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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 2.31.130.99 (talk) at 18:02, 6 April 2015 (→‎NPOV Tag: Correct figures). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Former good article nomineeBombing of Dresden was a Warfare good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
April 4, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed


Death total again

An IP editor is removing cited text which says that the death toll was between 22,000 and 25,000. We have discussed this already and arrived at a consensus. Here are a few relevant sources:

When using this one should at least be familiar with the background of the report. It was tasked by the government there to arrive at a figure as low as possible. Also, their sources are classified and locked up in the archives for several decades. Which means that this is hardly a scientific report. --154.69.27.250 (talk) 16:33, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Richard J. Evans, Telling Lies About Hitler, page 162. "The 'Final Report' put the 'missing' figure known to the register of missing persons and the city administration at 35,000 but 10,000 of these missing were later found to be alive." Evans says that the death toll was about 20,000–21,000.
Just a few words on this. Evans is obviously a highly biased source and also lies about excavations not finding remains of dead humans in Dresden. It's just that this isn't widely published. The "Historians commission" has clearly been tasked to minimize the figures of victims. Given that some of it source material has been made inaccessible to the public, the report is scientific neither. Btw. The City of Dresden published a figure of more then 200.000 victims when asked about this before the year 2000. --197.228.6.202 (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Malarkey. Evans is a Cambridge professor and his book was published by respected left-wing imprint Verso Books. Some anonymous South African guy on the internet is not going to negate the Evans book. Binksternet (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see any reason to change the article text and casualty numbers. Binksternet (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right. In German Wikipedia we face the same problem of permanent manipulation of these numbers, usually by IPs or "new" accounts of the ever the same far right fringe people. They like to exploit inconsistencies and mistakes for their purposes. So an article on this matter should be very accurate. However, this article contains several ambiguities about these numbers:
  • The introduction says: "Between 22,000 and 25,000 people were killed". Where is the source for the minimum "22,000" in the article?
  • The last sentence in section "Casualties" (apparently the only sentence indirectly referring to a minimum) reads: "...stated that a maximum of 25,000 people were killed, of which 20,100 are known by name.[83][84]". If these names are known and no other hint for a minimum is given, 20,100 seems to be it. That's inconsistent to the 22,000 in the introduction.
  • Two sources are given for that sentence. But reference Nr. 84 is only a media article of 2008 on a "preliminary" report, which is a. not as reliable, b. outdated by reference Nr. 83. That link leads to the official Final Report of the Dresden Historian Commission in 2010, pages 50 and 67.
  • Page 50 belongs to a section titled: "Auswertung der Datenbasis personenbezogener Daten", english: "Evaluation of the data base of person-related data." Quote:
"In der Datenbasis sind Informationen zu etwa 24.900 namentlich bekannten Dresdner Luftkriegstoten enthalten, von denen etwa 20.100 sicher oder wahrscheinlich im Februar 1945 getötet wurden." English: "The data base includes informations about approximatly 24,900 namely known Dresden citizens killed by air raids, of which approximatly 20,100 were certainly or probably killed in February 1945."
This obviously represents only part of the whole evaluations and refers only to the namely known deads, not including the unknown deads for which there is also a data base. So this is not a conclusive minimum estimate; page 50 cannot count as source for that.
  • This conclusion should be found on page 67 in the last section of the report under the title "Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse" ("summary of the results"). Quote:
"Bei den Luftangriffen auf Dresden vom 13. bis 15. Februar 1945 wurden bis zu 25.000 Menschen getötet." English: "Within the Dresden air raids from February 13 to 15, 1945, 25,000 humans were killed." No minimum estimate is given there.
"Die Untersuchung der Bergung, Registratur und Bestattung der Luftkriegstoten ergab mindestens 18000 Tote, ..." English: "The investigation of recovery, registration and burrial of those killed by the air raids [in Dresden in February 1945] revealed at least 18,000 dead, ..."
Now this is a real minimum number; not an estimate, but a factual result.
  • But this was not the last word of the Historian Commission. It stated on S. 34 of that book:
"Um zu prüfen, ob die Einzelnachweise in den Unterlagen des Heidefriedhofs unvollständig sind, wird das Projektteam die in der Datenbasis erfassten Informationen zum Heidefriedhof noch einmal im Detail untersuchen..." English: "To check whether the single evidence in the documents of the Heide-Cemetery is incomplete, the project team will examine the information recorded in the data base for Heide-Cemetery in detail again."
  • This examination was finished a few months later. In April 2010 they found documents on additional 1.600 unknown dead bodies burried on that cemetery. So the minimum number totals to 22,700. Source:
"Die Kommission kann über 20.000 Tote namentlich benennen und geht insgesamt von mindestens 22.700 Opfern aus. Das sind über 4.000 Opfer mehr als zuvor gedacht. Bisher ging man von mindestens 18.000 Opfern aus. Die maximale Zahl der möglichen Opfer schätzen Wissenschaftler weiterhin auf 25.000 Menschen." English: "The Commission can name over 20,000 deads and assumes a total of at least 22,700 victims. These are over 4,000 more victims than previously thought. So far at least 18,000 victims were assumed. Scientists still estimate the maximum number of possible victims to 25,000 people."
So the introduction and the last sentence in section 2.4 should be completed and corrected accordingly. I will do that in a moment. Kopilot (talk) 09:42, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Kopilot (talk) 10:02, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The last sentence of the 1st paragraph in the lede says "Between 22,700 and 25,000 people were killed." Then the last sentence in the last paragraph of the lede states the 25,000 number again. Does it need to address the actual number of casualties twice in the lede? 98.209.42.117 (talk) 10:05, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's necessary here: the first time is in the opening paragraph where the event is succinctly described; the second instance, three paragraphs later, deals with the still rumbling 'controversy' about the death figure, saving the reader from having to scoot back to the first paragraph to check the inflated level of the figures given by the Nazis and their apologists. Alfietucker (talk) 11:15, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Kopilot, in the section casualties he text says "Three municipal and 17 rural cemeteries outside Dresden recorded up to 30 April 1945 a total of at least 21,895 buried bodies of the Dresden raids, including those cremated on the Altmarkt.", and two paragraphs down it says "A further 1,858 bodies were discovered during the reconstruction of Dresden between the end of the war and 1966". That would make a total of 23,753 known bodies. -- PBS (talk) 19:17, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A German wartime message has been found that says 100,000+- were missing in addition to the 20,000+ bodies recovered. This message was in the possesion of the British. Looks like the earlier numbers were closer to the truth( not a wiki goal). 159.105.80.64 (talk) 19:08, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All those details have been accounted for. This isn't new news. Rmhermen (talk) 20:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The death toll given by revisionist German historians is obviously false. Unless you believe Germans to be actual Superhumans whose bureaucracy works perfectly right through the end of the war and massive firebombing you will consider these facts: Dresden was considered a safe city by many refuges because it had no industry contributing to the war, therefore no air raid was expected. These refuges never registered due to the chaos. The reports after the bombing e.g. from American POWs speak of molten stones, compare that to reports from the Vietnam war where large casualty numbers from bombing with Napalm were given although hardly any bodies were found. The obvious conclusions are that a) more people were inside the city than officially registered and b) the bodies of virtually everybody aboveground were incinerated and could not be retrieved. The 20.000 bodies found and identified were from those persons who were inside air raid shelters that protected from the heat but had insufficient supply of oxygen. A better idea of the actual casualties are given by the numbers of inhabitants: December 31. 1944 566.738 -> April 30. 1945 368.519 Within four months, 200.000 inhabitants had vanished. Directly after the war tens of thousands of refuges were relocated to the city, among them my own family. These relocations were possible because the original owners did not exist any more. Historians who claim that only 20.000 died probably also think that only 333 humans died when the Titanic sank (number of recovered bodies), the other 1200 victims just walked off or what? Even published "scientists" write complete bullshit, I really deplore that Wikipedia reiterates that instead of relying on other, better works! (80.133.123.101 (talk) 01:37, 16 April 2014 (UTC))[reply]

The above contribution is well reasoned and placed, and a statement that is with all respect overdue. (John G. Lewis (talk) 00:00, 17 October 2014 (UTC))[reply]

Has a deplorable and in this case disgusting policy, shapred through years of strife and bureaucracy that declares that anything cited enough trumps any argument of logic. This is the sad state of this now soulless machine. 78.68.210.173 (talk) 01:11, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Evan's numbers were published before the more recent German investigation published their sources. Clearly the German who wrote under with an IP address of 80.133.123.101 (English language usage is to use commas to denote 1,000s), is either being disingenuous or does not know how the figures were derived. The German writes

  • "revisionist German historians" an interesting propaganda inversion for a term usually used for David Irving who is the major proponent for inflated numbers of casualties.
  • "more people were inside the city than officially registered" says who?
  • "A better idea of the actual casualties are given by the numbers of inhabitants: December 31. 1944 566.738 -> April 30. 1945 368.519" So suddenly the figures that before were unreliable have become reliable?
  • "200.000 inhabitants had vanished." They had not vanished. By this stage of the war one could not eat in Germany without a ration card. The fact is (as the article says) "35,000 people were registered with the authorities as missing after the raids, around 10,000 of whom were later found to be alive".

The Number killed, missing etc are detailed in the section Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Casualties all of the facts are backed up with inline citation to reliable sources.

Take 35,000 registered missing and subtract those who were later found alive and one gets a figure of about 25,000 which is roughly the number that were found to have been killed by counting the dead. This is a form of double entry book keeping. The numbers also tally with what is found by doing a statistical analysis of the dead from similar Allied bombing raids. If there had been a large discrepancy between any of these then questions should be asked about the accuracy of the figures. However as they tally it is a good indication that the numbers derived in three different ways is probably accurate. Therefore if the numbers are to be challenged then as Exceptional claims require exceptional sources.

@user:154.69.27.250, user:80.133.123.101, User:John G. Lewis, user:78.68.210.173 and user:Cspoleta where are the exceptional sources?

-- PBS (talk) 18:52, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The "Mail" is a right-wing British paper, that wants to minimise the extent that Britain killed civilians during the Second World War. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Azul441 (talk • contribs) 11:42, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Official British Inquiries on necessity/justification

JuanRiley 23:10, 26 August 2014 diff "Undid revision 622637845 by PBS (talk) reverting good faith edit of PBS..the emptiness was clearly there as indicative as no RS src yet for such..talk room?"

  1. I dislike you placing "reverting good faith edit of PBS" in an edit commentary as it can be read that you think I also make bad faith edits.
  2. The use of empty sections is discouraged.
  3. If there is no reliable source then any mention in this article is OR. I have no recollection of any such enquiry and so the WP:BURDEN is on you before you restore my edit to produced in line reliable sources that such an enquiry has been made.

I think your revert shows a profound misunderstanding of the difference between the RAF acceptance of the need for area bombing of city centres and that of Americans who liked to pretend that what they did was precision bombing, ignoring the facts of their bomb mix and their blind bombing of precision targets like railway marshalling yards in city centres using H2X. The official British view on the raid was summed up by Harris at the time "Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things."

--PBS (talk) 10:32, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the section. A single uncited sentence without context. It could be construed as POV in that it could be interpreted that the was some sort of cover-up or avoidance of the issue. There has been much coverage of the subject, there should be some source that says if there was any consideration of the subject (including area bombing as a whole rather than specifically Dresden) post-war in official circles. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:14, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I fear that PBS is a wee bit sensitive. Ignoring his issues, I do admit to some truth behind the old cliche that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and thus it may well be OR to explicitly state the apparent lack of any official British inquiries. I am okay with deleting it for this reason and leave it up to a discerning reader to note the absence. Frankly, it is not clear to me which is better... ignoring complicity or whitewashing it. But that's a POV--which the deleted section was 'not' guilty of. Juan Riley (talk) 23:30, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PBS Saying "reverting good-faith edit" is a common and friendly practice that I too adopt when I think of it, in the general case obviously there is no implication meant that your other edits are bad. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:42, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is a lazy practise when used indiscriminately (a breach of AGF), and that it can only be viewed as a friendly practice when reverting edits by an IP addresses or a new editor to reassure them that the reversal is because their edit is misguided and not malignant. It also serve a secondary purpose of informing an experienced editor who views the history of the page that if this IP address makes another edit to the page it should be viewed in context as it may not be simple case of vandalism etc.
If an editor is using a user name I do not recognise, to see if it is a new editor, it is necessary to look at the history of the editor's user name (therefore if I were to revert an edit you make, because you are an experienced editor, I would never start the reversal with "reverting good faith edit of Rolf h nelson:" instead I would do you the courtesy of explaining in as much details as possible in the history the reason and suggest we discuss it on the talk page). I would do this because I assume good faith among all experienced editors and so do not need to tell the world that you have a made a "good faith edit [on this occasion]". -- PBS (talk) 10:47, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't personally heard anyone complain before, but feel free to propose on WP:AGF or WP:Twinkle that there should be a guideline one way or another about this common practice. In either case, it's widespread enough that this won't be the last time you see it; it's obviously your decision whether you want to get offended by it despite the overwhelming evidence that it's not generally meant in a negative way. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 17:02, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, total RAF bomb tonnage on Germany 1939-45 was 955,044 long tons.
Total RAF bomb tonnage on Germany 1939-45 by city was:
All figures are long tons.
from an August 1945 issue of Flight here: [1]
BTW, there was 'no official British enquiry' simply because Dresden was just another raid of the kind that RAF Bomber Command had been carrying out on other German cities for the previous three years. It was of no special interest other than being a target that had not previously been bombed by the RAF and by being at an unusually long range from the RAF airfields, hence petrol loads were large and bomb loads small, and total flying time was around nine hours, as opposed to around six hours for attacks on Berlin. The resulting devastation and extensive fires were noticed by aircrews over the target, but as far as any 'controversy' is concerned that only started to emerge after reports began coming in from neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, and these were dismissed as being based on Nazi propaganda - any sympathy there may have been for the unfortunates of Dresden didn't last long as two months later Bergen-Belsen was liberated and pictures from it published all over the world. Then in the post-war years the-then East German government under influence from Moscow attempted to stir up trouble between NATO allies by exaggerating casualties figures during the Cold War.
Dresden had not been bombed by the RAF previously because it was at extreme range which would have necessitated a nine-hour flight over defended territory, which in turn would have potentially resulted in large RAF losses, for a target which at that stage in the war was only of minor industrial importance. By 1945 however with the industry in the cities listed above more or less destroyed, Dresden then took on a higher relative importance; simply put, the other cities were more or less completely burnt-out and no longer worth bombing. In addition, the constriction of the Kammhuber Line made such a long flight much less risky for the aircrews. Then Stalin asked for attacks in the East, and so Dresden then became important. That's why Dresden was bombed.
The destroyed state of the main German industrial cities is why the RAF had by then transferred its attentions to the lesser cities and towns, such as Pforzheim, Braunschweig and Darmstadt, because whereas previously they had only been of minor industrial importance, by late 1944-early 1945 they had assumed an importance they had not held previously.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.220.15 (talk) 11:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Further reading

Further reading list (as of 27 august 2014)
  • Bergander, Götz (1977). Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen. Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag.
  • Hansen, Randall (2008). Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385664035.
  • Hansen, Randall. "An Air Raid Like Any Other". Nationalpost.com.[dead link]
  • Irving, David (1963). The Destruction of Dresden. London.

I have moved the further reading list here. I thin that over time it has become too large. I suggest that the list in article space is kept to about half a dozen books and or articles. As there are so many to choose from I suggest that the members of the list are are restricted to reliable sources. I am going to leave one source in the Further reading section so that it remains open. Others can select the best half dozen or so to add to it.-- PBS (talk) 20:23, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]


I find it easier to identify the weakest members of the list (Strictly web pages should be "External links" and dead trees should be under "Further reading") Anyhow, there are some obvious issues; the Rosenthal photo link is dead, and any other dead (or out of date links) need sorting out if they are to stay. Anything in German which relies upon text to deliver content/navigation is probably not accessible for the average article reader. e.g. die Neue Dresden is a lot about the architecture before and after, and I suspect the text is where most of the content is. Irving's reputation for accuracy has taken a pasting, thought he might have been more on the level in the 1960s. (PS If these aren't actual references, we can lose the access dates). GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:24, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Irving definitely should not be there, as Evens says not one sentence that Irving has written can be trusted. In fact the top four in the above list were placed there by me during my clean-up yesterday. The four had been in the Reference section but they were not supporting as inline citations. I disagree with your statesman web pages should be in External links, because for example the difference between a news item that has a link and one that doesn't is marginal and arbitrary. I think that access dates are useful (With those it is easier to find archived url's if any exist, and also if a dead link is likely to be really dead or that the website is just down). However my initial and main point is that I don't think that there should be much more than half a dozen items in further reading as the references section contains a good overall bibliography with mention of most of the books that detail the raids with a wide POV.
In looking through the list of further reading I restored two. The late John Keegan is a very well known and influential military historian so his views are notable in this context. The BBC article makes the point that the horrific pictures were released a Nazi propaganda and likewise for their own reasons the British did not release similar photographs for the opposite propaganda motive (under the pretext of protecting relatives). One see this propaganda still being played out today with such things a s moral outrage when enemies show downed captured British aircraft crews,[2] and justifying it under GCIII.13 about "[protection against] public curiosity". -- PBS (talk) 09:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly disagree with this removal. You are now the judge of reliability? E.g., aint it nice that you like Keegan? Talk about OR (with a dash of POV)! However, I am going to leave it up to someone else since you apparently have a problem with me. Juan Riley (talk) 23:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject"

Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.[1]

The BBC quoted Professor Evans further:-

Irving, (...) had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. (...) Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all."[2]

Notes
  1. ^ Evans, Richard J. "Chapter 6. General Conclusion". Holocaust Denial On Trial: Expert Witness Report. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  2. ^ Walker, Andrew (20 February 2006). "UK | Profile: David Irving". BBC News. Retrieved 2 September 2011.

In presenting his ruling at the David Irving vs Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt trial, Mr. Justice Gray concluded (Paragraph 13.167) that he found the following claims against Irving to be 'substantially true':

Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.

"John Keegan, an Englishman widely considered to be the pre-eminent military historian of his era and the author of more than 20 books, including the masterwork 'The Face of Battle'," Obituary in the NYT (2 August 2012). "The Face of battle" (1976) was a seminal work.[3] He has been criticised for his views on Clausewitz;s ideas, but the criticism is of the type expected in academia, he died with his reputation as a military historian intact, and no one since has suggested that he was anything but an objective historian. As to Irving's reputation the quotes above sum it up. Do you know of one reliable source that has cited any of Irving's works since he lost his libel case? -- PBS (talk) 10:14, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

That's just rhetorical baby-talk. You're actually trying to use one judge's opinion as absolute arbitration on whether or not a source is reliable? Laughable and indefensible. 70.105.236.121 (talk) 16:45, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No he is not. In fact he is using one previously listed further reading (which is quite questionable) as a justification for his purging a whole list of such without addressing each in turn. Juan Riley (talk) 19:20, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Please reread the first posting I made to this section. I have picked one title and left it to other editors to select another half dozen or so from the deleted list. -- PBS (talk) 19:07, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Far-left in Germany

The section "Far-left in Germany" either needs moving up into the justified section or it needs to be deleted under WP:UNDUE. I think that it should be deleted. -- PBS (talk) 11:18, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd put it together (though trimmed down) with the Far-right, and what the middle ground of German politics thinks, as a general section on the current German position. At the moment the whole series of dogmatic-titled subsections with make the Table of Contents look rather skewed. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:12, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative theories anyone?

The US fighterplanes is supposed to have hovered above Dresden just for the sake of machinegunning the civil populace before the bombing would start. If we say this happened, is it because they would burn more easily, or shut up about something (like the fact that Nazism never was popular in Dresden), or are we just on about an altenative theory ? --Stat-ist-ikk (talk) 07:48, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia?!

As a Portuguese, nor I nor my country have anything to do with this historical event, I just want to pronounce myself as a Wikipedia contributor. It seems clearly, according to every report and documentary I have been reading about the Dresden bombarding, that the partiality of this article is quite evident. That's the bad thing of Wikipedia, people write with passion, with patriotic approach, and not with scientific criteria. Wikipedia is not the place for you to redeem your ancestor's sins.João Pimentel Ferreira 17:02, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

'... independent Historian (sic) commission'

I'd suggest either commission of historians or historians' commission for the German Historikerkommission and a lower case H. The present version sticks out as an inept translation. Things like that tend to give an article an unintended whiff of amateurishness. Any objections to changing it? Norvo (talk) 02:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Britain bombed Germany first

Closing discussion initiated by sockpuppet of banned HarveyCarter. Binksternet (talk) 19:58, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Should the article mention the fact that the RAF bombed Germany first in 1939? (JeffersonStar (talk) 12:32, 9 February 2015 (UTC))[reply]

Not really relevant this late in the war. Leaving aside 'reaping the whirlwind', bombing early in the war was generally by small numbers of aircraft and scrupulous in its attempt to avoid civilians. GraemeLeggett (talk) 22:34, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
People often try to justify the destruction of Dresden by talking about Coventry or the London Blitz, so I think this article should point out the fact that Britain bombed German cities first. (JeffersonStar (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2015 (UTC))[reply]
You are forgetting the German Zeppelins over London in WWI. Binksternet (talk) 16:32, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The article on strategic bombing in World War I says the British air force bombed a zeppelin factory in Cologne on 22 September 1914, and the Germans were only allowed to bomb London in May 1915 after the British had already bombed cities in Germany. (JeffersonStar (talk) 16:51, 10 February 2015 (UTC))[reply]
Some people may try to justify the bombing of German cities but then again many people don't consider any justification necessary. "What goes around comes around" as they say - "They sowed the wind ...".
Personally I also don't consider any justification necessary. They asked for it. They thought that the Luftwaffe was gong to bomb the s**t out of everyone with no comeback on Germany. They were wrong. Until around 1942 many German civilians thought that war was all about victory parades and marching bands. They were wrong. War is unpleasant, and the bombing of German cities taught the average German 'man in the street' that.
Twice in twenty years the German people had followed a lunatic leader into completely unprovoked and unjustified wars, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and later millions, of innocent people. So no, the bombing didn't need any 'justification'. They asked for it.
That fact may be unpleasant to some, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Having their cities bombed was one of the unfortunate prices the German people had to pay for removing Hitler from power - who they had elected back in 1933. It's a shame they were unable to do that for themselves before all those millions of lives were lost.
If you elect a mass-murdering lunatic into power (and allow him or her to remain there) then you have only yourself to blame if it has unfortunate consequences for yourself. In other words, in a democracy - which Germany was, at least in 1933 - you have a responsibility to keep your government in-check - no matter what politicians might like or say. And until 1942 many Germans thought Hitler wonderful. By 1945 many had changed their mind. What a shame it took them so long, and at such cost. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.29.18.220 (talk) 11:20, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV Tag

I will not repeat the arguments given in article 1, this page, "Death Totals Again".

Most of this article is well written and comprehensive in it's coverage. However I strongly object to the biased use of just a few sources out of many (presumably by a small number editors), to support an intentionally low estimate of deaths, whatever the reason. Among other things there is selective cherry picking of evidence - as in the citation of two obscure german sources to support the article's principal estimates - one a newspaper, without giving any details or caveats of the estimates; and without mentioning other points of view. The insertion of the section about "Holocaust deniers" would seem to be out of place, and the unproven statement as to the 200,000 death estimate being propaganda of the Nazis all seem to fit into a pattern of attempting smear anyone who wants to actually minimizing the horror of Dresden, which goes beyond numbers.

It does not mention the problems of counting, identification, and disposal of bodies killed by smoke and asphyxia but then incenerated in the 1,000 degree temperatures of the Firestorm. It doesn't mention the similarly wide divergence of death totals found by different estimators in the Iraq War; say between Iraq Body Count - which relied on published newspaper accounts, and the surveys done by the British Medical Journal The Lancet.

When 1,250 heavy bombers attack one small city, which had never suffered a major attack in six previous years of war, this suggests that something unusual is going on. The article mentions the use of both conventional and incendiary bombs but does not explain the theory behind Firebombing a theory which was tested, with success, over Dresden. It was a pure revenge attack and many English people said so at the time, albeit approvingly. One comparison that springs to mind is Hiroshima, also previously untouched, which was openly chosen as an ideal location to measure the destructiveness of the A bomb - because it was a "clean" target. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cspoleta (talk • contribs) 15:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC) Cspoleta (talk) 16:16, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cspoleta - I don't understand why you inserted the NPOV tag. Everything that you raised questions about has been addressed in the article. Your second paragraph especially does mention the issue of disposal of x number of bodies. No "...theory behind firebombing..." is needed, albeit in a separate article. Why the tag? Dinkytown talk 21:46, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Cspoleta. I am going to remove the template. It has been there for weeks and no reliable sources have been produced to challenge any of the content of the article. Comments like "1,250 heavy bombers attack one small city, which had never suffered a major attack in six previous years of war, this suggests that something unusual is going on" It is explained why it was attacked in the article. Indeed many of your comments indicate that you have not read the detail. If you want to engage in a detailed discussion of the facts in this article then please indicate which sentences you think are biased and produce reliable sources that support you contention. For example you says "and the unproven statement as to the 200,000 death estimate being propaganda of the Nazis" do you have a reliable source that claims that 200,000 is and accurate figure and not one based on the war time forgery that David Irving used? -- PBS (talk) 19:02, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The RAF attacks on Dresden were just a normal type of RAF night attack that places such as Berlin, Essen, Cologne, etc. had been undergoing for the past two years, as can be seen by the list of bomb tonnages in the section above, and as a matter of fact Dresden doesn't even make the list of most bombed cities. In fact, the French towns of Bolougne and Calais had a far higher tonnage of bombs dropped on them by the RAF than Dresden - at around 2,353 long tons - did.
... and if the British had wanted to carry out 'revenge' attacks, they could have sent the same number of bombers carrying the same load, over again the next night, and again the next night. In one 24-hour period RAF Bomber Command dropped over 10,000 long tons of bombs on Duisburg and Brunswick. If they had wanted to they could have done that to Dresden. They didn't.
BTW, Dresden got around 2,353 long tons dropped on it by the RAF. Berlin got 45,517. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.31.130.99 (talk) 12:15, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Accuracy Issues Comment

The line "The attack was carried out in direct violation of international law..."

If you take the time to read the actual citation you may find, at least in my interpretation, that the citation doesn't actually say anything of the sort. It's disappointing but I could be misreading it.

"So long and thanks for all the fish." (talk) 00:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. The line is an extrapolation and not directly stated in either of the cited sources. I have removed the line per WP:NOR. Mbarbier (talk) 19:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The text added was:

The attack was carried out in direct violation of international lawhttp://www.dannen.com/decision/int-law.html#D and the Hague Convention of 1907.

This has been raised many times before, and there is a whole article dedicated to it. (The text used to be in this and some other articles and was centralised into one see Aerial bombardment and international law). The legal position is that there was no positive international law controlling aerial bombardment as there was for both naval and land based bombardments. So it is not correct to say that the bombardment was a "direct violation of international law". The current article has a summary section on this: Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Legal considerations, as to whether the attacks were a breach of the general laws of war, is part of the debate as described in this article. So any statement in the lead that it was or was not a breach of international law is expressing a non-neutral point of view. Also in this specific case the editor who added the sentence is extrapolating an position from primary sources, which contradict many secondary sources. This is a breach of WP:PSTS -- PBS (talk) 18:16, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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