“Erewhile a Holocaust”
The Destruction of Dresden, by David
Irving. N e w York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1964. 255 pp, $4.95.
THE Destruction of Dresden is a detailed history of one of the great tragedies of the Second
World War: the three raids (two British and
one American) which obliterated some 1600 acres
and killed some 135,000 people in the German
city within fourteen hours on February 13-14,
1945. (The death toll inflicted upon Hiroshima
was, by comparison, “only” 71,000.) Two elements of this tragedy are clearly established by
Mr. Irving: (1) the frightful suffering inflicted
upon innocent civilians in return for only small
military gain; (2) the fact that the residential
area of Dresden was, by “civilized” standards of
warfare (if such there are), not a legitimate
target. These two facts suggest two difficult problems: the historical problem of assigning responsibility for this tragedy, and the moral problem
suggested by the fact that in modern warfare
not only barbarians like Hitler and Stalin, but
“civilized men” like Churchill, Roosevelt and
Truman order (or acquiesce in) “uncivilized”
actions. Irving’s book should be required reading
for the numerous Britons and Americans who
complacently continue to believe that crimes and
atrocities are only committed by the “other fellow.”
Before discussing these points it may be useful
to make a few general comments on the book.
I t is a thoroughly researched and clearly written
piece of work, though the scholarly reader is irritated by the absence of specific footnoting (the
discussion of sources pp. 239-50 is only a poor
substitute) and the general reader often overwhelmed by technical detail. Part I, dealing with
T h e Precedents for “area bombing” before Dresden, is rather disappointing since it is a pedantic
chronicle of major raids rather than an analytic
discussion of the one problem of general interest:
how did the doctrine and practice of bombing
civilian targets arise in Britain and win ascendancy in o5cial policy? The book picks up with
Part 11, an excellent description of the planning
for “Thunderclap” (the code name of the attack
upon Dresden) and the condition of the city as a
“virgin target” whose population did not believe
it would ever suffer major attack. Part 111, on
T h e Execution of the Attack, is an admirable
description of the flawless technical precision
which brought more than a thousand bombers
to a target some nine hours flying time from their
British home hases: it describes the attack from
the point of view of the attacking air forces.
Part IV,on The Aftermath, chronicles the attack
from the point of view of the victims. I t describes
the incredible destruction and suffering caused
by the raid in a less vivid but far more precise
manner than Martin Caidin employed in his comparable but far less scholarly The Night Hamburg
Died (1960). Where language fails adequately
to portray the horrors of the stricken city the
author relies upon well-selected photographs. Part
V, inconclusively labeled Neither Praise nor
BZame, provides a too brief account of the response of neutraI and AlIied public opinion to
the Dresden holocaust, and some very restrained
comments on the question of responsibility.
Irving’s book is based partly upon the already
vast literature dealing with Allied Strategic
Bombing (more especially the British four volume
Official History of The Strategic Air Offensive
against Germany written by Webster and Falkland), partly upon the systematic interrogation of
surviving participants, whether Allied or German,
elevated or humble, of the events described. The
author received especially valuable help from Sir
Arthur Harris, the former Commander in Chief
of the RAF Bomber Command (and as such
the director of the raid), and his deputy Sir Robert Saundby, “who has exercised his copious
memory in recollecting the story behind the execution of the RAF attacks and who has patientIy checked and criticised the text of this book”
(p. 12). Saundby provides a foreword in which
he expresses a pained puzzlement about the causes
of the tragedy (“I am still not satisfied that I
fully understand why it happened”-p. 9 ) . The
sombre tone of Saundby’s foreword stands in
refreshing contrast to the pharisaical introduction written by his American counterpart, Gen.
Ira C. Eaker, for the American edition.
The enormous casualties inflicted upon Dresden
were due to various factors. The city’s normal
population of 630,000 was nearly doubled by the
influx of hordes of Silesian refugees who fled
from the Russian armies only eighty miles away.
The air raid precaution service was inexperienced
and dominated by an “it can’t happen here” outlook. German fighter defenses were grounded
partly by lack of fuel, partly by a breakdown
of the communications network (pp. 144-45). The
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main reason was, however, that the Allied Air
Commands deliberately created a firestorm (p.
112) in the Inner City ( a densely populated residential area), with the sequence of raids being
planned in such a way as to make fire-fighting
impossible. Tens of thousands of German civilians
caught in the firestorm area never had a chance
as they were “carbonised” by heat which rose
to the fantastic level of 1000” F.
Dresden was certainly not a major military
target, although it possessed some war industry,
three military camps, and several railroad marshaling yards. Whether these objectives in the
Dresden area justified a major raid has been the
source of much post-war controversy. The problem is comparatively unimportant, however, since
there is no question that the Allied target planners deliberately aimed at creating a firestorm
in the residential part of the city rather than
the destruction of specific military objectives.
The passenger railroad station was gutted, the
various freight stations and marshaling yards (far
more important to the German war effort) were
left relatively undamaged. The important railroad bridge (Marienbrucke) over the Elbe was
left standing, the railroad network was running
again only four days after the attack (p. 176),
and comparatively little damage was done to
the industrial plants of the area. These facts
indicate that the primary aim of the raid was
not to inflict specific economic and military
damage, but rather to terrorize the German
civilian population.
The Dresden attack was not an isolated event;
it was rather the climax of a policy of planned
bombing of civilian areas whose main theorist
was Churchill’s favorite scientist F. A. Lindemann. (It is unnecessary to add that the Nazis
had, of course, already practiced this policy
against England in 19411, and that English policy
was a case of a “civilised nation” being dragged
down-of course in this respect only-to
the
moral level of its barbarous adversary). Irving
has too little to say about the origins of strategic bombing, and strangely ignores what C. P.
Snow had to say about this topic in his important
Godkin Lectures at Harvard, Science and Gouernment (1960).
This reviewer would suggest that its triumph
in British councils was in part due to the shock
left by the trench warfare of the First
World War, the memory of which was indelible
in the minds of Britain’s leaders during the
Second World War. They were desperately
searching for an easy road to victory which
would prevent (or at least delay) massive fighting
on land. Their compulsive search for such a
road made them blind to the distinctly limited
economic results achieved by bombing, and its
initially adverse psychological result of making
the German people rally behind their Nazi government. It also made them blind to the moral
problems involved, for nighttime precision bombing of military targets-given the technology of
the early 1940’s and the nature of European
weather-was a simple impossibility. A great deal
of hypocrisy (not to speak of plain lying) resulted from the fact that “precision bombing”
was maintained as an official fiction until the
end of the war.
It must be repeated that the Dresden raids
were unique only in their scale and limited military value, not in the fact of deliberate “terror
bombing” directed against the civilian population. Mr. Irving gives an excellent account of
the specific preparation of the raids. Sir Charles
Portal, the Air Chief of Staff, suggested on
August 1, 1944, the desirability of a single blow
of “catastrophic force,” preferably upon a virgin
target, to demoralise the German war effort. Sir
Arthur Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, even
hinted at his own resignation if area bombing did
not replace attacks on oil installations as the
primary objective of the British bombing effort
(January 18, 1945). The Joint Intelligence Committee suggested, on January 25, 1945, the desirability of a strike at an East German City in
order to help the Russian offensive then in progress, and to demonstrate Western-Russian unity
in military planning to the world. Prime Minister
Churchill specifically urged such a blow the
same day after receiving the committee report,
and repeated his urgings in an imperative second message to Sinclair, the Air Secretary, the
next day. It is probable (though conclusive documentation is lacking) that Churchill, then on the
eve of departing for the Yalta Conference, desired to impress the Russians with the strength
of Western air power in order to improve the
Western negotiating position with Stalin. While
one should appreciate Churchill’s precocious recognition of the Communist danger, it certainly
led to singularly ill advised consequences in this
case. The Bomber Command, and more especially
Deputy Chief Saundby, had serious doubts about
the desirability of Dresden as a target (more, perhaps, on technical than on moral grounds), but
it was given to understand that Churchill was
personally interested in the attack. And so it
happened.
Churchill, Portal, Sinclair, Harris and Saundby
-to mention but a few key individuals who
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planned the Dresden raid-were
obviously not
barbarians; they were all British gentlemen who
made important contributions to the crucial objective of saving the world from Nazi barbarism.
Yet they were all active instigators (not just accomplices) in the policy which culminated in the
senseless destruction of Dresden. Why? The
main reason appears to be that modern warwith its rational technology and irrational mass
passions-develops a momentum of its own which
inevitably erodes moral standards. I t is not surprising that men felt no moral restraints in
dealing with an enemy as odious as Nazi Germany, a country which had gratuitously started
the war and conducted it in a thoroughly atrocious manner. Under these circumstances the
British leadership thought more in terms of statistics than of human beings: 135,000 Germansalmost all civilians-killed were in their eyes no
longer 135,000 individual human beings who died
individually under the particularly terrible circumstances of a man-made firestorm. Air Marshal
Saundby, one of those responsible for the tragedy,
says with acute perception about the Dresden attack: “Those who approved it were neither
wicked nor cruel, though it may well be that they
were too remote from the harsh realities of war
to understand fully the appalling destructive
power of air bombardment in the spring of
1 9 w (p. 9).
There is no evidence that any of the British
generals ever thought of resigning rather than
implement barbarous orders from their government. The provocative question arises: was not
this the precise crime-failure to refuse to implement barbarous orders-for
which German
generals were severely punished after 1945? The
parallel is, of course, far from accurate, except
for the fact that in both cases soldierly minds
were oblivious to moral considerations. I believe
that the central point to note is that the British
commanders-as military technocrats with defective imaginations concerning the consequences
of their acts-clearly never thought of resignation and were obviously not in opposition to their
government. They were in fact openly contemptuous of civilians like Sir Stafford Cripps who had
moral qualms.
The raid upon Dresden not only killed innumerable civilians and destroyed priceless art treasures, without significantly shortening the war. It
has also proved a grave liability to the Western
democracies in the post-war world. The Russians
have ruthlessly exploited it as an example of
“Anglo-American barbarism,” while the attempted
Western reply-that the Russians had asked their
vestern allies to bomb Dresden to embarrahg
Germany’s Eastern defenses-is
apparently i
d
supported by historical evidence. The Dreldbii
tragedy has also dulled the sense of too many
Germans to their country’s unique guilt during
the Nazi era. To cite only one example: this reviewer, while lecturing to provincial German audiences on Nazi atrocities, has encountered the ins
terruption: “Let us not forget Dresden.” If h, 06
course, wrong and futile to compare Dresdtm
wlth Auschwitz, but it is nonetheless worth remembering for Britons and Americans that their
countries are unhappily not immune to officially
sanctioned barbarous acts. To the understanding of this sobering fact, and the corollary need
of soul-searching, Mr. Irving has made an important contribution.
Reviewed by KLAUSEPSTEIN
The Mutations
of Money
A Monetary History of the United
States, 1870-1960, by Milton Friedman
and Anna Jacobson Schwartz. Princeton:
Princeton University Press for the National
Bureau of Economic Research, 1963. xxiu
860 pp.; $15.
PROFESSOR
FRIEDMAN
and Mrs. Schwartz have
amassed evidence for a thesis long urged by
Friedman and, earlier, by Dr. Clark Warburton.
Changes in the quantity of money (defined in the
book as currency plus demand and time deposits
at commercial banks) intertwine closely with
changes in business activity, income, and prices.
By surveying monetary experience under the
sharply contrasting conditions found in the historical sequence, the authors can hope to distinguish accidental factors from basic ones likely to
keep working under still other conditions. A wide
range of qualitative evidence goes beyond what
tobacco spokesmen, in another context, desperately keep calling “mere statistical association”; it
permits informed judgments about the direction
of cause and effect. Monetary changes have often
been independent and have begun first. New gold
discoveries and improved techniques of gold refining, for example, caused the worldwide peacetime inflation under the gold standard from 1897
to 1914.
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