The Cellar - Mar 23rd, 2016: Dresden, 1945

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Mar 23rd, 2016: Dresden, 1945

To this day, people debate whether the allied attack on Dresden for two days in mid-February of 1945, was right or wrong.

Quote:

By the morning, some 800 British bombers had dropped more than 1,400 tons of high-explosive bombs and more than 1,100 tons of incendiaries on Dresden, creating a great firestorm that destroyed most of the city and killed numerous civilians. Later that day, as survivors made their way out of the smoldering city, more than 300 U.S. bombers began bombing Dresden’s railways, bridges and transportation facilities, killing thousands more. On February 15, another 200 U.S. bombers continued their assault on the city’s infrastructure. All told, the bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped more than 950 tons of high-explosive bombs and more than 290 tons of incendiaries on Dresden.

So what happened to this woman?

.................. http://cellar.org/2016/dresden1945.jpg

Her hair and clothes prove she didn't burn in a fire. I suspect she died from suffocation, breathing the extremely hot, oxygen depleted air, created by the firestorm following the bombing. I don't know how long after that raid this photograph was taken, but suspect the same searing air she died of, also desiccated her body.

I've read estimates of the body count ranging from 8,000 to 500,000, depending on the agenda of the estimator.
100,000 seems to be the most rational number, but we'll never know.

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"And so it goes," indeed.
In "Slaughter House Five" Kurt Vonnegut describes a kind of prayer that involves Allied bombers' flying backward over Dresden, sucking up all the smoke and flames and then continuing the process until the raw materials of the bombs are returned to Earth.
I encourage everyone to find and read this passage. Google "bombers flying backwards."

Quote:

“It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”

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But all those women in the defense plants would have to give the money back, grocers would get their food back, and babies would crawl back in.

And Cat would have a shock when he went into the bushes.

"But all those women in the defense plants would have to give the money back, grocers would get their food back, and babies would crawl back in."
Ah, the law of unintended consequences.

I prefer to think that the munition factory workers negotiated a deal whereby they kept their assembly wages and were then paid for disassembly.

"So what happened to this woman?

..................

Her hair and clothes prove she didn't burn in a fire. I suspect she died from suffocation, breathing the extremely hot, oxygen depleted air,..."--xoxoxoBruce

See pyrolysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis. . It the name of the process I use when I make charcloth for firestarting.