My great uncle served in Italy’s campaign in Greece. After the armistice, he tried to come back to Italy but was apprehended by the germans, which imprisoned him in a concentration camp more than 50 kms away from Dresden. He told stories about how they could see the lights of the bombs and feel the ground shake from where they stood during the bombing. Thankfully he was able to survive the camps and died peacefully in 1998
One of my grandpas also died in 1998, born 1922. He was a German soldier on the western front in France 1941, as he came from Westphalia. My other grandpa was born 1923 and died in 2011. He served on the eastern front in Russia, actually most of the time in today's Ukraine from 1942 onwards. He came from east Germany, Cottbus, and after the war studied in nearby Dresden. Students to enroll at university had to work a certain amount of ours to rebuild university schooling rooms (also in other parts of Germany). Why was your great uncle imprisoned then?
@@patriciabrenner9216 Pity that you only wish other people's death somehow ^^ Damning all kind of war crimes and genocides is important, thats one thing. Being opposed to war in general is good too, it is another thing. Being called in as a soldier despite your own views and under certain social and historical circumstances is a third thing. A woman can have a big mouth on that.
On my tour through Dresden, they said desperate people were jumping into fountains, only to die instantly as the water was boiling at over 1,000° Fahrenheit. Horrifying.
from my grandfather's logbook "13. 02. 45. Hardly any opposition. Target only. 70 miles from russian lines at Breslau. City a mass of flames. Inspiring sight. Made a wide circuit of the target to give boys a peep"
@@Attmay says the who? The history books? The people who rule the world and consider us normal people as trash? History is never taught properly in schools, public or home. It is up to the individual to judge both sides of the story, not just the one we are indoctrinated with yearly.
Historians are still arguing over the number of deaths. But look at those firestorms. There is just no way only 25-40k people died; it was well North of that, easily. Dresden had its own population and was filled with refugees and military ready to ship out to Russia. Where were people to go to escape those firestorms and scorching heat? Nowhere.
My theory lately is maybe this raid was given the go ahead to kill as many people as possible who escaped from east to prevent them revealing the truth about Russian crimes. Maybe not, whatever the reason it can't be justified.
Italians were the worst military in ww2, ran away half the time got rodgered when they did fight and then switched sides. I can see why your salty about the history of ww2 because your country were an embarrassment.
@@africanlipplateandbonenose3223 Dresden bombing was a war crime, like Hiroshima was. Also Germany's and Russia's eliminating prisoners of war were war crimes. - There is no war without war crimes, also if one calls them "collateral damage". That's euphemistic but doesn't change fhe facts.
It's interesting to note that, as this and other Allied bombing raids took place across Germany, the Ministry of Propaganda was still actively producing films (under "Die Deustche Wochenschau") claiming that the war was in Germany's favor. The last Wochenschau film from March 20th, 1945 even showed Hitler himself in Berlin. I highly recommend viewing these late-war films because it shows the last months of the war from a unique perspective.
I'm German. I was in hospital in 2017 for a month. I had an surprisingly fit 89 years old man on my room, who told me stories about WW2 (like how he was able to avoid the Hitlerjugend etc.) and he said in the radio you would hear that the war is going great, that the victory would be close and then finally you would see armed Russian soldiers walking down the streets and you would need to run, since they also shot many civilians. It's really crazy how they lied to the population for so long and how they were able to hide concentration camps and the real bad stuff from like 90% of the military. Hitler and his men didn't trust ANYONE except the SS.
Baghdad Bob was hilarious in 2003. He was on live TV saying how Iraq was winning the war and the Americans were so close they almost nabbed him during his report.
Actual bomber pilots in WW2: Jesus Christ what we have unleashed hell down there on innocent mother's and children! Their grandkids: 🤓 Well actually it was deserved because they did it first. This goes for both sides.
How on Earth does this go for both sides? What kind of twisted thinking is that? Brits: This will pay them back for bombing civilians in Belgium, the Netherlands and London and starting the war in Europe! Nazis: We will bomb them because they did not surrender and just go quietly to the gas chambers when we started the war!
My great grandpa was 16 and in the Waffen SS by that time, he had to search for bodies in the burnt and collapsed buildings and afterwards never talked about it again and cried every time when he did. He didn't wanna have something to do with this time and even cut out his tattoos with his blood-type and number
considered ur great grandpa was a very lucky lad,, Soviet red army, French army or even sometimes GI would 3x3cuted SS on sight whether they surrender or not
Yes...also those who were tried to be excused with others. Like the fev hitler supporters being killed in Dresden against all the millions that died in the KZs and battlefields that Hitler started...
Easy to say as a german. Why did germans destroy Warsaw and Rotterdam? Every action gets a reaction. Only the germans are to blame. Shouldnt start ww2 and Dresden would be Beautiful but germans wanted war
Dresden? There is not such a place any longer." "I want to point out, that besides Essen, we never actually considered any particular industrial sites as targets. The destruction of industrial sites always was some sort of bonus for us. Our real targets always were the inner cities. - Arthur Harris
@@Ah01 what a joy we weren't alive to make these decisions for our society. The moral high ground is bonkers when one starts killing someone else's people. Any action to stop legitimate threat and a peer at that is acceptable.
@@Ben942K Yes, it can be called moral high ground, if you will. It can also be, that those commenting from the safety and comfort of any western country may have different perspective and family history concerning the slavery, that sovjets (and their western cronies) provided for us east europeans.
@@Ah01 As I said... The moral high ground isn't present in war and it's naive, judging from history, to believe one side should. While they absolutely could, thankfully we didn't need to make those decisions while facing a serious threat from people were looking to conquer more people.
Actually it's worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And atomic bombing could be understood, because Japanese planned to drop a bio bomb on California. And also because Soviets could invade and capture Japan. But Dresden is not so important city to bomb into dust is, of course superfluous.
It amazes me how people when mentioning Dresden don’t understand what happened to Coventry, London, Portsmouth, Southampton, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull etc. It’s quite incredible that people don’t comprehend how much worse the bombing of Tokyo was to this. Complaining about war crimes, don’t see the residents of the British cities complaining about war crimes 80 + years later.
It’s because the post WW2 era is coming to an end as we enter a new world order, and every crank amateur revisionist historian is coming out of the woodwork to redefine the narrative of WW2. It’s similar to the cycle of generational rebellion of children against parents except on steroids, and spanning a long adult lifetime as opposed to a 20-30 year cycle. Nothing is sacred, and no deeply held narrative is safe. Reality and truth are up for grabs. It’s sad, and hopefully the truth of who the “good guys” and “the bad guys” were in this conflict will be defended and upheld.
The German people were Affiliates of the Nazi regime who Agreed on the "TOTALEN KRIEG" meaning society as a whole worked for the German War Economy. Therefor they gave up their title as Civilian and made them a legitimate target to stop the War Machine!!!
You will find, if you can be bothered to check, that there were massive concerns voiced in Parliament and in the media about bombing in this fashion. Churchill sent an internal memo in March 1945 questioning the value of it. Bomber Command were stigmatised for decades, with no campaign medal and no dedicated memorial until 2012. A poor thanks for the 50% casualties they suffered. So don't talk utter trash.
There was no civilian city in Germany during WW2, nor in Britain either for that matter. If a city was in military use and had military value, it was fair game.
it's a legitimate target it has major railroad infrastructure it's being used as a staging ground the wehrmacht to do a counter attack on the soviets it also has a large industrial center making it a valid target to be bombed at
This is why Europe will never have peace. Revenge thirsty and short sighted evil people like you. If you think revenge is a good recipe for war, you have learned nothing!
As a Belgian, I have not forgotten that our vasal troops followed the French into the occupation of the German industrial area 1921-23, to impose the impossible reparations decided at the Versailes Treaty 1919, which btw Maynard Keynes had run away from in dismay. We drove Germans into hyperinflation, hunger and political madness. The RAF started bombing German cities on 11th May 1940 and went on for 3 months before the Luftwaffe retaliated in August. Before WW I, we had British Mackinder geopolitics, French vengefulness (after they had lost the war they had declared on Germany 1870) and encirclement of Germany with Russia. Here, a few kilometers from Waterloo, I know about Napoleon killing millions all over Europe till 1815. Unforgotten is a British "peaceful" colonial supercilious attitude causing misery for millions of underlings on all continents. The US Empire has been bombing everywhere for 77 years now. Today, Poles are still thankful for the part of Germany given to them by the Russians, but complain about the Russian package settlement because they want more money. No need for a holier than thou attitude in any country, I dare say.
Strange thing.. the Soviet army which defeated the german army in over 4 years of war.never planned and carried out the carpet bombing of german cities..
@@michaelengel3407 Japan and Germany combined killed 60 million people, the western allies AT THE ABOSOLUTE WORSE, killed less than 5 million. Of course, that 5 million (which is EXTREMELY high-balling it) is still a lot, but Japan and Germany are way worse. Also, Many neo-nazis and Werahboos still idolize and spread myths about the werchmact and Nazi Regime. Meanwhile Japan, hasn't even legally regonized there war crimes.
Do you realise that the Nazi's concentration camps were still in full operation as this raid took place. Without raids like this, they would have continued.
A lot of people seem to be shocked that the civilian casualty estimates aren’t higher. I responded to someone else’s comment on here the following, and I’d be interested to hear from some students of military history their thoughts on my response: “My understanding is that most of the deaths were due to asphyxiation, and that much fewer people died from direct hits or burns from the incendiaries or other explosives themselves. Despite the horrific scale of this attack, I imagine that the vast majority of residents were still able to dodge and hide from the barrage. People tend to forget that even in densely populated cities, there are so many gaps of sparse population, and these types of campaigns were not very accurate at all. It’s not like they were doing precision hits to apartment buildings. If you take all of this into account and consider the relatively short, albeit voluminous campaign, the estimates of 45,000 people is still quite shocking.”
It was a very smart move by the allies. Apparently U.K. intelligence was spreading rumours that they would never bomb Dresden because Churchill had a family member living there . He knew all the Nazi generals would go there to hide etc
Except that most civilisations have, to some extent at any rate. Sherman is literally one of the most famous butchers of civilians in history, so he would say that, wouldn't he?
@@LarryDaLobstah He wrote: '"we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." And: "during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age."
Vile and petty to say the least. Why was this done? Germany was collapsing by this point, and from the looks of it, the bombers paid more attention to destroying historical buildings, not the industry that supplied the army.
@@GeorgRv22 I Mr. one-ball hadn't decided he really wanted to take over the world, the British would not be bombing Germany at all. He's the worst human being of ALL TIME.
@@Bigfishfun333what is terrorism? British empire killed 200 million people in india and Africa and other part of world is called real terrorism which your education system didn't tought you in history class because as winston churchill say "history is always written by the winners "
The WW1 zeppelin raids on the UK were the first bombing campaign targeting civilians. This was carried on into WW2 by the Nazis via Spain, while they committed numerous war crimes with the support of their people and army including systematically murdering whole populations. The air campaign was one of the few ways the west could hit back and its technology was limited. The regret of Dresden was that it wasn’t needed and sullies the reputation of the forces that carried it out.
@@patriciabrenner9216 So it's okay to punish injustice with injustice? With this attitude history will only repeat itself, please reconsider your opinion.
@@ajcso7844 you need to learn the difference between a normal war and total war. So the British should sit back and let the nazis destroy their cites and do nothing? Thank god you weren’t running the country.
Given what was done to Stalingrad, St Petersburg, and Warsaw expect some retaliation. Germany and Japan are now good international citizens, maybe the memory of what happened has produced the change of attitude.
How is Dresden a genocide Dresden was a legitimate target. For one it was home to a railway center that sent supplies to the eastern front or were the Soviets were fighting the German’s. Two Dresden also had factories and arms production there. If you wanna use this as an example of what’s going on in Palestine you should research it even the Soviets supported it.
@Sebastokrator Greece should never have been invaded but it was not the Germans that invaded Greece, it was Mussolini with his big shot ego (Greco-Italian War of 1940). When he got into a mess he had to call on his German ally for help and as an ally they were obliged. As for genociding slavs, that's not why Germany invaded Poland. Poland was invaded because of the Polish massacres of the ethnic German minority that lived in Poland. 58,000 were killed, many in the Bromberg massacre. You can read the details in the document released at the time titled "The Polish atrocities against the German minority in Poland", compiled by Hans Schadewaldt.
@@footballnick2 what was he’s crime? Doing exactly what the Germans were doing all over Europe? It’s called total war my friend, fighting fire with fire. That is just the sad reality of war.
cause and effect, there was a saying about eyes.... anyway a population complacent to mass murder will unavoidably see a return on their investment manifest. thou shall not kill means period! this is an example of cause and effect. the moment someone starts the evil cycle of violence it will build like a fire as long as people are there to fan the flames. of course its all horrible but evil begets evil remember that. anyone can be caught in the crossfire at any magnitude of evil not just the ones that are so massive they trick you into thinking this isn't part of human nature. This must be understood instead of talked down to. that mindset separates us from our recent ancestors and tricks us into believing the actions of the previous generation were that of some protohuman animal when they are the same people we are and the same people that will follow us. the next gen will sound off similar completely useless emotional sentiment about todays crimes and the cycle will continue because we are not trying to understand the complete nuanced details of a severely complicated situation. my point. everyones hands were in the cookie jar that year giving absolute condemnation to events that shaped exactly where everything lay in the present is just foolish. The point is to understand not condemn. and dont mistake understanding for justification. No killing is justified if you believe what human faiths have to say.
@@Feroxing12 Yes. And Germany was trying to save Europe from the evils of Communism. So not only were we murdering innocent people here, we were murdering heroes
From the British perspective, all this started in late August 1940, the Germans veered off course and did not bomb the airfield they were aiming for due to low cloud cover. They ended up on the 24th August, bombing a civilian part of london. We a few days later launched a few attacks on Berlin. The first one on the 25th August did little damage, but the one on the 27th did more. I believe Hitler was not aware of the German accidental raid on British homes, so that is when he started his so called Blitzkreig on Britain and British cities. So a mistake caused all this mess and then the total war was declared afterwards when all out bombing was ordered. Sorry but it is on the internrt so please read it. The destruction of cities on an industrial scale in this war was unprecedented. Yes maybe Dresden was a war crime but so was Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw (twice), as well. Britsh, Polish, French, Dutch, and Belgian cities were flattened by the luftwaffe. The Russians got it bad also, with Stalingrad, the baltic states, Crimea, and even Moscow being hit. What's done is done, I would and do feel sorry for all those on all sides that were peace loving people thatgot cauggt up in the bombings, great tresures were lost forever, lots of lives too. We should now be in a posotion never to repeat this carnage.
@@patriciabrenner9216 we declared war on Germany as it was heading East completely in the opposite direction to us. Germany v ruthless Stalin and Communism was always going to kick off, we didn't need to get involved. We lost the Empire, lots of the greatest generation and bankrupted ourselves to America. America then spent the next 70 years destroying traditional England with hypa Liberalism, Consumerism and open borders Globalisation.
They did not “want total war.” The Allies declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Germany offered several peace offerings to Britain in 1940 with pretty generous terms. The terms were that Germany leaves France and Belgium but keeps Alsace-Lorraine, and Britain gets to keep all of its colonies, but the Allies can’t intervene in the Eastern War. Britain refused every single peace offering. They even imprisoned one of the German diplomats for 40 years after the war until he killed himself. Now who were the warmongers?
@@destroyer1667 Yet they didn’t declare war on the USSR. 🤔 Not to mention, Germany sent several peace offerings to Britain with quite generous terms: Britain gets to keep all its colonies but can’t intervene in the Eastern War, and Germany leaves France and Belgium but keeps Alsace-Lorraine like before WWI. But Britain refused every single one. And who were the warmongers?
@@staticsnow22 it would be unfeasible to wage a war against both, Germany and the USSR simultaneously so they went for the bigger threat, especially since invading Poland was germanys plan in the first place, the USSR just played along. Also, britain shouldn't accept peace offerings that leave its ally, poland, without their land. The only peace would be germany stopping all war they are waging and leaving all territory they are occupying. And they had to be bombed to oblivion to do that
@@destroyer1667 Right. So an extremely complicated situation in Eastern Europe, where West Prussia, full of ethnic Germans, was given to a new Polish nation so it could have access to the sea. In addition, German citizens of Poland were being severely mistreated and sometimes had their villages raided and massacred by Poles, but that never makes it into the history books. Either way, some arbitrary borders drawn up by Britain and France in the 1910s was worth sacrificing tens of millions of lives and countless historical structures over? Absolutely not
And the Luftwaffe bombing London over and over and over was just oops we missed the air base again? The politicians and the Nazis were the real war criminals.
Blame it on Hitler not the US 😂I can't imagine what the men coming back from war would say about this video if it came out in the 40s....and what your grandparents/great grandparents would do to you if you told them you supported this video.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
@@swagkachu3784 There is no such thing as war crimes, in every war there had been civilian casualties, read some history and you will see that since middle ages people was slaughtered during wars, war crimes are just fancy term to pretend that you are victim of war, during ww2 every nation who was at war made war crimes, Germany done with concentration camps, bombings, uk, Usa with bombings of german cities, Japanese with slaughtering people all over south east asia, Russia with rapes, executions.
@@swagkachu3784 they are not innocent because they identify as citizens of a nation that tried to commit genocide against everybody was not a white heterodegenerate KKKristian.
Kurt Vonnegut was a POW working in Dresden. “On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in 24 hours and destroyed all of Dresden-possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.”
@@Tom_Cruise_Missile well how about if I said that the whole thing was engineered by the very same people who cried wolf. The only sad part about it is the people who really suffered are the civilians of Germany, Russia, england.. ECT and not their generals who were part of the plot. Remember Germany our tribal society no way, were they all of a sudden United against a cause. This was way above and beyond that and was bankrolled by the very same....... wolf
Dresden was a sanctuary city for refugees from the war across Central Europe and Eastern Europe and Germany . Rare to see the film of a genocide . Disturbing.
Sanctuary? The city had just not got bombed yet, and it's luck eventually ran out. When it did It was not a genocide, not even a massacre or a warcrime - it was WW2 style city bombing as usual.
I notice less and less Russians in the comments complimenting their "best friends" for acts like Dresden... *I wonder why?* Maybe because they realize these same hypocritical friends complimenting them today, would glady nuke them tomorrow accompanied by disgusting slurs and jeers...
Victor Gregg - the only british soldier within Desden on this fateful day, a man who has lost all his friends during the war and saw his hometown London bombed -said that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime without comparison, and that Churchill should have been executed for it. Let that sink in.
80 years later, nothing changes. Despite the laws of war seemingly drawing a distinction between civilian and military, we still want to neatly pack both into "good guys" & "bad guys", and justify crossing those lines.
@@patriciabrenner9216crimes like colonized India for centuries or stolen gold from Africa and enslaving them? Or destroying Iraq, no mass weapons found. Or occupied Ireland and destroyed them and wiped mostly the language out? You british shouldn’t talk about morality, you are war criminals too. Blair Too and same for you other prime ministers
Unfortunately you must fight fire with fire in some circumstances, when you face a war machine that wont quit and wants to drag the world down with it, you must take steps no matter how hard in order to win and stop evil from prevailing.
@@TheDeepState2001 Nope doesn't work against a dictatorship with its members deep down under inside bunkers. This was very unneccesary bloodshed. You also try to make it look like 1945 Germany wasn't already down on its knees.
The war was nearly at an end, the allies knew that dresden had no stratigic value, the narrator in the video lied when he says dresden was being used to pump German troops into counter attacks against Russia, there was no German troops, the allies knew this. And they knew the city was jam packed with hundreds of thousands of refuges, the bombing of dresden was one of the greatest war crimes of the war and the deliberate vengeful mass murder of German civilians,, for which no one was made to answer for, the man who ordered the bombing was air marshal Tedder and he should have been tried as a war criminal.
Do you genuinely believe that Dresden was one of the greatest war crimes? By that logic every bombing raid carried out by both Axis and Allied forces could be considered a war crime
Vous avez raison Une Terreur non légitime Détruire une ville Hôpital sans industrie en 1945 avec des réfugiés Aucun objectif militaire juste la terreur Cela n'excuse pas les crimes nazis
I was taught it in school but first learned about it cos my heroic grandad was in a lancaster bomber and took part in the bombing. Not a war crime btw. It was military target that had to be hit, although he took no pleasure in the deaths of civilians.
@@TheSm1thers Most definitely was a war crime, I am sorry you have family who took part in it, and I pray he didn't take part in the raids that went after the fleeing population
