The bombers and the bombed December 21, 2016 4 ANALYSIS: Cross-referencing the videos published by the US-led coalition and by A’maq, the Islamic State’s most important auxiliary media wing, can provide us with insight into how civilians are caught in the crossfire. The Bombing of Germany 1940 - 1945. Allied air-strikes and civil mood in Germany. In World War II approximately 410,000 German civilians were killed by Allied.
Commuters board a tram in bomb-damaged Dresden, March 12, 1946. Fred Ramage/Keystone/Getty ImagesWorld War II was more than three years old when Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and other Allied leaders met at Casablanca in January 1943, but the decisions made there would shape the rest of the war in Europe.During the conference, Allied leaders settled on a policy of unconditional surrender and to bring the Axis to its knees.Read more:For the US, bombing would focus on daytime raids against strategically valuable targets — factories, ports, military bases, and other infrastructure involved in the war effort. For the British, who had suffered during, the air war would target German cities with nighttime raids.In the following months, numerous German cities would crumble beneath the onslaught, but perhaps the most heinous destruction was in Dresden, a historic city in southeast Germany.B-17 Flying Fortress Dresden Germany bombing World War II (AP Photo)Dresden had avoided the destruction wreaked on major urban centers like Berlin and Hamburg. But on February 13, 14, and 15, 1945, more than 1,200 British and US heavy bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city.The intensity of the bombing devastated the city’s historic center. The fire that raged during the bombing made superheated air rise with that it created a vacuum on the ground, ripping trees out of the ground, sucking people into the fires, and those spared the flames.Read more:Roughly 25,000 people were killed, many of them civilians and refugees, and more than 75,000 buildings were destroyed.
The scale and ferocity of the bombing, so late in the war, has led many to believe the attack was a war crime.Below, you can see some of the devastation wrought by Allied forces 74 years ago: 74 years ago, Allied bombers obliterated one of Germany’s most beautiful cities — here are 18 photos of the bombing of Dresden slides18 Bilder Open slideshow. Allied forces and other have argued the bombing was necessary to disrupt German communications and supply lines that could have hindered the Soviet advance. While the British did not tout their targeting of civilian infrastructure, some acknowledged it. 'For a long time, the government, for excellent reasons, has preferred the world to think that we still held some scruples and attacked only what the humanitarians are pleased to call military targets,' the head of Britain's bomber command said in November 1941. 'I can assure you, gentlemen, that we tolerate no scruples.' Source:,(AP Photo). 'As the incendiaries fell, the phosphorus clung to the bodies of those below, turning them into human torches.
The screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of those not yet hit. There was no need for flares to lead the second wave of bombers to their target, as the whole city had become a gigantic torch,' Victor Gregg, a British paratrooper held in the city during the bombing, said 68 years later. 'Dresden had no defenses, no anti-aircraft guns, no searchlights, nothing.' Gregg was captured at Arnhem in the Netherlands in 1944. He was sent near Dresden to work in a factory, which he was caught trying to sabotage.
He was sent to Dresden on the day the bombing began.Source:Fred Ramage/Keystone Features/Getty Images.