London, and is the father
of five daughters.
1963
In he published his first English language book, The Destruction of
Dresden. Translated and published around the world, it became a best-
1945
seller in many countries. The present volume, Apocalypse , revises
and updates that work on the basis of information which has become
1963
available since .
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN 3
LUFTWAFFE HOSPITAL
AIR ZONE COMMAND XVI
(10) DRESDEN A.24
GENERAL-WEVER-STRASSE.
I think it is February 13, 1945.
My darling, darling wife,
I doubt that this letter will ever reach you; these are probably the last words and
thoughts I shall ever write to you.
Apparently I was brought to Dresden earlier yesterday. Tonight there have been
two air-raids, one after another. Now everything around me and above me is on fire.
The hospital I’m in has been evacuated, and is empty. Outside I can hear a fire-storm
raging, like the one in Hamburg. The whole building has been abandoned long ago. Eve-
rybody ran off when it caught fire. I am curious to know how many of them will survive,
and where they’ve gone to. Everything around my bed is on fire; smoke and sparks are
making breathing almost impossible.
It is peaceful here in the cellar. There is one candle giving out a little light. It is going
to get very hot in here too. At the moment, I am just lying here in the cellar which is
still cool, smoking my last rescued cigarette, and thinking of all the things one ought
to think of in ones last minutes alive. There’s nothing I can do but wait, and write these
words…
Perhaps you will then sense somehow, even if this letter does not reach you and
you find yourself alone, that my last conscious thoughts were with you and my mother.
Yours, V.
4 THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN
Copyright © Focal Point, London 1995
Internet edition Copyright © Focal Point, London 1999
http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/Dresden
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be
made without written permission. Copies may be downloaded from our website for
research purposes only. No part of this publication may be commercially reproduced,
copied, or transmitted save with written permission in accordance with the provi-
sions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthor-
ised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
The Destruction of Dresden was first published in Great Britain by William Kimber &
Co. Ltd 1963, in a revised and updated edition in 1971 by Corgi Books Ltd, and by
Papermac, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, in 1985. The present work Apoca-
lypse 1945 has been thoroughly revised and expanded on the basis of materials avail-
able since 1963. Source notes are still in draft form. Researchers are advised that
figures for the final deathroll in Dresden still vary widely, and may be lower than this
author originally stated.
Printed edition published 1995 by FOCAL POINT PUBLICATIONS, 81 Duke Street, Lon-
don W1M 5DJ
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Irving, David John Cawdell
Apocalypse 1945. The Destruction of Dresden
1. World War, 1939–1945 – Aerial operations
2. Dresden (Germany) – Bombardment, 1945
ISBN 0–958–76021–7
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN 5
[Click to navigate]
Contents
They Have Sown the Wind .......................................................... 7
Bomber Command Gets its Teeth.............................................. 22
Fire-Storm................................................................................ 36
A Second Firestorm.................................................................. 55
The Sabre and the Bludgeon ..................................................... 74
Dresden the Virgin Target.......................................................... 89
Thunderclap........................................................................... 110
The Plan of Attack.................................................................. 133
The Plate-Rack Force Arrives .................................................. 151
A City on Fire......................................................................... 168
The Triple Blow Complete ...................................................... 187
Ash Wednesday ....................................................................... 202
The Victims ............................................................................ 220
Abteilung Tote ........................................................................ 234
Anatomy of a Tragedy ............................................................. 255
They Shall Reap the Whirlwind................................................ 271
The Reaction of the World....................................................... 295
A Serious Query ..................................................................... 310
6 THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN 7
Part One
DRESDEN: THE PRECEDENTS
They Have Sown the Wind
A
IR HISTORIANS trace the earliest roots of the area offensive against Germany to
10 1940
the events of May , .
Prior to this date, aerial attacks had been delivered by the Royal Air Force
only against capital ships, bridges, or gun installations, more from respect of the
superiority of the German Luftwaffe than from considerations of international law.
4 1939
Warships in the Kiel Canal had been attacked as early as September , but it
19 20 1940
was not until the night of March – , that the R.A.F. dropped its first bombs
on German soil, bombing a seaplane base on the island of Sylt; three days earlier the
Luftwaffe had raided the Orkney Islands, killing a British civilian. ‘Up to that time,’
1943
the Air Ministry noted in June , ‘the R.A.F. had avoided the bombing of targets
which might have involved the civilian population.’1
The Royal Air Force had continued to restrict its operations over Germany to
‘nickelling’ – dropping leaflets on the Reich, a pursuit which continued up to the
10 1940
evening of May , , the day when Hitler’s invasion of France and the Low
Countries began; it was also the day on which Neville Chamberlain, a pronounced
8 THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN
opponent of the use of the bomber as a weapon of terrorisation, was replaced by a
less inhibited British prime minister.
Just before four P.M. on that warm but cloudy afternoon three twin-engined air-
craft flying at an altitude of around five thousand feet appeared out of the cumulo-
nimbus clouds over Freiburg-im-Breisgau in south-western Germany; each dropped
a stick of bombs and departed swiftly. Most of the hundred-pound bombs exploded
very wide of their original aiming point, the fighter airfield: only ten fell on the
airfield, while thirty-one, including four which did not explode, fell within the city
limits to the west; six fell near the Gallwitz barracks, and eleven fell on the Central
Station. Two of the bombs fell on a children’s playground, in Kolmar-Strasse. The
Polizei-Präsident – the official responsible for civil defence in every German city –
reported fifty-seven fatal casualties, comprising twenty-two children, thirteen women,
eleven men, and eleven soldiers.2
The German propaganda ministry was swift to exploit this incident. The official
D.N.B. news agency stated that night: ‘Three enemy aircraft today bombed the open
town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, which is completely outside the German Zone of
Operations and has no military objectives’; the agency added that the German Air
Force would answer this ‘illegal operation’ in a like manner. ‘From now on any fur-
ther systematic enemy bombing of the German population will be returned by a
five-fold number of German planes attacking a British or French town.’3
The Freiburg raid was surrounded in immediate mystery. The French, accused of
63
having executed the attack, insisted that they were innocent, although a Potez
aircraft had been seen in the area; satisfied by this plea, the British Foreign Office
published a clear warning that they regarded the German allegation as ‘mendacious’;
they suspected an attempt at prefabricating a justification for a Luftwaffe (German
1 1939
air force) assault on allied towns: while recalling that on September , they had
given an assurance to the President of the still, nominally, neutral United States that
the Royal Air Force had been given orders prohibiting the bombing of civilian
populations – an assurance which it must be stated the British prime minister up to
10 1940
May , had scrupulously observed – the British government now publicly
proclaimed that it reserved the right to take whatever action it considered appropri-
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN 9
ate in the event of German air raids on civilian populations.4
Thus the Cabinet on its very first day of office under Mr Winston Churchill, the
new prime minister, was able to dispose of Mr Chamberlain’s public guarantee to
respect German civilian lives, a guarantee which could well have proved embarrass-
ing in the offensive against Germany that was to ensue.
v v v
Four days after the Freiburg affair, the Luftwaffe launched one of its most ill-famed
air raids of the Second World War, during the critical land battle for Rotterdam.
While, like the mysterious attack on Freiburg, this raid does not fall within the con-
cept of an area attack, any account of the prelude to the bombing war would be
grossly incomplete without a sober description of the Nazis’ Rotterdam raid, given
the role it played in forming British public opinion towards the later overwhelming
attacks of the Royal Air Force on German towns.5 Mr Churchill himself afterwards
referred in his memoirs to ‘the long prepared treachery and brutality which culmi-
nated in the massacre of Rotterdam, where many thousands of Dutchmen were slaugh-
tered,’ and in subsequent official documents he claimed that as many as thirty thou-
sand had died in the attack.
His statistics were less than exact, as historical research has proven. Although many
of the most important Luftwaffe records were destroyed in an accidental fire at
27 28 1942
Potsdam on the night of February – , , the origins and nature of the Rotter-
14 1940
dam attack of May , can be clearly reconstructed.
13 1940 22
By May , , three days into Hitler’s invasion of Holland, his nd Airborne
Division with four hundred troops were encountering severe difficulties at the posi-
tion where they had landed on the tenth, to the north-west of Rotterdam; rein-
9 16
forcements from the th Panzer Division and the th Infantry Regiment had pene-
trated the city as far as the Maas bridge – captured on the very first day of the offen-
sive by Nazi paratroops in the face of Dutch attempts to demolish it; the bridge was
4 00 13
a Dutch defence keystone. At . p.m. on th May Lieutenant-Colonel von
1940 16
Cholchitz – later commandant of Paris, but in still commanding the th In-
10 THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN
fantry Regiment’s troops, sent a deputation to the Dutch city’s commandant, to
demand its immediate surrender. The latter, Colonel Scharroo, refused to negotiate,
and every indication was that during the night the Dutch would shell the German
22
positions. The nd Airborne Division, beleaguered on the other side of Rotterdam,
appealed for an air strike against the Dutch artillery before this bombardment could
occur.
In spite of the urgent need for such a tactical air strike, the eventual orders actually
issued for the air operations against Rotterdam expressed a decidedly different in-
tent: ‘Resistance in Rotterdam is to be crushed with all means,’ General von Küchler,
18 6 45 13
th Army Commander, ordered XXXIX Korps at : P.M. on May . ‘If necessary
2
the destruction of the city is to be threatened and carried out.’ Luftflotte , Kesselring’s
54
bomber group, allocated Kampfgeschwader (bomber wing) for the Rotterdam
54
operation, and on the evening of the thirteenth a KG. liaison officer, Colonel
Lackner, was dispatched to the Seventh Air Division operations room to collect the
target map, ‘on which the Dutch defensive zones which had to be destroyed by satu-
ration bombing were drawn in.’6
9
On the same evening the th Panzer Division’s interpreter was ordered to frame
an ultimatum to the Dutch Commandant in the following terms: ‘The resistance
offered to the advancing German Army compels me to inform you that in the event
that resistance is not ceased at once, the total destruction of the city will result. I
request you, as a man of responsibility, to use your influence to avoid this. As a sign of
good faith, I request you to see an intermediary. If within two hours I receive no
answer, then I will be forced to employ the severest means of destruction. (Signed)
SCHMIDT. O.C., German troops.’ This was the bluntest possible threat, but it was
apparent that General Schmidt, the XXXIX Korps Commander, hoped that the Dutch
would see reason and capitulate.
The Dutch commander however saw no reason for such precipitate action. His
communications with his commander-in-chief were intact and northern Rotterdam
was still securely in Dutch hands.
v v v