Dresden Read Free

sophisticated machine of destruction that Bomber Command has become. This is deceptive, and perhaps the briefing’s tone is deliberately disingenuous. This particular city has been renowned over centuries for its architectural beauty and douceur de vivre , and in that respect the war has until now changed surprisingly little. Its name is Dresden.
    Although the spearheads of the Russian armies have temporarily halted about seventy miles to the east, and a stream of refugees from the eastern front has recently begun to tax the city’s housing resources, the situation remains surprisingly calm. The theaters and opera house—where works by Webern and Wagner and Richard Strauss saw their first performances—are temporarily closed under orders from Berlin, but Dresden’s famous cafés are still open for business. Tonight the Circus Sarrasani is staging a show at its famous domed “tent” just north of the river, drawing hordes of sensation-eager spectators.
    How can Dresden know that for some time it has been marked out for destruction? Weeks of bad weather, making accurate bombing difficult if not impossible, have saved its people until now. Today over the target city, conditions have cleared. Unlike other parts of Germany farther to the west, the area has experienced a pleasant day leading into a cold, dry night with only light cloud. What the Germans call Vorfrühling . Pre-spring. This simple, cruel meteorological fact has finally sealed the city’s fate.
    The Lancasters have reached their cruising speed of around 220 miles per hour, flying in layers at between seventeen thousand and nineteen thousand feet to avoid collisions. They maintain a southeasterly course at first, breasting the French coast over the Pas de Calais, continuing over northern France until they reach a point roughlyhalfway between Reims and Liège. There the formation banks northeast, heading for the border city of Aachen—now in Allied hands—before setting course due east, over the front line into enemy-held territory. Soon the bombers pass, as planned, just to the south of the Ruhr industrial area, avoiding its massive concentrations of well-practiced antiaircraft batteries. Here is where they also pass beyond the protective shield of “Mandrel,” the jamming screen provided by the RAF’s 100 Group to fog the enemy radar defenses. “Window” devices are dropped in the thousands to further confuse the enemy. En masse, these small strips of metal appear on German radar screens as a wandering bomber fleet while the real aircraft do their work elsewhere. These measures will be especially effective tonight, for the area west of the target remains blanketed with thick cloud, making visual tracking of aircraft movements impossible.
    At 9:51 P.M . in Dresden the air raid sirens sound, as they have so often during the past five years, and until now almost always a false alarm. The city’s people, and especially its children, have spent the day celebrating a somewhat toned-down, wartime version of Fasching, the German carnival. Many of them, and again especially the children, are still in their party costumes. There are, perhaps, even more than the usual laughter, the usual jokes, as families sigh and head for their cellars. Stragglers, hearing the alarm, scuttle home through the winding, cobbled streets of the old town, or pick up their pace as they make their way past the grand buildings of the Residenz.
    There are remarkably few major public air raid shelters for a city of this size. One of the largest, beneath the main railway station, built for two thousand people, is currently housing six thousand refugees from the eastern front. The Gauleiter—the local Nazi Party leader but also the province’s governor and defense commissioner—has consistently failed to divert the necessary resources to remedy this situation, although (as his subjects are well aware) he has commandeered SS