- The 60th anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden
has unleashed an anguished response from Germans unsure whether they should
cast themselves as victims or continue silently to shoulder the blame for
wartime atrocities.
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- The air raids on the city by the RAF and USAF left tens
of thousands dead and turned what had once been a baroque architectural
masterpiece into an inferno.
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- On Sunday ceremonies across Dresden will mark the bombing.
Clergy from Coventry Cathedral will present a cross to the reconstructed
Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), whose blackened ruins were left for
years as a war memorial.
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- The far-Right has pledged to hijack the events with a
3,000-strong protest planned in Dresden city centre to remember the victims
of an act of "mass murder" against Germany.
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- At the same time, the far-Left, under campaign slogans
such as "No Tears for Krauts", has called for the Frauenkirche
to be torn down in recognition that "all the victims were perpetrators".
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- Between the two extremes are the majority of Germans.
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- The debate still rages over whether the dropping on the
city of hundreds of tons of incendiary bombs within minutes was justified.
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- Allied forces said it was necessary if the war was to
be brought to an end but increasing numbers of ordinary Germans argue that
it was an act of terror against civilians.
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- In a recent survey, a third of Germans under 30 said
they did not disapprove of the far-Right's phrase "bombing Holocaust"
to describe what happened.
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- "The British Supreme Command knew that hundreds
of thousands of refugees were in the city at the time, yet they still gave
the order to devastate it," wrote Welt am Sonntag newspaper in a report
headlined, "Suffocated, Burnt to a cinder, Dismembered," referring
to the victims who succumbed to temperatures which reached 1,200 degrees.
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- Another controversy surrounds the numbers who were killed
on the night of Feb 13-14, 1945. The figure - estimated between 35,000
and 400,000 - has never been officially fixed, allowing extremists to manipulate
it for their own means.
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- Only now has the mayor of Dresden established a commission
of historians to produce an official death toll.
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- Many survivors had until now remained silent about their
horrific experiences, owing to the widespread feeling that that was their
just punishment for supporting Adolf Hitler.
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- But, six decades on, the anniversary has untethered many
emotional responses about what happened on that night.
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- In a television documentary by historian Guido Knopp
called "The Drama of Dresden", witnesses recalled the horrors
they experienced.
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- "We did not imagine in our wildest dreams that they
would bomb such a magnificent city which was so full of civilians,"
said Eleonore Kompisch, a refugee from Wroclaw.
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- She described how she almost choked to death in a smoke-filled
cellar beneath a house while around her mothers slit the wrists of their
children to ensure a speedier death.
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- The documentary, typical of several being screened this
week, interviewed British pilots, most of whom at the time, it said, "did
not even have a driving licence".
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- Asked to justify their involvement in the campaign, a
typical answer was: "That was the consequence of total war, a war
that Hitler started."
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- Donald Nielsen, a US forces pilot wept: "I've asked
God for forgiveness several times".
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- The documentary said it had new evidence that the bombs
used consisted of Napalm - the deadly jelly substance associated with the
Vietnam war - which intensified the suffering.
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- Reconstructions showed children enjoying the circus or
carnival on the night of the bombing, juxtaposed with horrific pictures
taken hours later, of charred victims and bombed-out hospitals.
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- "The Drama of Dresden" concluded by quoting
Stephan Fritz, the pastor of the Frauenkirche, who said: "Whoever
talks of Dresdeners' suffering, must also talk of German guilt".
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
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