Railroads To Death Camps Not Destroyed Fallacy Bruhl

Firestorm: Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden, by Marshall De Bruhl. 2010

Rebutting the Silly Complaint That the Polish Underground Did Not Destroy the Railroad Tracks To the Nazi German Death Camps. The Dresden Firestorm in Broader Context

This book summarizes the history of Dresden and recounts its role during WWII. Besides describing the February 1945 bombing, it includes survivors’ accounts.

NEITHER THE POLISH UNDERGROUND, NOR ALLIED BOMBING, COULD HAVE PUT THE RAILROAD TRACKS, LEADING TO THE DEATH CAMPS, OUT OF ACTION

Although this book is not about the Jews or the Holocaust, de Bruhl writes a significant amount on this topic. He realizes that, owing to the fact that bombing was insufficiently accurate (as specified above), destroying the death camps was not a feasible proposition for the Allied bombers. What’s more, destroyed rail lines could be easily repaired, often within a matter of hours! (p. 140, 143).

POLISH SUFFERINGS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

The author mentions the thousands of Jewish inmates of Stutthof concentration camp who were shot by the Germans after a forced march to the Baltic Sea (p. 198), but not the many Polish inmates who met the same fate.

However, de Bruhl does mention the stunning achievement of Polish intelligence in hiding a fallen V-2 rocket, disassembling it, and smuggling parts of it to England. (p. 116), as part of Operation Wildhorn. He also informs the reader that 3 million non-Jewish Poles perished at the hands of the Germans during WWII. (p. 142). As for the 1939 war, it was not as lopsided as commonly supposed. The Luftwaffe lost 285 planes and 734 men in the 4-week campaign. (p. 52).

THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN WAS A LEGITIMATE MILITARY OBJECTIVE

The reader may be surprised to learn that Dresden was much more than a cultural city. There were no less than 110 military targets in Dresden. (p. 281). Finally, unlike most other books on this subject, this one provides details on the decades-long rebuilding of this city, including the reconstruction of historic buildings that had taken place only since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

De Bruhl seems to be a little inconsistent in his citing of casualty figures. Thus, he cites 600,000 German civilians killed by Allied bombing (p. 47), which is an upper limit. On the other hand, he endorses the 35,000 figure—a minimum estimate—for the number of Dresden civilians killed in the February 1945 raids. (p. 273).

CARPET BOMBING LONG PROVED MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE ATTEMPTED DESTRUCTION OF SPECIFIED INDIVIDUAL TARGETS

There has been a long debate on the efficacy of strategic bombing versus that of area bombing. (p. 151). The author makes it clear just how ineffective strategic bombing really was. British Bomber command estimated that 50-75% of bombs were not even hitting the intended city! American strategic bombers, in 1943, dropped their bombs within 1,000 feet of the intended target only 14% of the time. At war’s end, this improved to about 44%, while 73% fell within 2,000 feet of the desired aiming point. (p. 143).

Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris was essentially copying German methods of bombing when he chose to use area bombing as his main strategy. (p. 40). [The author could have mentioned the fact that the Germans were already using massive high-explosive and incendiary bombing of civilian areas in their 1939 conquest of Poland. As for the accusations of Allied bombers strafing German civilians (p. 227), de Bruhl should have mentioned the fact that the Luftwaffe was systematically strafing columns of fleeing Polish civilian refugees back in 1939.]

The author confirms the fact that the dislocations caused by area bombing often proved more significant than the actual destruction caused by the bombs themselves. For instance, in describing the July 1943 Hamburg firestorm, he comments: “The Reich, however, had to divert staggering amounts of supplies, thousands of men, and great effort to protect, house, and feed the beleaguered civilian populace. The effort was a tremendous drain on the German war effort…But no nation could constantly rebuild itself from within…The bombing campaign would ensure the ultimate collapse of the Third Reich.” (p. 107).