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ADVANCE TO BARBARISM
The following extract is taken from Advance To Barbarism by Frederick Veale, published in Britain and the U.S. in 1953. It was graced by a Foreward written by the celebrated Dean Inge of St. Paul’s. In the Chapter on Dresden entitled The Splendid Decision Veale wrote the most powerful indictment of those responsible for the massacre at Dresden (This extract is taken from the 1968 edition, written after David Irving's book on Dresden and the official account, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939-45, had appeared.):
“Reverting to the authoritative work of Air Marshal Harris, Bomber Offensive, it is noteworthy that even the gallant Air Marshal’s hardihood falters in regard to the mass bombing by some two thousand heavy bombing planes of Dresden on the night of February 13th, 1945, when the normal population of ‘this large and splendid city’ was swollen by a horde of terrified women and children from the eastern provinces of Germany in flight from the most dreadful fate which had ever confronted a large European population since the Mongol invasion of 1241. In February, 1945, the war had, of course, long ceased to be a military operation and had become merely the breaking of the desperate but hopeless resistance of a defeated people, the leaders of which faced death and the remainder slavery. Selecting his words with obvious care, the Air Marshal writes, ‘I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself.’
“It will be noted that the Air Marshal pointedly refrains from endorsing the opinion of these important people. He leaves it open to speculation whether this was due to a modest shrinking from associating himself with so much importance or whether, after reflecting on the facts and circumstances, to sheer horror. It is further to be noted that he attributes this opinion to these important people as held by them only ‘at the time’, from which it may be deduced that he cannot bring himself to believe that any sane person could still hold such an opinion. Finally, it will be noted that he loyally refrains from disclosing the identity of these important people.
“An examination of the situation existing at the time of this great mass air raid will provide an explanation of the Air Marshal’s studied reticence. In February, 1945, the war had been won and no military purpose remained to be served by indiscriminate bombing. From the East, the Russian hordes were advancing steadily and irresistibly. In the centre, they had reached the Oder on a wide front on each side of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, only 50 miles east of Berlin; on the right wing, the greater part of East Prussia which for seven hundred years had served as an advanced bastion of Europe against Asia, had been subdued; on the left wing, Lower Silesia had been overrun, although the capital, Breslau, closely surrounded, continued to offer a resistance as heroic as this city had offered the Mongol hordes of Batu almost exactly seven hundred years before. In the West, the armies of General Eisenhower were advancing on a wide front to the Rhine. The surviving German armies in the field continued to resist, not from any lingering hope that defeat could be averted but because their enemies’ insistence on unconditional surrender made it seem preferable to a people brought up for generations on the tradition of Frederick the Great to go down fighting to the last. The publication of the infamous Morgenthau Plan had left it in no doubt what were the conqueror intentions whether Germany surrendered at once or a final stand was made. The only military problem remaining in February, 1945 (if such it can be called) was the question along what line running North and South across Germany the invaders of Germany from the West would meet the invaders of Germany from the East. In fact, the campaign which had commenced on the Normandy beaches in the previous summer had become a mere race with the Soviet hordes, a race in which anything which the Germans could do to retard the progress of the latter, although of no practical benefit to themselves, would be of enormous political value to the Western Powers. Nevertheless, the British and Americans decided to launch a mass air attack on Dresden: then about 70 miles behind the scanty German forces resisting desperately the Russian advance across Lower Silesia.
“Very little authoritative information has been available until very recently concerning this mass air raid. In the earliest books which dealt with the last stage of the war, the course usually adopted was to refer airily to the bombing of Dresden as the last of a long series of mass air raids in which it happened that an exceptionally large number of people were killed. As a result of this general reticence little could be added for a long time to the following reference to this air raid published in The Times three days after it had taken place:
‘Dresden, which had been pounded on Tuesday night by 800 of the 1,400 heavies sent out by the R.A.F. and was the main object of 1,350 Fortresses and Liberators on the following day, yesterday received its third heavy attack in thirty-six hours. It was the principal target for more than 1,100 United States 8th Army Air Force bombers.’