The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

117. Based on Taylor, chs. 21–4. See also Götz Bergander, Dresden im Luftkrieg, Weimar, Cologne and Vienna, 1994, esp. chs. 9–12; Friedrich, pp. 358–63; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), pp. 777–98; Olaf Groehler, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland, Berlin, 1990, pp. 400–12; Rolf-Dieter Müller, Der Bombenkrieg 1939–1945, Berlin, 2004, pp. 212–20; Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang (eds.), Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, London, 2006, esp. pp. 18–77 (contributions by Sebastian Cox and Sönke Neitzel) and pp. 123–42 (Richard Overy’s discussion of the post-war debate); and Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (London, 2004), pp. 382–7.

118. Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, vol. 2: Tagebücher 1942–1945, ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, pp. 661, 669, 675–6 (13–14.2.45, 19.2.45). Discrimination against Jews even went so far as to refuse them entry to ‘aryan’ shelters during air raids.—Klemperer, p. 644 (20.1.45).

119. This paragraph is based on Taylor, pp. 397–402, 508. An eighteen-year-old soldier, shocked to the core by what he saw in Dresden, noted in his diary that there was talk of over 200,000 dead.—Klaus Granzow, Tagebuch eines Hitlerjungen 1943–1945, Bremen, 1965, p. 159 (18.2.45).The propaganda claims of up to a quarter of a million victims are judiciously assessed and dismissed by Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Der Feuersturm und die unbekannten Toten von Dresden’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 59 (2008), pp. 169–75. An evaluation of all available evidence, and of the wildly differing figures given for the numbers of dead (with some claims of half a million dead), by a specially nominated Historians’ Commission which reported in 2010, arrived at the figure of 25,000—the estimate already made in the official investigations of 1945–6.—www.dresden.de/de/02/035/01/2010/03/pm_060.php, ‘Pressemitteilungen. 17.03.2010. Dresdner Historikerkommission veröffentlicht ihren Abschlussbericht’.

120. Taylor, p. 463.

121. Friedrich, pp. 331–3, 533–6.

122. Friedrich, pp. 312–16.

123. Taylor, pp. 413–14; DRZW, 10/1 (Boog), p. 798.

124. Taylor, ch. 15.

125. Taylor, pp. 412–24, 506. Goebbels’ aide, Wilfred von Oven, estimated in his diary entry for 15 February a total of 200,000–300,000 victims, and went on to write of a historically unprecedented killing of ‘300,000 women, children and defenceless civilians within a few hours’.—Von Oven, Finale Furioso, pp. 580–82 (15.2.45).

126. Das Reich, 4.3.45, p. 3, with the headline: ‘The Death of Dresden. A Beacon of Resistance’. The bombing, the article claimed, was an attempt to compel capitulation through mass murder so that the ‘death sentence’ could be carried out on what was left. ‘Against this threat’, it concluded, ‘there is no other way out than through fighting resistance.’ See also Bergander, pp. 184–5; and Taylor, p. 425.

127. Klemperer, p. 676.

128. BfZ, Sterz-Sammlung, letters of DRK-Schwester Ursel C., 16.2.45, 20.2.45; O’Gefr. Rudolf L., 16.2.45, 18.2.45; O’Gefr. Ottmar M., 26.2.45. Only a single letter in Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst—Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, p. 152, mentions the bombing of Dresden, but then only to indicate worry about the population and relatives in the area. One letter that came into the hands of the British army, dated 20 February, though sent from Unna in Westphalia and with no direct reference to the attack on Dresden, did speak of bitterness and sense of impotence at the ‘terror-flights’ heading for Germany, but determination to fight on and conviction of victory.—LHC, Dempsey Papers, no. 288 Pt. II, p. 8 (18.3.45). The Berlin population seems to have been understandably concerned about the raids on the capital but, to go from reports covering February 1945, no comments about Dresden were registered by the Wehrmacht agents gathering information on popular opinion in the city, though some general feeling was expressed (e.g. p. 252) that the war was almost over and it was pointless to continue.—Das letzte halbe Jahr, pp. 248–93. The Government Presidents of Bavarian provinces gave no indication, in their reports for March 1945, of reactions of the population, preoccupied with its own concerns, to the Dresden bombing.

129. BAB, R55/622, fo. 181, Briefübersicht Nr. 10, 9.3.45.