Allied bombing was fiercest at the end of the war, when Germany’s defeat was clearly imminent and her defenses minimal at best. 800 RAF Bombers dropped their Valentines upon the core of Dresden in the form of 650,000 incendiaries, 8,000lbs of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000lb bombs in two waves of attack, facing little anti-aircraft fire. RAF crews reported smoke rising to a height of 15,000 feet and the fires could be seen from a distance of 500 miles away. The Americans sent in 450 B-17 Flying Fortress long-range bombers the next day on the still burning city, a city of questionable military importance. The British dropped 2,656 tons of bombs, of which 75% were incendiaries unquestionably calculated to spark a massive firestorm and cause a cataclysmic loss of civilian life. The Americans then polished off what was left with 771 tons of bombs.

The exact death toll will never be known. Not only was Dresden teeming with thousands of refugees who had fled into the city from the eastern regions seeking protection and shelter, but all body counts were immediately suspended when the Red Army seized the city. Yet, bombing apologists regularly refer the Dresden atrocity as a “debate” and relentlessly deflate the death toll as if that is somehow the issue, whether 100,000 human beings were killed or a “mere” 40,000. Unwilling to assign moral accountability for that which by any other measure would be viewed as a blatantly criminal act, they have led us to believe that not only was it militarily justified, but that its perpetrators and architects were heroes. They claim the moral high ground on the premise that the cold blooded murder of thousands of innocent women and children was, in a warped interpretation of collective guilt, something the victims “brought on by themselves” and therefore legitimate.

But what of their own? In the insanity of the Allied terror-bombing of Germany, not only were hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed, 26,000 American airmen out of the 350,000 who served of the US Eighth Air Force were killed, 18,000 wounded, and over 23,000 became POWs. In the British Bomber Command, 55,573 aircrew were killed out of a total of 125,000 who served, a 44.4 per cent death rate. A further 8,403 were wounded and 9,838 captured. Hundreds and hundreds of bombers were left with devastating emotional scars, haunted by their own sense of moral right and wrong and from that small, still voice in their heads begging in vain for mercy.

The Soviet Memorial in Dresden, below, far right, was built inaugurated in November 1945. It says: “Eternal glory to the warriors of the Red Army in the battles against the German fascists. Conquered for the liberty and independence of the fallen Soviet homeland.”

After bombing, the charred and rotting and stinking hulk of Dresden was sent into communist slavery for decades. Between May, 1945, when the Soviet army first occupied the 18 million cubic metres of rubble which was once Dresden, and unification in 1990, the once romantic city of Dresden was redesigned and reconstituted as a “model socialist city” with its grim, grey streets arranged to keep industrial chimneys in sight.

Wide streets and squares were cut into the landscape and “Socialist Realist” structures took the place of the destroyed Baroque wonders in central public spaces. Even today, well over a half a century later, bits and pieces of human remains are still occasionally found in unlikely places.