Talk:Bombing of Dresden/Archive 1

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Somebody added in comparison ... 200,000 were killed in Warsaw during the Warsaw uprising 1944). Is that really appropriate? You could just as well add the battle of Stalingrad or that of Midway to the list! :| Malbi

But those 200 000 were civilians and this happenned in approximately the same time. Some fraction of victims was killed by air raids, but Warsaw had not anti-aircraft resistance at all, so it was bombed from 100 m and very precisely.

One should notice, that bombings of the German cities brought relatively small number of casualties in comparison to directs executions on the spot, that were common practise by Germans in WWII. AM

I think you are talking about Germans bombing Jews in Warsaw? Do we know the percantage killed by aerial attacks? Rmhermen 17:35, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)
As far as I am concerned, Germans didn't bomb Jews. However, during Warsaw Uprising 1944, bombing from low level was common practice. Most of the 200 000 victims died from artillery shooting, bomb attack or executions on spot.AM
I see now. In Wikipedia we are calling the Jewish uprising the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and this later Polish army one the Warsaw Uprising. Sorry for the confusion. Rmhermen 13:33, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)

I took the following external link off this page.

Irving is a discredited pro-Nazi historian, but I couldn't see any way of saying that that was NPOV so I just took him off.

I took another item off but I am putting it right back, since I misread it. Ortolan88 12:07 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT)

I took out the claim that Goebbels added a zero to police reports, since we really have no clue what Goebbels did, and the claim that "Goebbels did X" is, well, propaganda. Graft

Well, Goebbels may not have "added a zero", but it is a fact that his Propaganda Ministry circulated a figure of 100,000 to 200,000 in 1945. David Irving later publicized these figures, disguised as to their origin, in his book The Destruction of Dresden and it was not until research undertaken by Richard J. Evans as part of the defense against Irving's lawsuit tut still horrifying figure of 35,000-some was arrived at. It is late and I don't feel like pursuing this tonight, but I will be putting some better version of Goebbel's lie back in the article soon. Ortolan88 06:10 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)
Hi Ortolan... I actually left in the claim in the form of "it was propaganda by the Germans", I just took out the direct attribution to Goebbels, which seemed unreasonable to me. Graft

Your page is outrageous. Did you check sources on the internet perhaps - simple Google search will do? There is holocaust denial, but I didnt know that there is Dresden bombing denial too. Arguing that Goebels added a zero and putting accent on it and such a heavy bias is something you should be ashamed off. Germans have done a lot of horrible crimes in my country during WWII but noone there would try to deny that Dresden was destroyed like you do. Check British sources, they put number of dead to 135,000. And there is nothing contraversial about it, the town was completely destroyed. It is no Nazi propaganda, and I am really surprised that there are people here who are denying it in such a blatant way. Shame on you, this is not encyclopedia, this is a washup service for someones bad conscience. You people have no honesty, I regret any time spent trying to make a contribution here. German people who are rised with guilt complex are probably going to be reluctant to object to your washup attempts (what is your motivation for this?), but I am no German nor I like Germans very much and I object to such outrageous twisting of history. How easy is to spit on someone who is not able do defend himself. Do you enjoy it? I am not so surprised that someone put it (it happens) but that this article survived so long here, and it has been scrutinized, obviously people have read it and found nothing WRONG with it - that is what I find so overhemlingly disgusting. Have you no sense of decency? I am not going to attempt to correct your article, or educate you - you could do some websearch yourself if you cared. But obviously you dont, it is just to easy to put selfassuring version of history and to think of victors as angels. Shame on you all, you are nothing but a selfsatisfied ignoble mob filled with prejudice

Your British source, unnamed, is holocaust denier and pro-Nazi pseudo-historian David Irving. The larger figure originated with Goebbels. The British and Americans basically just covered it up until the 60s when Vonnegutt and others began talking about it. Irving wrote a book about Dresden with the Nazi figures and then got himself in a lawsuit. As part of the lawsuit, more accurate figures were found. The war was plenty horrible and Dresden was horrible too, but we are all better served by accurate information. If you are so strong on Google, why not look into Irving's lawsuit, or search on the name Richard J. Evans? Ortolan88

BBC is NOT David Irving! And Ortolan seems to be much like David Irving - a liar, manipulator, inserting sources into people's mouths - if nazis were here around today, I bet you would be first to join them, you scum! The figure of 135.000 is widely circulated. Here are some links wich mention this figure (is Columbia or UCLA a neo-nazi propaganda center?).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/re/warpeace/justwartheoryrev2.shtml

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm

http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/estudent/jvallier/dresden.html

http://www.bartleby.com/65/dr/Dresden.html

http://www.eppc.org/publications/xq/ASP/pubsID.123/qx/pubs_viewdetail.htm

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/001.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/raico-churchill5.html

..... 

Marco

I am astonished that anyone has the brass nerve to remove that link to Irving's letter just because they disagreed with it. Irving is indeed a repulsive nazi apologist, but who gives to Ortolan88 the right to censor what he doesn't like. Dispute it, challenge it, debate it, but who made Ortolan god? Wikipedia deserves better than politically correct censorship. I come across sites all the time that tell propagadistic lies about many things about Ireland (glorification of the IRA, etc). I re-write them to be balanced, ironing out loaded terms by neutral ones, or by adding in balancing accurate facts that allows the READER to make up their own mind, objectively. I'm not God. I don't have the right to turn around and say 'that's a load of s***. I'm censoring it." If Ortolan wants to contribute to making this project a success, they need to show some respect for other opinions. As I say, dispute it, challenge it, add in balance. But don't do a nazi job and just censor that you don't like, just because you disagree with it. JTD

I didn't take it off because I disagreed with it, I took it off because I wasn't ready at that moment to do all the work it would have taken to fill in all the context around Irving to make his letter understandable. No one made me god, but the Wikipedia allows me to take things out and allows you to put them back and allows me to come back and say other things. Why don't you put in Irving's letter to the Times and then you can figure out a way to put it in context. It's a waste of time to denounce me if you won't do the work to make things the way you want them. I have Richard Evans's book here before me. I have read it through once and worked through several of the other sources on the Irving trial and I have been working up some material on both Irving and the Dresden bombing for the Wikipedia. Irving is the source of most of the misunderstanding about Dresden and he is a very clever propagandist so I felt that leaving his letter in place while I did research was a bad idea. If you want to be the one to put Nazi propaganda in place without supplying any further understanding, go right ahead, but I think my plan is better. And, while we are talking, I also wrote several articles on strategic bombing, and, particularly, the strategic bombing survey that could also use some help. The treatment of strategic bombing in the Pacific war is basically a stub and could certainly use some work, since the deaths in Japan from the firebombing of Tokyo and the attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were far far worse than the Dresden attacks. As for my contributions to Wikipedia, please see my user page or check Recent Changes on most days. Maybe I shouldn't have removed the Irving link, but I had what I thought were sound reasons for doing so and I'm glad this has come up to encourage me to continue demolishing the fraudulent "historian". Best regards, and have a good wikipedia, Ortolan88 15:19 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)
By the way, here's the summary comment when I took the Irving link out:
"remove possible holocaust revisionist external references, someone more knowledgeable should check, see talk page"
Then I went to the talk page and noted what I had done and why I had done it. Doesn't seem all that arrogant to me. Ortolan88 PS- Don't call me a Nazi, thanks.
Sorry for just breaking in. Heres two photos:
http://www.elephant.se/zoos/germany/dresden/images/dresdenbombat.JPG
Dresden bombed. Evidence: bombed buildings, and statue.
http://www.elephant.se/zoos/germany/dresden/images/kremering.jpg
About 6 500 people were cremeted next day on the "Altmarkt" market square, out from a total estimation of apr. 35 000 vicitms. Statues as evidence.
According to my files; An area of 15 square kilometers was totally destroyed, among that: 14 000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals,19 churches, 5 theaters, 50 bank-, and insurance companies, 31 department stores, 31 large hotels, and 62 administration buildings. Swedish, and such, fighter for truth. user:Dan Koehl

Some pictures should be posted on the page 

Marco

Marco, can you explain some of your edits? Why did you remove the reference to RAF briefing notes and the given motive for bombing Dresden? Why did you remove the reference to Rotterdam and the fact that Dresden was used as a propaganda tool by the Germans? Also, I read through your links above supporting the 135,000 number. None of them give a source for their numbers - unless you can cite a primary source (which exists, at least, for the 25,000 number) which gives some justification for this estimation, I don't see a reason to keep that number around. As a final note, I don't think it's necessary to insult people. You'll find that if you approach people with courtesy, 99% of the people here will be willing to give your point of view respectful consideration. If you approach people with insults and anger, 99% of people will return the same. Just some advice, take it or leave it. Graft

The number 135,000 is both from Colymbia encyclopedia and Encarta encyclopedia - I dont know the other sources, but I doubt they would put a random estimate. If the number is not known (and it is obviously disputed) then it is reasonable to put a range which is widely accepted. If you want to put a discussion about it (citing other figures - 25,000 or 250,000 or whatever) it is OK with me, but I really find it in bad taste to concentrate the whole article on licitations about the number of dead. The RAF briefing note I removed by mistake, and insult is a reaction to what that person did - for a widely circulated figure he said the sole source is Irving. Do what you want with the article, but it seems that I am not the only one who find licitations with numbers repulsive. 

Marco
I think Ortolan was clearly mistaken about the source for the larger figure (which I think he assumed to be 250,000) to be Irving - I don't think Irving has ever said 135,000 dead. But I don't think a mistake warrants insult, especially not when someone is working together with you on a project - and if you come in with the attitude that everyone is working against you, that's going to end up being the case, because no one will want to work with you (and your attitude).
At any rate, it may be disrespectful to the dead, but this is an encyclopedia, and the number of dead is an important thing to note (accurately) in an article about a bombing campaign.
Regarding Encarta or Columbia - either and both may be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time. This is why it's better to rely on primary sources than on secondary sources. We shouldn't say that "Encarta said X, so it must be okay." This is the fallacy of appeal to authority, and it is to be avoided. This is why I say, if we can't find a primary source for the 135,000 number, it should not be included, and in general it is better, rather than merely giving a range of numbers, to give estimates and the reasons behind them. I'll try to hunt around for where it came from. Graft

Encarta and Columbia are legitimate sources, if not primary, and they prove the fact that figures are widely circulating. They were not used by me as appeal to authority, but as answer to your question about the sources. Your attempt of intimidation is also some sort of a fallacy I would say. And that is what you constantly do - your insistance on a primary source for instance, branding widely available not only as unreliable, but as some sort of dogmatic etc. The principle of finding true figures, reliable sources etc. is something perfectly worth praise, in principle. But the trouble is, that there isnt such scrutiny given to everything, and there is a heavy bias in what questions are being researched and where we care more about figures and where we care less about exact figures. I personaly believe that more conservative figures are always more likely, and I will give you an example from what I know about number of people killed in my country - it was inflated after the war so to get greater compensations from the Marshal plan. There are sources, by historians which support the figures, but then there are interviews done many years later with them admitting how this was done and why was done etc. And that is not about Jews, not about Germans, but about my own country (which lost 1.7 million people, according to those figures which I now do not know what to think of). So, does it really matter? How much of research is out there and what is to be trusted and what not. What I am very much against is selective scrutiny and selective research into figures - suppose you put such question about 6 million killed Jews in WWII. You would imediately be branded a neonazi - everyone would ask about your motivation etc. But if you ask for sources about number of dead in Dresden, thats perfectly OK. Thats what I am against. What if there is no reliable research into upper limit of those killed in Dresden? Should we just keep the lower numbers? The figures which are available now - from the number of dead citizens etc. - can give a lower limit, not the upper one - who can account for all the refudges who were killed in those 3 days, for instance? No historians were there to do a bodycount, and I come from a part of the world where licitacions with figures, innaccuraces and lies have all to often been used to intimidate and manipulate population. That is why I have such a doubt about all the figures, and do not think they serve any other purpose BUT to manipulate, twist and stretch the truth. Insisting on sources here and not insisting somewhere else is a grave injustice, especialy in a subject where reliable research is almost impossible - if it was possible imidiately after the war, no one was there to do it. No one cared about number of killed Germans, and insisting on primary sources is not only unjust, but absurd. How do you know that 800,000 people were killed by Mongols in Baghdad in 1258? Is that a Mongol propaganda, a random estimate of contemporary historians, or what?

As for your friend, who has been insulted - well you said yourself that the one who insults people should be prepared for the same. And implying that someone does not name his source because the source is actually a neonazi, is not a simple mistake, but a filthy insult and attempt of intimidation (which you both seem to like), and when I see such a thing I would not only warant someone a right to answer, but answer to it myself. 

Marco
The fact that a figure is widely circulating does not mean we should believe it - by this logic, I should be a Christian, since the belief in the divinity of Christ is widely accepted around here. This is why I insisted on primary sources. :Personally I would rather give my attention to Dresden than to the Jewish Holocaust, which gets far more attention from other quarters, but this doesn't mean I wish to be inaccurate in doing so. But in any event, while it's true that you would probably be called a holocaust denier if you gave evidence for revising down the estimate of the number of Jews killed by the Nazis, I don't think this means we should be less accurate in other areas to keep up with the (hypothetical) inaccuracy in the Holocaust figures (which are probably far more closely scrutinized in any event). And as to Orotolan (who is not my friend), he, at least, has given justification for his claim - he demonstrated that it was Irving who first gave the figure of 135,000 which has been picked up and repeated after him. If you believe otherwise, then you could show where that 135,000 figure came from. If this is going to be a scholarly endeavor and not just a collection of hearsay and gossip and conjecture, then we need to hold ourselves to higher standards. So, Encarta is not good enough.
As to inaccuracy, I agree - there are many confounding factors in the estimates. We can do our best by making clear what the confounding factors are. We should not simply ignore them just because it is difficult to know the truth. Graft

I was not "clearly mistaken". The source for the following is Lying about Hitler: History. Holocaust and the David Irving Trial by Richard J. Evans, Basic Books, 2001. pp 150 ff. Evans is a professional historian of World War II retained to prove that Irving was a holocaust denier after Irving sued Penguin Books and claimed he was not. Irviing lost his case, ignominously, in part based on Evans' evidence.

I would prefer not to write this up myself now since various people have made various (baseless and insulting) accusations about my motives. However, Irving did publicize the 135,000 figure in the 1963 edition of his book and upped his estimate to 202,040 and speculated that as many as 250,000 may have died. I will be looking forward to seeing this information included in future versions of this article. In the meantime, I am going to work on an article about Irving himself and his trial (at which, in one moment, he forgot himself, and called the judge "Mein Führer") and leave Dresden to other hands.

In his book The Destruction of Dresden, Irving relied on information from Hans Voigt, a schoolmaster who had been put in charge of collecting records and personal effects of the dead and missing four days after the attacks. Voigt's office had four filing systems for identifying the dead:>

  • garment cards, clothing samples marked ast to date, location, etc. total 12,000
  • miscellaneous personal belongings
  • bodies identified by personal papers
  • wedding rings

The total dead identified and officially reported by Voigt was approximately 40,000. This matched closely the figure of 39,733 arrived at by Georg Feydt, a Dresden civil defense official who wrote in 1953.

Direct quote, p. 151, detailing how Irving came up with the 135,000 figure:

"However, Irving did not accept the 40,000 as the actual figure because Voigt had told Irving that he himself 'estimated the final number would have been 135,000.' In 1963, Irving was reported to have explained: 'The Germans simply struck off the first digit to make the figure more acceptable to the Russians, who contended that Bomber Command was not a powerful weapon.' In other words, he apparently thought that the Russians wanted to reassure the citizens of the Eastern bloc that Western bombing was not very dangerous. There was no evidence for this supposition. Voigt wrote to Irving as early as September 1962, blaming the amendment on 'Dresden officials' (especially the then mayor Walter Weidauer), who 'reduced the figure out of fear of the "Big Four," so as not to speak ill of them.' This did not seem to me [Evans] to be a particularly strong motive. The Russians were not involved in the bombing of Dresden. At the height of the Cold War, the would have had every incentive for inflating the figure, so as to put the Western Allies in a bad light. Yet Irving repeated the claim in 1995."

Back to paraphrasing. Weidauer, the former Communist mayor, stated that the death register was still extant in the Town Hall, gave 31,102 deaths, a number that matched exactly the "street books", which counted the dead according to the streets and houses where the dead were found.

Direct quote, op. 152: "Irving could only sustain the figure of 135,000, therefore, by relying on a postwar speculation which he must have known was shaky and was discounted by most other writers on the raid, with good reason. "

Back to paraphrase, after first editions of his Dresden book came out in 1963, Irving claims to have received a copy' of an SS document, Order of the Day no. 47, dated March 22, 1945, which claimed to be an extract from another document by the Police President of Dresden.

Direct quote again, p. 152, , "Irvings's copy of the report, besides detailing other physical damage, bput the final death-toll at 202,040 and experessed the expectation that the figure would rise to 250,000 by the time all the victims had been recovered. Irving gave the document full prominence in the English edition of 1966 and the Geerman edition of 1967, and reproduced it in both as an appendix. This, then, was the source of his frequently repeated upper estitmate of 250,000."

Back to paraphrase. Earlier, Irving had dismissed this same document as a forgery, but withdrew his skepticism and built his new edition of the Dresden book around it. What he had was not a document, according to Evans, "It was merely a carbon copy of a typed-up transcript of another typed-up transcript of an extract from an unknown document, unauthenticated by any distinguishing marks such as a signature or an official stamp of any description. Had it not contained information congenial to his purposes, Irving would doubtless have had little hesitation in dismissing it as inauthentic."

Back to paraphrase, Irving sought to bolster the document by stating, in a letter to his publisher, "The figures originate with the then deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Max Funfack,. Therefore the dead of Dresden need in future no longer be guessed. They are precisely counted and they were 202,040 in all."

Dr. Funfack, however, demurred, after these statements appeared in the German press. He stated he was never a medical officer of the city, only a urologist in a hospital, had been present at only a few burials, and had no special knowledge of the number of deaths, or of the provenance of the Order of the Day.

Irving continued to claim that Funfack had received the document in the course of official duties despite his repeated denials.

Evans then tells of the circulation of the 250,000 figure in the Nazi magazine Das Reich and of Irving's repeatedly ignoring any evidence that contradicted that large number. Finally, Evans reports on the very document that the Order of the Day purported to be quoting, the final report of the Police President of Dresen, dated March 15, 1945, which stated: "Until early 10.3.1945 established: 18,375 fallen, 2,212 badly wounded, 13,718 slightly wounded, 350,000 homeless and long-term requarterered."

Irving ignored this document as well and went ahead with publication, but backed down within a few weeks afterwards. Evans presents considerably more detail, but I hope that I have convinced any fair-minded person that my changes to this article were done in good faith and that my efforts to make this article accurate were sincere, Ortolan88

I'm convinced (not that I wasn't before), and I apologize for the 'clearly mistaken', since it seems you weren't. I think somewhere around here the link to Irving's backing-down letter (where he acknowledges the 18,375 figure and bumps it up to ~25,000 total dead) is kicking about.
So, four numbers:
  1. 40,000 from Voigt
  2. 18,375 from the police report
  3. 31,102 from the death register
  4. 39,733 from Georg Feydt
  5. 135,000 and above from Irving and the Nazis.
I think it's fair to write it up like so, and I'm sorry for the insults to yourself. Graft

Of course, this article should be as accurate as possible, and the article should turn to credible sources to produce those numbers. But, that being said, in term of the human and moral dimensions of what happened in Dresden, I am having a hard time seeing the difference between 35,000 and 135,000. Is the firebombing of Dresden somehow less of a case of massive human carnage if "only" 35,000 people died? It's not like anyone is debating WHETHER any carnage took place (there are no "Dresden deniers" that I know of); all that is being debated is whether it was a) a REALLY lot of people who were killed, or b) a REALLY REALLY lot of people who were killed. I guess it seems to me that it is easy to lose perspective on thi subject. That doesn't mean, as I said, that we shouldn't strive to be accurate, but I just think that we shouldn't lose sight of other aspects of this event. Anyway, that's my two cents worth. soulpatch

Does it matter, then, whether 600,000 people were killed in the Holocaust, or 6 million? In either event, it's a really large number of people. Or how many were killed by Stalin? 12 million? or 20? Is Stalin any less of a criminal for having killed "only" 12 million people? No... but is the point of this encyclopedia to point out Stalin's criminality? I don't think so. Our job is to get the facts down, as best as we can get them. Many Americans seem to think 3,000 innocent Afghani lives is an okay price to pay to smash up al Qaeda, but maybe they wouldn't think so for 30,000. Rather than making people's judgements for what is an "acceptable" number of people brutally massacred by sadistic bombing campaigns, we should just try to be accurate, and let them decide for themselves. But, that said, I agree, there's more important things to consider, and I've already wasted too much time arguing about this damn number. Graft
I agree with Soulpatch that it is all dreadful, but also with Graft that we should not forget the context. The 20th century was a century of mass slaughter, the trenches in World War I, the mass starvation in the Soviet Union, the purges and the Gulag of the Soviet Union, the murder of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and "defectives" by the Nazis, the impact of our "unconditional surrender" policy on German, particularly Berlin, the Japanese depredations across Asia and the Pacific, the hundreds of thousands killed by the US in fire and atomic attacks on Japan, the famines of Africa (keeping in mind that famines almost always have political causes), and on and on. We have a lot of slaughter to document and it is incumbent that we keep a neutral point of view and as much accuracy as possible, on a subject on which it is hard to be neutral and which the perpetrators do everything they can to keep the facts covered up. Ortolan88 17:01 Dec 1, 2002 (UTC)
I tried in my earlier comment to make the point that we should strive to be as accurate as possible, so on that point I agree with both of you. I just think that it is easy to get bogged down in details without seeing the forest for the trees. soulpatch

I don't think we are here to do historical research, but to report on what is known. Reporting about what estimates are there is perfectly OK and in accordance with the basic NPOV policy - reporting what people SAY about a contraversial issue, not trying to judge who is right. Johans

Removed for debate: He was never held accountable for breaches of Geneva convention or war crimes.

about the General who ordered the airstrike. The Geneva Convention on civilians in wartime wasn't written until 1949. I haven't read the earlier ones to know what would apply to this action. Did anyone accuse him of war crimes or violating Geneva Conventions at the time? To say that he was never held accountable implies that he did do something wrong but that is not clear that he did in the context and laws of the times. --rmhermen

I removed the line and just used the phrase war crimes - since you never got a response.... Martin


There are reports that even civilians fleeing the firestorm engulfing Dresden in February 1945 were strafed by British and American aircraft.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that allied aircraft mistook allied POWs on the ground for being German civilians and shot them up too. If anyone can confirm this please add.

Btw, the higher casualty estimates don't sound unreasonable. The lower estimates would require there have been only one death per dwelling in the central city, which seems unlikely.

(This is not the case at all: My father took part in the bombing of Dresden as a navigator with the RCAF - under Butcher Harris. The bombing of Dresden was easily the most defining moment in his life, he was troubled immensely by having taking part and sent back medals that he had received during the war. Dresden was a nightmare he lived every day.)