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Germany 1945 ▶ Bombing of Dresden () by RAF Royal Air Force/ USAAF Air Force @GERMANHISTORYARCHIVE Playlist ▶ The attacks on Dresden, capital of Saxony, were carried out in several waves and alternately by the US Army Air Force and the RAF Royal Air Force. Further air raids on Dresden were already carried out in January 1945 and April 1945, here also with thousands of dead. At the time of the bombing, the city was overcrowded with refugees from the eastern regions of present-day Poland (Silesia, Pomerania) and Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland). Numerous prisoners of war were in the city. Dresden was an important hub for transports by rail, but had no significant air defence, since the Wehrmacht leadership did not expect any attacks on this important cultural city. Many German refugees came to Dresden because the city was considered safe from air raids. From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II (1939-45), Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in central Germany, today east. The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians—estimated at somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000–were dead. British sources and journalists in 1946 speak of about 100,000 dead. By February 1945, the jaws of the Allied vise were closing shut on Nazi Germany. In the west, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) desperate counteroffensive against the Allies in Belgium’s Ardennes forest had ended in total failure. In the east, the Red army had captured East Prussia and reached the Oder River, less than 50 miles from Berlin. The once-proud Luftwaffe was a skeleton of an air fleet, and the Allies ruled the skies over Europe, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Germany every day. #history #ww2 #Dresden #Germany #Sachsen #saxony #ww #bombing #worldwar2 #military #airfoce #Luftangriff #visitdresden
