Dresden was Germanys 7th largest city at the time of the war. Historically, Dresden had been northern Germany’s cultural centre – a city filled with museums and historic buildings. The Frauenkirche Cathedral was one of the world’s famous buildings. Dresden was also an extremely important industrial area, which was something that the allies really did not want, but before February 1945 Dresden was a peaceful country and there were not any threats from the British yet., Many refugees had fled to Dresden from the east because of the Soviet Union’s attack; therefore making it harder to find the actual figure of people who died. At 10 p.m. on Tuesday 13 February 1945, the first British marker flares drifted towards this beautiful city (Dresden) that had been almost untouched by bombing. Dresden overall was named 3rd most bombed cite in the world
There were main reasons for the British to bomb Dresden; 1) The city was not only a cultural centre – there were factories that were producing weapons and equipment for the Nazi war effort. Therefore, the city was a legitimate target. 2) It was a city with factories capable of producing tanks, self-propelled guns, and jet engines. 3) It was considered full of transportation hubs and had oil production facilities.
This are the main reasons that I picked out or I thought had the most effect on why the allies dropped 3300 tons of bombs. In their bomb bay was a deadly concentration of high-explosive and fire-causing incendiary bombs. Each Lancaster bomber carried roughly 1.5 tones of high explosive bombs and 2.25 tones of incendiaries. In all, many of the bombs that were dropped were incendiary bombs. These created so much fire that formed a firestorm. The firestorm burned in large amount and since, many buildings were made of wood, the fire caught faster. These types of bombs were mostly used because it needed lots of oxygen to burn. The more, the city burned the