17 Responses to “Dresden before and after”

1. Chas Says:
   December 3rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm

   With all due respect, that the bombing of Dresden was a ‘crime’ is a matter of much debate; I don’t think its appropriate in this context to call it a crime. It was certainly horrible and your visuals are highly compelling, but to take such a position is, I believe, beyond the purview of this site.

2. HCC Says:
   December 3rd, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   Is there no pre-bombing picture available for comparison? That would make for a great 3 parter.

   This has long been a question of mine, I feel as though I’ve seen the photos of Dresden after the fire-bombing a lot but have no idea what it looked like before. I might be inclined to argue the point on whether said bombing of Dresden is largely forgotten as well.

3. Joe Says:
   December 3rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm

   Absurd. First Kabul as a garden paradise, now Dresden as a crime? Way to ruin a potentially interesting post with completely inappropriate politics.

4. admin Says:
   December 3rd, 2009 at 4:17 pm

   I think you are being a bit oversensitive, Joe. Its pretty hard to include pictures of places that have been destroyed by war and gloss over what happened. In fact if the ‘purview’ of this site precludes anything other than entertainment, as Chas suggests, then using many of these images would be immoral. They show where thousands and thousands of people died. The voting is not to poke fun here, it’s to indicate which image is the most powerful.

   Dresden was a deliberate firebombing of a non military target, causing tens of times more civilian deaths than 911, it is widely held to have been a tragedy. It’s true that at lest one odious, right-wing, revisionist has tried to appropriate things like the Dresden bombing to somehow further the attempt to diminish incomparable German crimes such as the holocaust. But there is nothing controversial about deliberately killing innocent people as being labeled a crime, all wars have crimes on both sides, this just happened to be one by the British. In fact it it was Churchill that suggested so, complaining in a memo to his Air Marshall that attacks like the bombing of Dresden were “acts of terror” [ http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm ].

   As for Kabul, it sounds like your point is that I am suggesting that before = Taliban Paradise, after = US bombing. The image of ‘before’ predates the Taliban, and the destruction shown in the ‘after’ began in the war with the Russians not the US. The shocking cpmparison is as much a result of the presence of the Taliban and Soviets, as anyone else.

   What would appropriate politics be, one-dimensional, simplistic? Most of these pictures tell a story, a real one, they aren’t cartoons.

5. Tim Says:
   December 4th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

   There has been a great deal of debate about the merits or demerits of the Dresden bombings in 1945, but I think it’s a stretch to label it a crime, when in fact the men behind it, most prominently Air Marshal Dowding, targeted it for its strategic value, rightly or wrongly. (That is not to say we ought to excuse the results, and write off the civilians who perished as just so much collateral damage.) I mean, if we label Dresden a crime, then shouldn’t someone be prosecuted? And aren’t there so many other incidents where civilians died in large numbers, like Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki?

   I guess my bigger problem is that so many critics of Dresden have a larger relativistic goal of establishing moral equivalence between the Axis and the Allies, which in my mind is a disgraceful and grubby thing to do. The Nazis truly were criminals who robbed and slaughtered across Europe, while the Brits and the Americans were not. Given the choice of falling into the hands of one side or the other, most people (apart from the totally ignorant) would NOT choose the Nazis. Fact is, war is not clinical and safe — it’s a dreadful business that tars all participants. Standing up to tyrants and fascists was the right thing to do. (As an aside, I reserve special contempt for the “neutrals,” such as the Irish or the Swedes, who had the luxury of being defended while not having to get involved — how lucky that their territories were not invaded, as I think that would have changed their minds quite quickly. And don’t get me started on the Quakers.)

   But thank you for the photos. Amazing.

6. Todd Says:
   December 5th, 2009 at 12:21 am

   Yes it was a payback by the allies (a militarily unnecessary act)….a crime…..that is debatable.

   If you want a fictional story with pieces of fact intertwined from an American who was on the ground in Dresden when it happened….read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.

7. Edward Says:
   December 6th, 2009 at 3:26 pm

   Dresden a “Crime” ? LOL. Berlin ,Hamberg,Munich,Cologne,Leipzig,Essen - all larger cities with more tonnage dropped on them. It was a legitimate military target. And Strategic objectives, of mutual importance to the Allies and the Russians.

8. Mark Samaniego Says:
   December 15th, 2009 at 6:39 pm

   More than 60 years later and many Americans still can’t bare to owe up to their mistakes in “the good war”. I suppose this provides a good commentary on the state of the American education system. Pathetic.

9. Steve Packard Says:
   December 20th, 2009 at 2:58 am

   Well, Mark, I’m quite well educated in the events of the Second World War, and there was little “Good” about it, but I’m in no way ashamed or apologetic for the bombing of Dresden by my country. It was a horrible event which was a tough tactical decision that the US was forced to make. During a war, this happens. You have to win and therefore, you do things that nobody wants and in which no good comes.

   The purpose of the bombing of Dresden was to cause mass upset in the resistance and generally disrupt the reinforcements and military supply lines during one of the bloodiest portions of the campaign into inner Germany. Whether or not it acomplished this is another question entirely, but given the circumstances and the losses which had been encountered, as well as the advancement of the Soviet armies in the East and the desire not to see them take over all of Germany, it was an option which was tactically justifiable.

   Germany should not only be ashamed of the murderous actions of the Reich or of the agression that began the European war, but of the fact that she sewed the seeds of her own destruction and continued in blind, bloody resistance long after the war was lost. After the Battle of the Buldge, the righting was on the wall and at that point continuing to battle for every inch could only assure more suffering by the people of the country. Yet they continued to blindly follow a madman, who refused to even consider brokering peace. Even as they were sending 12 year old boys to the slaughter to fight for every inch, the strength of the unquestioned leader endured until he committed suicide, less he fall into the hands of the Russians, as their shells shook the bunker.

10. tim george Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 6:50 pm

    I liked your site until I viewed this collection of political silliness. The commentary was obviously anti-American, anti capitalism, and anti-war. The world must have been so beautiful before American capitalism and it’s war machine took over…no killing…no wars…no destruction…oh brother! Open a history book or, at least, open your mind!

11. tim george Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    Oh yeah, where are the before and after images of the site of the world trade center attack? I guess America deserved it after the destruction of the once utopian middle east. I have an idea for your next list…before and after images of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish temples, shrines, and statues destroyed by radical muslims. Here’s the difference (Since it was your site’s comments that turned this political) If the Allies could have pushed a magic button and just killed the nazis and no one else they would have but the Nazis would have killed everyone who was non Arian. The same could be said about the west and terrorism today. They would like us all dead but we just want the radicals dead.

12. Tortoise Says:
    January 26th, 2010 at 4:48 am

    Lots of fanatics here…

13. Matt Hooper Says:
    January 25th, 2011 at 2:04 pm

    The start of WWII was a war crime. We ended it.

14. Mike Anthony in USA Says:
    July 15th, 2012 at 10:17 pm

    The bombing of Dresden was not necessary for the war effort. It accomplished nothing except to deprive future generations of one of the finest examples of urban civilization. Revenge? Absolutely. A crime? Revenge is criminal. Would anyone agree today that the slaughter of millions of otherwise innocent people because of their race or color or sexual orientation is OK if it’s revenge? I hope not but maybe we won’t ever learn. Should millions of Germans been rounded up and sent to die in gas chambers? Was the brutal destruction of Warsaw made any less horrible by the destruction of other great cities? No. The bombing of Dresden was just evil….as evil as any war crime exacted by the Nazis.

15. Alan B'Stard Says:
    December 17th, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    Here’s a few photos of Dresden before and after. Most are small isolated scenes and not very illustrative though

    http://www.alien8.de/dd/page-1.html

16. Walter Hugo Says:
    January 30th, 2013 at 5:51 pm

    I’d say it was a crime. Not only because it was purely a civilian target but as we know now that the war was funded to both sides from a single source - the house of Rothchild through the Union Banking Corp and Federal Reserve. They simply wanted their League Of Nations (The UN today) which they didn’t achieve after the first WW.

    Frederick Taylor told Der Spiegel, “I personally find the attack on Dresden horrific. It was overdone, it was excessive and is to be regretted enormously”, but “a war crime is a very specific thing which international lawyers argue about all the time and I would not be prepared to commit myself nor do I see why I should. I’m a historian.”[116] Similarly, British philosopher A. C. Grayling has described British area bombardment as an “immoral act” and “moral crime” because “destroying everything … contravenes every moral and humanitarian principle debated in connection with the just conduct of war”, but “it is not strictly correct to describe area bombing as a ‘war crime’.”

    I believe Dresden contained important evidence regarding the total operation of the war from all sides. Just like how Building 7 was the operations center for 911 and the Enron cover-up. That building was demolished with the Trade Centers and then the clean-up of the crime scene was deliberately fast under security as documented through the Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth site.

17. ISSY Says:
    April 2nd, 2013 at 11:50 am

    IVE GOT A BOOKLET WITH 23 PICTURES OF DRESDEN PRIOR TO BOMBING A SOUVENIOR BOOK WITH 23 PICS OF ENTIRE CITY.IN BLACK AND WHITE I DONT KNOW IF ITS RARE BUT IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL CITY AND I BELIEVE THESE PICS SHOULD BE PUT IN MUSEUM OR ON NET FOR ALL TO SEE CIRCA 1920

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