Winston Churchill

"The Firestorm is incredibly destroyed. Insane fear grips me, and then I repeat a simple sentence to myself continuously: 'I do not want to burn to death". I don't know how many people I fell over. I know only One thing: I must not burn. "

At the 13. In February 1945, British planes attack started in The East German city of Dresden . In The Days that followed, they and their US Allies would fall nearly 4,000 tons of bombs in The Attack .

The subsequent Fire storm kills 25,000 people, ravage The City , sucking the oxygen from the air and suffocate people trying to escape The Flames .

Dresden was not unique. The allied bombers killed tens of thousands and destroyed large areas with attacks on Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin, and the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But the bombing has become One of The Most controversial actions of the Allies of the second World War Some have questioned the military significance of Dresden . Even The British Prime Minister , Winston Churchill expressed his doubts immediately after The Attack .

"It seems to me that the moment had come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing The Terror , though under other pretexts, should be reviewed," he wrote in a memo.

"The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of allied bombing. "

This story contains graphic images.

Dresden is the capital of the free state of Saxony. Before the bombing it was referred to as the Florence on the Elbe, or the Jewel-Box, for its climate and its Architecture .

From February, 1945, Dresden is only about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Eastern Front where Nazi Germany was the defence against the advancing troops of the Soviet Union in the last months of The War .

The City was a major industrial and transport hub. The factories made available, ammunition, aircraft spare parts and other accessories for the Nazi war. Troops, tanks and artillery traveled to Dresden , by rail and by road. Hundreds of thousands of German refugees fleeing from the fighting had arrived in The City .

At the time, The British Royal Air Force (Raf ), said it was the largest German city not bombed. Air-heads decided to attack on Dresden might be able to help their Soviet Allies - to stop by the Nazi troop movements, but also by the elimination of the German evacuation from The East .

Raf bomber raids on German cities had increased in size and power after More Than five years of war.

aircraft carried a mix of high-explosive and incendiary bombs: the explosives in the buildings apart would blow up, while the incendiary bombs, would be The Remains in The Fire , causing further destruction.

had Previous attacks, destroyed whole German cities. In July of 1943, hundreds of Raf bombers took part in a mission against Hamburg, called Operation Gomorrah. The resulting attack, and unusually dry and hot weather has caused a Firestorm - a Fire so big it creates its own weather system, sucking winds to feed The Flames which destroyed almost the whole city.

The Attack on Dresden began on the 13. February 1945. Nearly 800 Raf -planes - led by boy scouts, the torches deleted marking, which flew for the bombing of the area, centred on the Ostragehege Stadium on Dresden in the night. In just under 25 minutes, British aircraft, More Than 1,800 tons of bombs dropped.

As is the common practice was, during The War , U.S. aircraft, followed The Attack with a day-time raids. More Than 520 USAAF bombers flew to Dresden on Two Days , with the goal for The City is the railway marshaling yards, but in reality they hit a large area in the whole city.

gutted On the ground, civilians cowered under the onslaught. Many fled, and in shelters after air raid sirens warned of incoming bombers.

But the First Wave of planes knocked out electricity. Some came out of cover, just as the second wave came over The City .

people fell dead as they ran from The Flames , the air sucked from their lungs by The Fire storm. Witnesses Margaret Freyer described a woman with her baby: "she runs, she falls, and The Child flies in an arc into The Fire . The Woman remains lying on the ground, very still".

Kurt Vonnegut survived the bombing as a prisoner of war in Dresden .

"Dresden was a big flame. The One flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn," he wrote in his work Slaughterhouse-Five.

He described The City after The Attack as "like The Moon Now nothing but minerals. The Stones were hot. Everyone else in the neighborhood was dead. "

in total, The British lost six bombers in The Attack , three aircraft accidentally hit each other with bombs. The USA lost.

Nazi Germany immediately, the bomb attack of the Allies . The Propaganda Ministry claimed that Dresden had no war industry and was only a city of culture. Although local officials said, died of 25,000 people - A Number of historians agree with the Now claimed by The Nazis that were killed 200.000 civilians.

In the UK, Dresden was known as a tourist destination, and some members of Parliament and public figures in question, the value of The Attack is made. A story published at the time by the Associated Press news agency, said the Allies , the implementation of terror-bombing, spreading further were alarm.

US and UK military planners, but insisted The Attack was strategically justified, in the same way as the attacks on other cities - they interfere with the industry, to destroy the workers' houses and paralyzing traffic in Germany .

the conclusion that The Attack destroyed or severely 23% of industrial buildings, and at least 50% of its residential buildings damaged. But Dresden was a "legitimate military target," The Report said, and The Attack was no different "from established bombing policies".

The Debate on the air attacks of the Allies on the campaign and about The Attack on Dresden , which continues to This Day . Historians question if the destruction of the German cities hindered the Nazi war effort, or simply causing dead civilians - especially towards the end of The Conflict . In contrast to an invasion like D-Day, it is difficult to quantify how much these attacks helped to win The War .

Some argue it is a moral failure, for the Allies , or even A War crime. But the defenders, it was a necessary part of the total defeat of Nazi Germany was saying.

It was even a symbol for conspiracy theorists, and some extreme right-wing activists, including Holocaust deniers and extremist parties - The Most -cited victims of the Nazi regime as a fact and remember the bombing.

Seventy-five years later, the bombing of Dresden remains a controversial law.

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Source of news: bbc.com