Talk:Bombing of Dresden

Incomplete references to Dresden Historians Commission claiming maximum 25,000 killed

The article addresses the Final Report given by a Historians Commission in Dresden in 2010 (individual pages cited as ref. [16], [70] and [86] by article version 832318440) as the today one document which can be acknowledged to provide correct casualty numbers of the air attacks of Feb.13-15 1945. My Talk does no question this view in general. In Detail, however, the report's message of a total maximum of 25,000 people killed is not as unambiguous as the article teaches. Controversial disputes are beyond the scope of wiki articles, but regarding the prominent position of this source a revised article version should portray its existing inner uncertainties and address the associated conclusive options.
Remarkable original research results are given by the Final Report on pages 38-40 based on individual burial documents (which are classified in comparison with other data bases as most complete and reliable on p. 37). These listed burial data can be read and summarized quite differently:

(i) Reading as adopted by the present article: In four subsections on p.38-40 for four groups of burial locations the Final Report counts (A) up to about 21.000 killed victims with reference to two big cemeteries Heidefriedhof and Johannisfriedhof Dresden until April 30 (p.38), plus (B) on "Other Cemeteries Within the City Limit of Dresden" for "March and April 1945 ... almost equally many burials on the cemeteries in the city as, in the same frame of time, summarized for Heidefriedhof and Johannisfriedhof together", followed by a formulation of "more than 2.600 individual proofs" (in German: "Einzelnachweise"), plus for (C) "Cemeteries Around Dresden and Beyond" and (D) "Improvised Burials" another number of close to 1.000 burials. Summarizing gives slightly below or close to 25.000 as claimed by the Final Report's Summary on p.40/41 and cited by the article. -- By this way of reading we accept, however, the number of 2.600 casualties for (B) as "almost equal" to the share of burials in (A) that took place during March and April - in conflict with a much higher number on p.38 teaching that "On Heidefriedhof the ashes of 6.865 casualties cremated on Altmarkt arrived on March 5" - a position which is outside of any doubt since it is known as reliably documented for decades of years.

(ii) However, the above contradiction is dissolved if the reader, in analogy to other parts of this Final Report, understands the two statements above about "Other cemeteries ..." (called (B) here) as contributions to the Commissions efforts to distinguish upper and lower limits: With this view, the number of 2.600 "individual proofs" on p.39 for the (B) locations represents a lower minimum of the total of burials there, whereas the ashes of 6.865 victims that arrived on Heidefriedhof on March 5 (p.38) are understood as included in the commission's reference of about "almost equally many burials on the cemeteries in the city as, in the same frame of time, summarized for Heidefriedhof ..." in March and April (p.39). In total the subset (B) becomes, then, 6.865 instead of 2.600 and increases the final sum of documented burials by more than 4.000 to about 29.000 instead of 25.000. -- (in fact, with this reading the final total may increase to even more than 29.000 since other Commission's remarks on p.38/39 indicate that the real share of March/April burials in the two locations of group (A) among the total of 21.000 burials there was probably higher than 6.865; unfortunately, the Commission's Final Report does not distinguish which of the other 14.000 burials on Heidefriedhof and Johannisfriedhof documented until April 30 took place in February already and which in March and April)

Thus, details of the presentation of basic casualty data in the Final Report are equivocal, and a revised article should point it out. Such revision seems the more appropriate since M. Neutzner (editor of the Final Report) addressed some political pressure writing in a separate Report published on March 17, 2010 on p.22: "Since 1990 the administration of the city of Dresden" (which organized the Dresden Historians Commission) "was ... confronted with the request to correct the former number of 35,000 casualties ... An important argument had been that the official statistics were falsified by the GDR administration by political reasons which revision became, with the changed [political] conditions, possible now." (in German: "Seit 1990 sah sich die Dresdner Stadtverwaltung ... mit der Aufforderung konfrontiert, die bislang vertretene Zahl von 35.000 ... zu korrigieren. Ein wesentliches Argument dabei war, dass die behördliche Statistik von der DDR-Administration aus politischen Gründen verfälscht worden wäre, was nun unter veränderten Bedingungen aufgedeckt und revidiert werden könnte."). Again Neutzner remains vague with details and does not tell the reader, which of the groups who "confronted" the post-1990 administration (and, thus, the Commission) with opposite requests he addresses. In fact, Irving's self-correction of his thesis of 135.000 or more Dresden casualties was included in issues of Weidauer's Inferno Dresden long before 1990 (e.g. p.123/124 in) and had removed reputable arguments for such high numbers. On the other hand, since 1990 the local discussion in Dresden was and is significantly influenced by groups criticizing the former GDR-Administration for "canonizing" (p. 18 in Final Report) the number of 35.000 by "assailable testimony" ("nicht belegbaren Zeugenaussage" - ). For these groups, the presentation of casualty numbers significantly below 35.000 was and is an essential target. Thus, regardless of Neutzner's vague note in his separate Report from March 17 2010 it is clear that the Commission had to act under pressure by politically based requests, and a revised version of the article should take this background into account when prominently citing the Commission's Final Report.

Few minor issues refer to two Citations, in article version 832318440 numbered [3] and [4]:

[3] should be omitted in a future edited version of this wiki-page since it is a secondary (citing others) source without own original input.

[4] is a published book based on the Final Report of the Dresden Historians Commission 2010 without new own research results different from or additional to the data of the Final Report. The global availability of [4] and of this Final Report is, however, quite different with only the latter present on-line; probably this was the reason why [4] was not included into the Article's Bibliography (but could be shifted to it). For an edited version of the wiki-page it is, thus, recommended to substitute [4] throughout by the link to the Final Report (of course, with reference to the individual pages addressed).

== Citations ==

. ---DocumentReader (talk) 13:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

@DocumentReader, I do not fully understand the logic by which you come to the conclusion that the number may be about 30,0000. I think you may be double counting, but I can not tell from your description above. There are several other points:

• the burials may also include people who died of reasons other than the bombings, or died later of injuries sustained in the bombings either of which alters the figures.
• There are other independent secondary sources for the numbers, which were used in the article before the inclusion of the official report see the section Casualties from the version of 21 December 2011.
• As mentioned in the Wikipedia article both back in 2011 and currently a calculation can also be done from the number reported missing which comes out at about 25,000. This correlates quite closely with the number of burials. If this were any country but Germany under a dictatorship that these numbers might be widely inaccurate, but I think it reasonable to assume that the figures are probably quite accurate as the chaos of the closing weeks of the war more than 2 months away.

I think before the numbers are questioned in the way you are suggesting, you would need to come up with a modern secondary source that questions the numbers in the way you have done in this section, before adding any questioning of the numbers currently displayed in the article. -- PBS (talk) 12:50, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

PBS (talk) I apologize for my delay - I'm still a greenhorn with wiki processes.

Apparently, there is some misunderstanding: I am not contra, I am pro commission's data in the Report of 2010! As a physicist I think that when "real data" are presented after huge efforts, we first have to address these data. Based on burial evidences, the numbers of casualties given by this Report are
( i) "more than" about 21.000 on Heide (6.865 [after March 5] + additional 10.430 until April 30) and Johannis ("more than 3.700") cemeteries (p.38+39), plus
( ii) "more than" 2.600 on further cemeteries within the city of Dresden (p.39, l.25), plus
(iii) "about" 860 on cemeteries around Dresden (p.40, l.20), plus
(iv) "several dozens" of improvised burials (p.40, l.14).
Formal summarizing gives an upper total of "more than" about 24500 in agreement with the report's summary of "a maximum of about 25.000" on p.41/p.67. All seems fine.
The one question mark I pose is on a detail in the above position (ii), and my request of complete citation of this report addresses this detail: The number of "more than 2.600" given in this paragraph is formally classified there (p.39, l.23/24) as the number of "relevant individual [burial] evidences" ("Bestattungen ... relevante Einzelnachweise"). However, exactly this same term "Einzelnachweise" is used on the last line of page 38 stating that such "individual" evidences cover only one third (a footnote on p.59 says: "slightly more than a half") of the total of 17.295 (6.865+10.430) which is accepted by the commission as "absolutely probable" (p.39, l.4) for Heide cemetery burials; reducing this share on Heide cemetery to the one third covered by "individual" evidences would remove any basis for the commission's final conclusion of "a maximum of about 25.000". If, now, the number of individual evidences covers just one third up to one half of the "absolutely probable" total in group (i) - how can we assume that it covers 100% of the total number for group (ii)? Thus, what is the quantitative meaning of the report's term "more than" 2.600 in (ii)? The question leads us to l.12-18 on p.39 where the total for group (ii) burials is described as "almost equal to the total number of Heide plus Johannis cemeteries burials in the same frame of time" (p.39, l.16-17). Unfortunately, any specification of this verbal statement by numbers (based on data provided for group (i)) is difficult an delivers, depending on (speculative!) assumptions, totals for (i)-(iv) between about 30.000 or up to 40.000.
You may ask me: If the one open question is about this one detail for position (ii) - why did I, living in Dresden, not ask one of the report's authors for their explanation?? The problem is: I did it several times by e-mail and using Neutzner's www site, I am on the mailing list of the Dresden History Museum - but from the closed (though living with public money) community around the 2010 Report I did never receive any response.

---

DocumentReader (talk) 12:44, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I have commented before, so I will shortly note that evidently the article has been written from a perspective sympathetic to the Allied cause, and in my view too much so. In the introductory summary, for example, a figure of those killed at between "22,700 and 25,000" is far too precise given the uncertainties involved here, and seemingly makes light of, or is generally dismissive about, the broader debate. This conclusion goes as well for use of the term "causes celebres": being an unfortunate and improper term not to be used in *this* discussion... Further, the conjecture that those killed died humanely in their sleep [e.g. see below, Group 5] appears to be a straightforward speculation, and defense, of the Allied perspective regarding the general and widespread use of incendiaries. (John G. Lewis (talk) 20:48, 14 December 2018 (UTC))

Michael Clodfelter's claim

"Military historian Michael Clodfelter observes [sic] that at the time the Dresden raids constituted the largest slaughter of civilians by military forces in one place at one time since the campaigns of Genghis Khan." This may be true if the immediately preceding numbers (from the same source) - 39,773 to 135,000 killed - are accepted, but 1. these numbers contradict all other reliable estimates cited in the article, and 2. even with them, the claim still sounds implausible in the context of WW2, and carries a whiff of the same far-right revisionism that refers to the bombing as the "Dresden Holocaust". Nanking (1937), Hamburg (1943), and Babiy Yar (1941) are just three examples of preceding events with higher casualties.

Restricted to the context of the eastern front, if the claim is not outright false it is at least highly misleading. Accepting the estimate of 7,400,000 Soviet civilians killed by direct military action in 37 months, between June '41 and July '44 (after which the Axis were mostly out of Soviet territory), casualties amount to a mean of 200,000 a month, or roughly 20,000 for each 3-day period (the same length of time as Michael's claim considers "at one time" in regards to Dresden), for over three years straight. Those numbers roughly double when starvation, disease, and overwork are considered in addition to guns and bombs. BlackNBlue (talk) 18:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@BlackNBlue: 135,000 is not a credible number; I reverted recent changes with this edit. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:33, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Using the low numbers for Dresden, the earlier bombing of Hamburg on 27 July 1943 was deadlier "in one place at one time". Rmhermen (talk) 17:44, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

" ... the largest slaughter of civilians" - he is wrong anyway, as the term 'slaughter' implies defenceless victims who are unable to escape, whereas none of the German cities were in any way undefended, nor were the Allies preventing the inhabitants from moving elsewhere.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.51 (talk • contribs) Revision as of 09:17, 4 August 2018 (UCT) (UTC)

Sack of Magdeburg in 1631 was on a similar scale to the bombing of Dresden. -- PBS (talk) 14:10, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

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5 Group Attack

I don't like editing other people's articles, but, as no one took any notice of my talkpage correction a couple of years ago, I've now corrected the article's misstatement of 5 Group's bombing times. Someone had taken a source that only referred to 49 Squadron and imagined that it applied to 5 Group as a whole. The previous claim about the Lancasters flying at only 8,000 feet is also a mistake. That didn't happen. Despite having written a whole Wikipedia article on a Bomber Command topic by myself a while ago, I cannot recall the bizarre hieroglyphic system of keystrokes required for inline citations, but the cite in this case is Taylor 2005 (it's already in the bibliography), p.296.

Incidentally, I notice the article doesn't explain why such an enormous death toll arose from such a routine attack. Frederick Taylor explains this at some length and in considerable detail. The Reich government's official advice was 'the air-raid shelter is the best protection' and that people should stay down in the cellar. Berliners were bomb-wise and knew that this was foolish. Someone had to run upstairs every few minutes and check the building for incendiaries. If they found them, they should call for help to douse the things or throw them out of the windows on shovels. Or, if they saw the fires getting out of control in the neighbourhood, they should warn everyone to evacuate and not stay in the cellars. Dresdeners were not, on the whole, bomb-wise. After the 5 Group attack, the fires were already getting quite dangerous and a lot of people defied government 'advice' and saw what was happening and just walked away from the central area and advised their neighbours to do the same. There were many hours available to get away, and to walk to the city outskirts, before the second attack and long before the firestorm brewed, and a great many people did just that -- some in pyjamas, because the night was unseasonally warm for February. But about 25,000 people, of a more Nazi cast of mind, simply obeyed government advice, stayed in their cellars, didn't check upstairs for incendiaries, didn't check to see if the fires were out of control, and those people died peacefully in their sleep as the fires overhead ate all the oxygen in the local atmosphere. In fact Taylor remarks that Dresdeners were more passive, Nazi and obedient than Leipzigers, never mind Berliners: 'In the case of the RAF's incendiary attack on Leipzig just over a year earlier, the surprisingly low casualty rate had been due to the disobedience of the city's population. Instead of staying in their shelters until the official all-clear, the Leipzigers quickly emerged and took an active part in extinguishing fires before these could spread and become unmanageable. The Dresden population was more passive and more obedient, perhaps more trusting of the authorities. It would pay dearly for this.' (Taylor 2005, pp.296-7 -- but consider pp.289-314 as a whole.) Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:07, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Many of the other German cities had been bombed on a smaller scale on numerous occasions earlier in the war and so there had been time for the inhabitants to become gradually accustomed to the attacks and to find the best way of surviving them, however the people of Dresden had had no such chance, instead they had the full-force of a typical 1944-45 RAF Bomber Command attack sprung on them suddenly in one night. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.50.186 (talk) 11:47, 17 December 2018 (UTC)