Laying a persistent ghost

Although it probably won’t, this book deserves to lay the ghost of Dresden, to demolish the myth and establish the rule of objective historical judgment. Frederick Taylor opens his investigation as long ago as AD 350 and carries it down to 2003. On the way, he gives us a condensed history of the strategic air offensive, explaining especially the evolution of area bombing, and of the development of the German air defences. He considers the policies and reactions of the British and American authorities, Churchill, Stimpson, the chiefs of staff and the C-in-C Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, among them, and of the German authorities, including Hitler, Goebbels and Mutschmann, the Dresden Gauleiter, and of the Russians, notably General Antonov, their leading airman at Yalta. He has interviewed German survivors of the firestorm and British and American aircrews who took part in the attacks. In short, he has scarcely left a stone unturned.

What then are Taylor’s principal conclusions?

First, the decision to attack Dresden was not extraordinary. It was based partly on Churchill’s instruction that something spectacular should be done to assist the advance of the Red Army and partly on the steady development of the policy of devastating major German cities by area bombing that had been inaugurated at Mannheim in 1940.

Secondly, Dresden was not just a city of cultivated art. It was also a notable stronghold of Nazism, peppered with light war industry and a key point in the German railway system. In October 1944, for example, Dresden’s rail system was handling the passage of 20,000 troops per day.

Thirdly, the number killed in the raids was not 135,000 (David Irving), nor was it 320,000 (East German propaganda); it was probably about 40,000 (Goebbels’s private estimate).