Dresden Review

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Dresden Review`Dresden' - the book - is Taylor's contribution to the revived controversy surrounding the 1945 firestorm bombing of the city of Dresden. While extremely interesting and recounted in great detail, I still had mixed feelings about some of his conclusions. Taylor who is out to dispel the "myths" surrounding the notorious saturation bombing totes a questionable fine line as to whether he is arguing a case for military target legitimacy... or for complete annihilation.
He spends much time building a case for why Dresden was a legitimate military target. Nearly every German city had by this time been conscripted to the war effort, and yes, Dresden may have had legitimate targets, but the destruction inflicted upon the civilians was so ferociously excessive contrasted with the relatively minor damage done to military infrastructure, that it makes the argument almost moot.
The first RAF bombing raid excluded the Marshalling yards, Hauptbanhof, Marienbrucke railway bridge and troop barracks... obvious military targets if you are bombing to disable troop movement. It was -only- during the 2nd bombing raid, seeing that the Altstadt was completely engulfed in flames, that the RAF bomber leader made a snap decision - on his own - to target the fringes, otherwise the second target drop would have been exactly as the first.. the Altstadt itself. This is as much of an admission as you are ever going to get that the 1st and 2nd RAF raids were sent not so much for its military targets but for sheer chaos or "dehousing" as it was called.
The author however, does an excellent job revealing the lack of preparedness for a possible all out air raid, and shows how Dresden was truly undefended that night. When the author, who in no way seeks to minimize the horrors, is finished recounting the devastation inflicted on the inhabitants (told mainly through survivor first hand accounts), and you realize that there is still more come by way of the USAAF,... you are in disbelief.
Taylor is less successful at dispelling the "myth" of strafing. His method is to give credence to anyone who did not witness strafing, and to dismiss accounts of those who did as being "confused and traumatized" people. Yet there is documentation of an order to strafe and Taylor even prints it in his book. There are far too numerous recollections of this happening ( in many cities ) to dismiss out of hand. The official RAF Bomber Command web site page for Dresden 1945... still reads:
"Part of the American Mustang fighter-escort was ordered to strafe traffic on the roads around Dresden to increase the chaos and disruption to the important transportation network in the region."
Anyway, what Taylor spends most of his time on is counting the dead .. and since no one ever went to jail for reducing the number of Dresden victims, his final number is far lower than the 100 to 200 thousand often claimed.Taylor's final number of 30,000 seems low considering the number of refugees in the city, but it appears he has covered every angle on this based on documents that are known to exist.
The dense writing style of the book comes across as impenetrable but it is not without it flaws or manipulations.There are several carefully crafted statements throughout the book which while true on their face, are given in a near vacuum without addressing coherently the history of the economic and political turmoil of not only Germany but all of Europe in the years prior to Hitler. Statements such as "Dresden was a Nazi stronghold even before Hitler" are simply torn from their essential historical and political context, insinuating that in Dresden the early Nazi party rose to power on a wave of anti-Semitism rather than being the counter-revolutionary byproduct to massive destabilizing movements by communist/socialist forces.
While most people regard WWII as a `just war' it is also a war filled with mutual slaughter and atrocities with each nation bearing the weight of its own moral transgressions. To call it `strategic bombing' is merely a label and if a nation were to commit such an atrocity against a civilian population today that nation's leaders would surely be branded as war criminals.
Taylor may have been successful at some things, but he is by no means that last word on the subject. His greatest contribution is showing us how military minds run amok. Dresden was neither the first nor the last German city to be firebombed with devastating civilian casualties - but the Saxony city still manages to arouse both controversy and curiosity and Dresden still holds its place in history as a symbol of wars devastation and ruthlessness.
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