Bombing of Dresden

The Bombing of Dresden was a ruthless attack from the 13th to the 15th of February by two allied militaries, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and USA’s United States Army Air Force (USAAF), on a city in Germany known as Dresden. In 4 waves of 1,300 raiders the forces dropped more than 3,900 tons of explosives and fire starting materials on this Nazi Germany city. This city had earlier been spared from such destruction by the allied troops because of its little input on the war and its innocent people living within it, although it was still considered a part of Nazi Germany making it a fair target. Considering the war was being fought against the Nazis and not just all of the innocent German’s this city seemed to be an insignificant spot to destroy with its dense population of refugees and civilians. There were a couple of statements made by Britain and USA for this relentless attack; there was evidence( supposedly) of weapons being created in Dresden to supply to the Nazi troops, there was no anti-aircraft missiles to threaten any of the raiders, and the Soviets Red Army could be shown how powerful Britain’s and USA’s forces are in order to scare Stalin for post war problems. At the same time Britain and USA knew that the war was soon to come to an end with Germany surrendering in Italy and slowly losing its power. So was this bombing necessary to get the point of wrong doing across to the Nazis or was it just overkill that ended around 30,000 people’s lives?
I strongly disagree with USA’s and Britain’s reasoning and doing of such an act. Did a town of 350,000 innocent civilians really need to be burned down to no more than rubble and ashes? A devastating 15 square miles of nothing but civilization was destroyed in around 48 hours. A quote from a Survivor of the Dresden bombings depicts her sight, “By the time the Americans flew in for the third and last air raid, smoke from the burning city nearly obliterated visibility.” One member of the United States Army Air Force regresses, “We bombed from 26,000 feet and could barely see the ground because of clouds and long columns of black smoke. Not a single enemy gun was fired at either the American or British bombers.” People were just living there everyday lives and not disturbing the war efforts for the allies and they are vaporized to dust just to be reminded again that there leader is crazy and his dream for lebensraum is a bit extreme. At this point in the war (war ends months after bombing) all of the people in Germany already have a pretty firm grasp on just how much Hitler is a lunatic and a friendly reminder like this was not needed. Some might say that if Germany had won this war Hitler would have taken the same brutal actions upon everyone else. And yes I agree with this, but do we need to stoop down to Hitler’s low life actions? I thought the whole point of this war was to stop this madman and put an end to the way he views things, so why would we compare ourselves to him? He previously had obliterated the city of London having no intent on attacking the military, but instead attacking innocent people of Britain. These citizens stayed strong and never gave in to Hitler’s plan of turning them on their government so why did we need to show our weakness and take revenge on the citizens of Dresden? This only makes our countries look weaker and showing that we could not be the bigger man in this fight for revenge by halting these cowardly actions.
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