1 00:00:03,480 --> 00:00:05,920 Hello, Skip. The first plane is just going down. 2 00:00:06,880 --> 00:00:09,480 If your intention is to kill civilians, 3 00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:12,360 how would you define the atrocity? 4 00:00:13,320 --> 00:00:14,560 Steady. 5 00:00:16,840 --> 00:00:17,840 Bombs down. 6 00:00:18,880 --> 00:00:21,560 Dresden was the raid that went horribly right. 7 00:00:23,040 --> 00:00:25,920 Super-hot air spreading the fire underground. 8 00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:30,200 People in terror trying to escape, 9 00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:33,520 separated by buildings that were exploding. 10 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:39,200 We just don't know how long the Germans will fight 11 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:42,480 and possibly have to kill everyone, because they were not stopping. 12 00:00:43,480 --> 00:00:47,080 He is the most controversial British officer of the Second World War. 13 00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:48,400 He is a fanatic. 14 00:00:49,040 --> 00:00:52,120 Was it justified morally or not? 15 00:00:52,240 --> 00:00:54,560 That really is the million-dollar question. 16 00:00:56,040 --> 00:00:59,840 The bombing of Dresden is one of the most controversial events 17 00:00:59,920 --> 00:01:01,360 of World War II. 18 00:01:02,080 --> 00:01:07,520 Now rare footage from around the world, expertly restored in full color, 19 00:01:07,600 --> 00:01:10,560 tells the story as you've never seen it before. 20 00:01:18,320 --> 00:01:21,880 The morning of the 15th of February 1945, 21 00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:26,880 the eastern German City of Dresden lies in ruins. 22 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:33,320 Further evidence of the Allies' total dominance of the skies. 23 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:39,440 But within days, the Dresden story is turned on its head. 24 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:47,400 A hidden source inside Germany feeds shocking pictures to the press. 25 00:01:48,800 --> 00:01:54,080 And a previously unreported level of civilian suffering and destruction 26 00:01:54,160 --> 00:01:56,200 is revealed to the world. 27 00:01:56,960 --> 00:01:59,080 All of a sudden people in the United Kingdom 28 00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:02,960 and the United States were saying, "How on Earth, in our name, 29 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:06,480 are our planes actually producing terror against civilians? 30 00:02:06,560 --> 00:02:08,200 It's completely unacceptable." 31 00:02:11,360 --> 00:02:14,600 It's reported that Dresden was a city of culture, 32 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:16,720 with no military value. 33 00:02:18,400 --> 00:02:22,520 And allegedly, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children 34 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:23,800 have been killed. 35 00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:32,600 The Allies, seen for so long to be fighting evil, 36 00:02:32,680 --> 00:02:35,800 look to have perpetrated an atrocity. 37 00:02:36,880 --> 00:02:40,200 It's a totally different situation in the Second World War. 38 00:02:40,640 --> 00:02:44,000 All the rules have been torn up and kicked into touch. 39 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:49,200 So how did Britain and the United States come to this? 40 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:52,760 What is the truth about Dresden? 41 00:02:57,280 --> 00:03:01,960 Six years earlier, Nazi Germany sweeps through Europe, 42 00:03:02,840 --> 00:03:05,720 powered by an era of mechanized warfare, 43 00:03:06,640 --> 00:03:09,200 both on the ground and in the air. 44 00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:20,240 The French, Belgians, and Dutch are overwhelmed. 45 00:03:20,320 --> 00:03:25,000 And the British Expeditionary Force is chased off the beaches of Dunkirk. 46 00:03:28,600 --> 00:03:32,440 By the summer of 1940, Britain stands alone 47 00:03:32,920 --> 00:03:35,000 and under attack by the Luftwaffe. 48 00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:41,320 But Britain's new prime minister refuses to surrender. 49 00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:44,480 You ask, what is our policy? 50 00:03:44,880 --> 00:03:49,080 I will say: It is to wage war by sea, land, and air, 51 00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:50,560 with all our might. 52 00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:56,120 To wage war against a monstrous tyranny, that is our policy. 53 00:03:58,400 --> 00:04:01,280 To try and win favor with the British public, 54 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:05,640 Hitler tells the Luftwaffe not to attack Central London. 55 00:04:07,480 --> 00:04:12,240 But that August, a sortie mistakenly hits Oxford Street. 56 00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:17,720 Winston Churchill strikes back with a small shock raid of his own 57 00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:19,000 on Berlin. 58 00:04:21,440 --> 00:04:25,080 The attack prompts a fearsome response from Hitler. 59 00:04:26,480 --> 00:04:28,680 And if the Royal Air Force 60 00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:31,760 throws 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 kg bombs on us, 61 00:04:32,320 --> 00:04:37,840 then we will throw 150,000, 180,000 230,000, 300,000 kgs in one night. 62 00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:45,040 The time will come when one of us will break, 63 00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:48,720 and it will not be Germany! 64 00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:03,920 The Luftwaffe launch an unprecedented bombing campaign 65 00:05:04,040 --> 00:05:06,480 designed to break Britain's morale. 66 00:05:10,400 --> 00:05:13,280 Mass raids drop incendiary bombs, 67 00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:15,160 loaded with flammable material, 68 00:05:15,240 --> 00:05:18,800 like thermite, on dozens of British cities. 69 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:24,040 There are major fire attacks on Liverpool, Birmingham, and Coventry. 70 00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:32,960 And London is hit by a blitz for over 50 consecutive days. 71 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,080 The campaign against London is a 24-hour campaign 72 00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:39,280 almost from the beginning. 73 00:05:39,440 --> 00:05:42,760 They see and hear the air battle going on as it comes towards them, 74 00:05:42,840 --> 00:05:46,520 so it makes Londoners very much feel that they are now a part of the battle. 75 00:05:47,240 --> 00:05:51,240 The German air raids in Britain kill over 40,000 people. 76 00:05:54,560 --> 00:05:58,120 Angered and fighting for her very existence, 77 00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:01,160 there is now an appetite in Britain to strike back, 78 00:06:01,720 --> 00:06:06,440 and make mass bombing a major part of its own war strategy. 79 00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:10,400 Churchill's stance over area bombing 80 00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:12,760 during the Second World War seems to move. 81 00:06:13,480 --> 00:06:16,000 In the early stages, he voices quite a lot of reservations 82 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:18,240 that actually, it doesn't do the job. 83 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:21,320 It's not going to break the enemy morale, in fact, it could stiffen it. 84 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:25,400 On the other hand, it was an opportunity to strike back at the Germans 85 00:06:25,480 --> 00:06:28,480 at a time when the Germans seemed to be victorious 86 00:06:28,560 --> 00:06:30,600 in pretty much every other theater of war. 87 00:06:31,200 --> 00:06:34,360 If you had asked British people, particularly following the Blitz, 88 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:39,640 going into 1941, if they could fight with as much force as possible, 89 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:43,000 the answer would have been an overwhelming "yes" from almost everybody. 90 00:06:46,440 --> 00:06:50,480 The RAF's own bomber division, known as Bomber Command, 91 00:06:50,560 --> 00:06:56,000 has been launching targeted raids against Nazi Germany since 1939. 92 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:03,880 Initially they fly day sorties, aiming for precision targets 93 00:07:03,960 --> 00:07:06,480 like airfields and oil refineries. 94 00:07:08,800 --> 00:07:11,080 But flying in the broad daylight 95 00:07:11,160 --> 00:07:16,400 leaves the bombers horribly exposed to attacks by the Luftwaffe. 96 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:22,080 Within a year, the RAF is forced to switch most of the fleet 97 00:07:22,240 --> 00:07:24,040 to bombing at night. 98 00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:28,440 Night timers are safer, you have the cover of the darkness. 99 00:07:29,400 --> 00:07:32,880 The only real problem with bombing, there's no way attacking at night 100 00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:36,240 at high altitude you could hope to hit anything, you know, 101 00:07:36,320 --> 00:07:37,920 of a small nature on the ground. 102 00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:42,720 The bombers' rudimentary targeting technology 103 00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:45,400 is hopelessly ill-equipped for the challenge 104 00:07:45,600 --> 00:07:48,040 of night-time precision bombing. 105 00:07:48,880 --> 00:07:51,680 In the summer of 1941 there is a notorious report, 106 00:07:51,760 --> 00:07:55,160 and they discover that hardly anyone's even getting within five miles 107 00:07:55,240 --> 00:07:57,720 of hitting their target, let alone a few hundred yards. 108 00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:01,280 In the first two years of operations, 109 00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:05,080 Bomber Command makes little impact on the Nazi war machine. 110 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:09,920 The campaign comes at a huge cost. 111 00:08:11,920 --> 00:08:13,880 Germany's bristling air defenses 112 00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:16,640 are slaughtering RAF air crew. 113 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:22,320 These young sons, boys, were killed in tens of thousands 114 00:08:22,400 --> 00:08:24,400 by German night fighters and flak. 115 00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:26,200 I mean, they had a huge death toll. 116 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:31,200 Where is he, rear gunner, can you see him? 117 00:08:31,440 --> 00:08:33,440 Jerry planes are behind us. 118 00:08:36,040 --> 00:08:39,080 Just keep weaving, there's some flak coming at me. 119 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:41,320 Down! 120 00:08:41,840 --> 00:08:45,720 About 55% of the men who served in Bomber Command died. 121 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:50,120 There was enormous fear that they tried to keep under control 122 00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:53,520 by various coping strategies, including often very heavy drinking, 123 00:08:53,600 --> 00:08:56,480 because the mathematics were simply overwhelming 124 00:08:56,600 --> 00:08:59,400 that a large proportion of them would not survive their tours. 125 00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:05,680 By 1942, morale inside Bomber Command is rock bottom. 126 00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:14,080 That February, a new commander in chief is appointed, 127 00:09:14,400 --> 00:09:17,080 with a remit to turn things round. 128 00:09:18,520 --> 00:09:20,680 His name is Arthur Harris, 129 00:09:21,240 --> 00:09:25,120 he soon becomes known as "Bomber" Harris. 130 00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:30,160 He was stubborn, opinionated, to the point of rudeness. 131 00:09:30,280 --> 00:09:33,600 Believed passionately in air power. 132 00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:38,480 He was an attack dog, basically, hired by the British government 133 00:09:38,560 --> 00:09:41,520 to do what they felt was now a key job. 134 00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:45,760 If you individually succeed, you will have delivered 135 00:09:45,840 --> 00:09:49,920 the most devastating blow against the very vitals of the enemy. 136 00:09:50,600 --> 00:09:52,840 Let him have it, right on the chin. 137 00:09:53,320 --> 00:09:54,360 He is a fanatic. 138 00:09:54,920 --> 00:09:58,120 He is someone who, once he gets an idea in his head, 139 00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:00,080 finds it impossible to change it. 140 00:10:01,040 --> 00:10:03,760 On the other hand, he would have been brilliant to serve under. 141 00:10:03,840 --> 00:10:06,800 He looked after his men extraordinarily well, 142 00:10:06,880 --> 00:10:09,200 provided them with the best equipment possible, 143 00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:11,320 and gave them as much support as possible. 144 00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:16,720 Arthur Harris spearheads an entirely new approach 145 00:10:16,800 --> 00:10:18,000 at Bomber Command. 146 00:10:19,760 --> 00:10:24,360 Night raids that no longer rely on precision targeting, 147 00:10:25,360 --> 00:10:28,880 Harris targets entire German cities. 148 00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:32,560 What they can do is hit a city-sized target. 149 00:10:32,640 --> 00:10:34,840 You don't have to be accurate, you have to hit something 150 00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:37,960 the size of Hamburg, you know, one of the biggest cities in Germany. 151 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:40,680 It really comes to a cold calculation of war. 152 00:10:43,920 --> 00:10:47,120 Arthur Harris is adamant that in his hands, 153 00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:50,480 city bombing can force Germany to surrender. 154 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:55,280 Because he plans to up the ante 155 00:10:55,440 --> 00:10:59,280 and carpet bomb not just industry and infrastructure, 156 00:10:59,360 --> 00:11:02,120 but also civilian housing. 157 00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:08,600 Harris believes the new approach, 158 00:11:08,680 --> 00:11:12,400 coldly titled "Worker Dehousing", 159 00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:16,880 will deprive the Nazis of the manpower they need for their war economy 160 00:11:18,280 --> 00:11:20,800 and cripple German manufacturing. 161 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:24,320 The concept was, there is no difference 162 00:11:24,400 --> 00:11:26,240 between combatants and non-combatants. 163 00:11:27,840 --> 00:11:30,320 Because the civilians, by their sheer existence, 164 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:34,760 they're producing something and they have a value for the war. 165 00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:41,440 No civilized country, like Germany, can wage the war without its cities. 166 00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:43,200 If we destroy their cities, 167 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:45,760 if we burn down their cities, 168 00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:47,880 then we have won. 169 00:11:50,240 --> 00:11:55,360 There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war. 170 00:11:56,200 --> 00:12:00,720 Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet. 171 00:12:01,680 --> 00:12:06,680 Germany will make a most interesting initial experiment, 172 00:12:06,760 --> 00:12:08,320 and we shall see. 173 00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:15,280 Harris has a potent new weapon to execute his strategy, 174 00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:20,000 the RAF's rapidly expanding fleet of heavy bombers. 175 00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:23,960 The famous bomber, the Lancaster, 176 00:12:24,040 --> 00:12:26,360 one of the most famous bombers of the Second World War, 177 00:12:26,520 --> 00:12:28,880 is a brilliant night-time bomber. 178 00:12:28,960 --> 00:12:31,640 It can fly high, it's a very stable platform, 179 00:12:31,720 --> 00:12:33,480 and it can carry a heavy bombing load. 180 00:12:34,800 --> 00:12:38,560 There was no way Britain could fight a land war against Germany, 181 00:12:38,640 --> 00:12:40,080 we didn't have the manpower. 182 00:12:40,200 --> 00:12:45,440 What it did have were resources, technology, and a huge pool of volunteers 183 00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:48,360 to call on for building a large air force. 184 00:12:50,600 --> 00:12:54,360 The heavy Lancaster bombers are also developing new technology 185 00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:58,840 like ground-scanning radar and radio navigation. 186 00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:06,080 Harris trains and organizes his new fleet. 187 00:13:12,520 --> 00:13:17,920 When in 1942 the United States joins the war in Europe, 188 00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:23,360 they base hundreds of their own B-17 Flying Fortresses in Britain. 189 00:13:26,880 --> 00:13:30,360 The Allied air fleet is now too big to be stopped. 190 00:13:32,240 --> 00:13:34,880 They served the wind and now, 191 00:13:34,960 --> 00:13:36,560 they are going to reap the whirlwind. 192 00:13:37,200 --> 00:13:41,320 In the entire Blitz of London, from September to May 1940, 193 00:13:41,400 --> 00:13:44,480 the Germans only dropped 18,000 tons of bombs on London. 194 00:13:44,840 --> 00:13:50,400 In 1944 the RAF is dropping on Germany over half a million tons. 195 00:13:51,080 --> 00:13:53,200 Off the radar in terms of increased scale. 196 00:13:54,720 --> 00:13:55,920 It was absolutely huge. 197 00:13:58,520 --> 00:14:00,560 If you have a hammer, you're going to go around 198 00:14:00,760 --> 00:14:02,080 looking for nails. 199 00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:07,240 And in the RAF we had a very big, very expensive hammer. 200 00:14:07,680 --> 00:14:09,840 It acquired a momentum of its own. 201 00:14:14,720 --> 00:14:17,400 On the 24th of July 1943, 202 00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:20,960 Hamburg, Germany's second largest city, 203 00:14:21,040 --> 00:14:25,920 is hit in a joint Allied raid called Operation Gomorrah. 204 00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:39,360 A fire storm grips the city. 205 00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:44,120 Sixty percent of the residential area is destroyed… 206 00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:49,240 and over 43,000 people are killed. 207 00:14:51,520 --> 00:14:54,800 The devastation wrought on western Germany 208 00:14:54,880 --> 00:14:57,800 is a shock even to Winston Churchill. 209 00:14:59,600 --> 00:15:03,840 Churchill is shown film of a Ruhr City being bombed 210 00:15:04,320 --> 00:15:08,720 and he almost wept and said, "Are we beasts to be doing this?" 211 00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:14,360 So one has this strange duality in Churchill running a war 212 00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:18,560 and this actually proved to be the case with the bombing campaign too. 213 00:15:20,160 --> 00:15:24,280 That year, with the Allied bombing campaign escalating, 214 00:15:24,360 --> 00:15:30,040 Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, calls on every German civilian 215 00:15:30,120 --> 00:15:35,080 to join the war effort in what he calls total war. 216 00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:38,480 Do you want total war? 217 00:15:41,440 --> 00:15:44,200 But the grizzly aftermath of the bombing raids 218 00:15:44,280 --> 00:15:47,400 is played down in the German press. 219 00:15:49,240 --> 00:15:53,480 The Allies monitor and sanitize their news reports as well. 220 00:15:54,400 --> 00:15:57,400 The public are told the city bombing campaign 221 00:15:57,560 --> 00:15:59,800 is focused on military targets. 222 00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:05,960 One of the greatest serial stories of the war, 223 00:16:06,040 --> 00:16:07,440 the battering of Hamburg. 224 00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:10,560 The cargoes of our bombers shattered military objectives in the city 225 00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:12,400 and started hundreds of fires. 226 00:16:13,160 --> 00:16:16,880 The general population seems happy enough with the policy. 227 00:16:16,960 --> 00:16:21,040 The British people had been attacked in their cities from 1940 onwards. 228 00:16:21,880 --> 00:16:23,720 Some think the Germans almost deserve it. 229 00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:27,840 Harris's bombing campaign is relentless. 230 00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:31,160 As the German war machine begins to falter, 231 00:16:31,760 --> 00:16:36,080 dozens of her industrial cities, including Karlsruhe, 232 00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:39,400 Bremen, and Stuttgart 233 00:16:39,640 --> 00:16:42,360 are smashed by Allied raids. 234 00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:50,600 We propose to entirely emasculate every enemy center 235 00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:52,320 where production is necessary. 236 00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:56,200 We are well on the way now to that end. 237 00:16:56,280 --> 00:16:57,960 War is a race. 238 00:16:58,040 --> 00:17:00,280 And the prize is victory. 239 00:17:01,240 --> 00:17:05,960 But whilst the destructive city raids drain the Nazi's resources, 240 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:08,920 still they refuse to surrender. 241 00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:12,440 That level of destruction usually does the trick, 242 00:17:12,720 --> 00:17:17,440 but it doesn't in the Nazi state because of that iron grip of the Nazis, 243 00:17:17,520 --> 00:17:20,840 because of this black and white world view that Hitler has 244 00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:23,640 of either the Thousand-Year Reich or Armageddon. 245 00:17:29,320 --> 00:17:31,800 Then in the summer of 1944, 246 00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:37,640 the whole focus of the Allied war effort changes with D-Day. 247 00:17:39,280 --> 00:17:44,160 The largest land invasion force in history storms the Normandy beaches 248 00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:47,480 and pushes into occupied France. 249 00:17:52,520 --> 00:17:56,000 Harris' deputy dismisses the operation 250 00:17:56,080 --> 00:17:59,400 as an unnecessary boating expedition. 251 00:18:00,680 --> 00:18:04,800 But to most observers, it's now the surest route to victory. 252 00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:10,560 Many senior Allied generals want Bomber Command 253 00:18:10,640 --> 00:18:14,400 to stop the city attacks and support the ground war. 254 00:18:16,960 --> 00:18:20,520 They know the Lancaster's accurate new targeting technology 255 00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:25,560 is now more than capable of hitting precision military targets. 256 00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:30,280 But Harris viewed this as a complete waste of time and effort. 257 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:34,320 And same goes for repeated American requests for Bomber Command 258 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:37,720 to try and hit targets like oil fields, oil refineries, factories. 259 00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:41,200 His bombers had helped drive Germany out of the war 260 00:18:41,280 --> 00:18:44,800 and provided this role, so he continues wanting to devastate the cities. 261 00:18:46,040 --> 00:18:48,200 And so Harris, the right man for the job, 262 00:18:48,280 --> 00:18:52,440 but perhaps a bit of a liability in some ways in terms of his refusal 263 00:18:52,560 --> 00:18:54,840 to contemplate how his force could be better used. 264 00:18:56,280 --> 00:19:00,960 Despite Harris's reluctance, Churchill tells him to comply. 265 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:05,640 His Lancaster bombers are pressed into service as transportation. 266 00:19:06,640 --> 00:19:09,680 And a new city bombing campaign against Berlin, 267 00:19:09,760 --> 00:19:13,320 called Operation Thunderclap, is shelved. 268 00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:17,600 It looks like area bombing has had its day. 269 00:19:26,280 --> 00:19:29,200 But that winter, the Allies' ground war 270 00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:30,320 grinds to a halt. 271 00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:36,520 Hitler launches a surprise counter-offensive 272 00:19:36,640 --> 00:19:37,640 in the Ardennes. 273 00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:39,680 The Battle of the Bulge. 274 00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:43,920 Ninety-thousand American troops are killed. 275 00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:48,480 And the British Army is a spent force. 276 00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:52,080 The British perspective was, we just don't know 277 00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:55,360 how long the Germans will fight, and possibly have to kill everyone 278 00:19:55,480 --> 00:19:57,000 because they were not stopping. 279 00:19:57,440 --> 00:19:59,520 They were not stopping, they were not giving up. 280 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:05,840 We have to end this damned war. 281 00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:10,920 The only Allied advance is on the Eastern Front. 282 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:17,240 The Soviet Red Army is pushing on from their decisive victory at Stalingrad. 283 00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:21,000 The offensive is brutal 284 00:20:21,080 --> 00:20:24,800 and it's costing the Soviet Union millions of men. 285 00:20:29,560 --> 00:20:33,040 That February, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, 286 00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:36,440 asks President Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill 287 00:20:36,680 --> 00:20:40,600 to Yalta in Crimea for urgent talks. 288 00:20:43,520 --> 00:20:46,280 Relations between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin 289 00:20:46,360 --> 00:20:48,480 were noticeably more strained at the Yalta Conference 290 00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:50,040 than at previous meetings. 291 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:54,000 Joseph Stalin felt the Soviet Union had been left deliberately 292 00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:57,960 to take the vast majority of the losses and the causalities of the war 293 00:20:58,040 --> 00:20:59,240 against Germany. 294 00:21:00,520 --> 00:21:04,160 If Churchill and Roosevelt want a quick end to the war, 295 00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:07,160 they need to keep the Red Army on the move. 296 00:21:09,720 --> 00:21:13,920 The Western Allies don't have the will or the means to offer manpower, 297 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:16,520 but they do have a huge air force. 298 00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:21,320 Western air superiority can solve their problem. 299 00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:25,400 Churchill's misgivings about the morality of area bombing 300 00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:26,800 are set aside. 301 00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:30,296 This is something that Churchill and Roosevelt were very, very keen 302 00:21:30,320 --> 00:21:32,536 to provide because it was well within their capabilities, 303 00:21:32,560 --> 00:21:34,440 as well as visually impressive. 304 00:21:38,080 --> 00:21:41,480 Bomber Commands' moth-balled Operation Thunderclap 305 00:21:41,560 --> 00:21:45,640 is revived and refocused for the Eastern Front. 306 00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:50,880 RAF strategists believe that attacking fresh cities 307 00:21:50,960 --> 00:21:54,840 in the east of Germany will cause chaos and destruction 308 00:21:54,920 --> 00:21:59,440 behind enemy lines and aid the Red Army's advance. 309 00:21:59,520 --> 00:22:02,400 The Germans are having to move men and material 310 00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:04,920 up to the Eastern Front to fight the Russians. 311 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:06,920 And they have to go through these cities. 312 00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:10,120 If those cities are attacked by bombers, 313 00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:12,640 it will put greater pressure on the Germans, 314 00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:14,760 it will cause confusion in those cities, 315 00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:18,200 it will stress the resources that the Germans have. 316 00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:24,560 Soviet strategists give their approval to the plan. 317 00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:31,360 Once again, the city bombing campaign is at center stage. 318 00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:36,280 Harris is given a target list of eastern German cities 319 00:22:36,360 --> 00:22:41,000 and told the objective is to cause chaos and disruption. 320 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:45,400 Harris just absolutely wants to show, 321 00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:47,360 as many ways it's self-vindication, 322 00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:50,720 he wants to show that he's right, prove he's been right. 323 00:22:54,880 --> 00:22:58,720 Nightfall on the 13th of February 1945. 324 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:06,280 A stream of RAF Lancaster bombers take off from bases in eastern England. 325 00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:13,480 They make their way across the Channel into liberated France, 326 00:23:13,560 --> 00:23:17,400 through Belgium and down into Nazi Germany. 327 00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:21,480 By now they are on enemy radar. 328 00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:25,640 The bomber formation tries to throw the Germans off the scent. 329 00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:28,840 The British come up with quite ingenious inventions 330 00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:31,480 to try and confuse German defenses. 331 00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:36,000 One of the most famous is Window, which is to drop a huge amount of chaff, 332 00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:39,880 just strips of aluminum, that they would drop into the air, 333 00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:42,040 like aluminum foil and they'd fill the air 334 00:23:42,120 --> 00:23:44,560 with aluminum foil and the radar would go haywire. 335 00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:49,280 Which meant that the Germans essentially saw nothing 336 00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:52,760 but a kind of curtain, behind which they could not see 337 00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:55,080 until the bombers emerged from it. 338 00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:57,920 And that kept the Germans from knowing precisely 339 00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:01,880 where the bombers of Bomber Command were headed that night. 340 00:24:03,360 --> 00:24:07,480 Finally at around 9:00 p.m., the Lancasters emerge 341 00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:09,640 from behind the cover of their chaff. 342 00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:16,200 They're heading south east across Germany. 343 00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:21,960 Even under the cover of darkness, a bombing raid is fraught with danger. 344 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,400 Creeping across the sky in a slow, heavy bomber, 345 00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:30,120 with no fighter planes for protection. 346 00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:36,520 And this time, the crews are heading deeper into enemy territory 347 00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:38,200 than ever before. 348 00:24:39,120 --> 00:24:40,880 They're covering an enormous distance, 349 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,440 probably the longest raid most of them would have carried out 350 00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:45,160 during the whole of the Second World War. 351 00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:47,096 And of course they're vulnerable during that period, 352 00:24:47,120 --> 00:24:50,800 from anti-aircraft fire and also from interception by German fighters. 353 00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:54,280 You never quite know when something's going to hit you, 354 00:24:54,360 --> 00:24:55,960 and it must have been quite scary. 355 00:24:56,640 --> 00:25:00,320 Going this far east in particular was something that the crews dreaded. 356 00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:02,760 But the thrill of, you know, being in these mighty things, 357 00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:05,120 thundering across, particularly on moon-lit nights 358 00:25:05,200 --> 00:25:07,280 with the kind of silvery clouds and things, you know, 359 00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:10,400 a lot of them kind of had moments of elation in between sheer terror. 360 00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:15,040 On this sortie, however, the German Luftwaffe 361 00:25:15,120 --> 00:25:16,880 are nowhere to be seen. 362 00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:21,280 Their numbers have been slashed by constant combat 363 00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:23,200 and dwindling resources. 364 00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:28,640 And tonight they fail to respond to the Lancaster's raid at all. 365 00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,800 It's an unusually clear winter's night. 366 00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:37,920 The pathfinder and marker planes at the lead 367 00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:40,360 can see their target perfectly. 368 00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:50,320 It's the eastern German city of Dresden. 369 00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:56,080 The unsuspecting inhabitants below are just finishing the day 370 00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:57,680 of carnival celebrations. 371 00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:02,200 Dresden has told themselves nobody will want to bomb this city 372 00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:03,560 because it's so beautiful. 373 00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:04,960 Sadly, they were wrong. 374 00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:08,920 Dresden is the capital of Saxony 375 00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,720 and one of Germany's most historic and cultural cities, 376 00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,320 layered with centuries-old architecture. 377 00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:20,880 It was called the Florence of the Elbe. 378 00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:26,120 It was a city that many westerners loved to visit during the interwar years. 379 00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:29,640 It had exquisite architecture, lots of art. 380 00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:32,760 And so it was a city that was very deeply appreciated 381 00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:36,400 by the cultured classes, the educated classes. 382 00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:39,880 It's not just the cultural center, 383 00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:45,040 it played the role in the Third Reich, economy, administration, 384 00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:47,960 in the world of Nazi Germany. 385 00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,040 There were Jews hunted down, killed. 386 00:26:51,120 --> 00:26:53,800 The whole dark side of Nazi Germany. 387 00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:58,960 The city has been virtually untouched by bombing. 388 00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:04,680 It has become a place of safe harbor for refugees 389 00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:07,040 from other war-torn German territories. 390 00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:13,360 And by now, the inhabitants of Dresden are sure 391 00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:16,720 the city is protected by a special status. 392 00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:20,640 People told themselves all kinds of stories, 393 00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:24,280 they felt that their city, preserved as it was 394 00:27:24,360 --> 00:27:29,040 with its beautiful palaces, would somehow be a possibility 395 00:27:29,120 --> 00:27:33,000 for being the Allied capital after the war. 396 00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:41,600 And there was a funny story of, circulating, 397 00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:47,440 saying that Dresden will not be attacked because Churchill's aunt is living there. 398 00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,240 Who this aunt was supposed to be, I do not know. 399 00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:54,640 The local Nazi leader in Dresden is so complacent, 400 00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:58,600 he makes no preparations for an air attack. 401 00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:04,120 Apart from the one deep concrete bunker he has constructed for himself, 402 00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:07,480 there are very few bomb shelters in the city. 403 00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:14,600 So, the whole city was in the end not prepared for an air attack. 404 00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,120 Nobody expected Dresden to be attacked. 405 00:28:24,360 --> 00:28:29,960 But for RAF Bomber Command, the reality of Dresden is very different. 406 00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:35,720 Germany's seventh largest city is also important to their war economy. 407 00:28:37,360 --> 00:28:40,600 Harris has only spared the city because until now, 408 00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:44,600 the Lancaster's fuel tanks weren't large enough to reach it. 409 00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:51,000 Allied intelligence was aware of significant military production 410 00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:52,200 within Dresden itself. 411 00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:55,880 There were factories making machine guns, rifles, 412 00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:58,560 there's a factory making tank landing ships. 413 00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:01,560 Dresden is a major rail hub. 414 00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:04,320 From Dresden troops are being sent to the Eastern Front, 415 00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:08,000 they're being sent down to Verona, to the Italian Front a well. 416 00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:13,520 It is not the fault of RAF Bomber Command that air raid shelters 417 00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:16,440 have been given such scant regard. 418 00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,920 At 10:00 p.m., RAF pathfinder planes 419 00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:22,960 swoop down on the city. 420 00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,400 They face almost no anti-aircraft fire. 421 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,320 The Nazi high command has moved all the guns 422 00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,160 to the front line in the east. 423 00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:39,200 The scene is set for a perfect storm. 424 00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:45,040 The pathfinders drop their marker flares uncontested 425 00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:47,560 and with unerring accuracy. 426 00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:52,200 The target they've been given by Harris and Bomber Command 427 00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:57,040 is the central stadium, right next to the marketplace, 428 00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,640 the heart of residential Dresden. 429 00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:03,200 Why isn't it the railway? 430 00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:06,880 It's absolutely the glue which is keeping the German war effort together. 431 00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,480 The markers go on the old, 432 00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:11,280 the Altstadt, the old town. 433 00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,280 Dresden was not a military target for the British, 434 00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:16,560 this is quite clear. 435 00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:20,320 Of course Dresden had war industry factories, 436 00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:22,080 but these were more on the outskirts. 437 00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:25,160 But this was not the aim of the British bombers. 438 00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:30,600 The aiming point of the British bombers was the marketplace, the Altmarkt. 439 00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:34,560 Whilst we were preparing some scrambled eggs 440 00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:40,160 we heard the warning, which was this time the real thing. 441 00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:43,000 And it was right above the city. 442 00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:46,960 Okay, boys, okay. 443 00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:48,240 Left, left. 444 00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:52,880 Under normal conditions, the bombers would avoid anti-aircraft fire 445 00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,840 and drop their payloads far away from the target area. 446 00:30:57,320 --> 00:30:59,040 Will you put the revs up please? 447 00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,240 But tonight it's like a training maneuver. 448 00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,120 Hello Bombardier, okay when you are. 449 00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:07,840 Bomb doors open. 450 00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:09,840 Bomb doors open, Bombardier. 451 00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:11,280 Steady. 452 00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:14,080 Steady. 453 00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:15,800 Bombs gone. 454 00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:25,160 Two hundred and forty-four Lancaster's drop all their bombs 455 00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:28,062 in the space of just 15 minutes. 456 00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:34,280 The sound of the falling bombs came closer and closer. 457 00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:36,880 And I thought, "Well, when will the next come? 458 00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,960 And will it fall onto our house?" 459 00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:45,000 It was a fright which shook the knees and the teeth were chattering 460 00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:47,640 and, uh, one was numb. 461 00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,640 Huge high explosive blockbuster bombs 462 00:31:56,320 --> 00:32:00,360 and 200,000 clustered incendiaries 463 00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:03,840 smash into the historic center of Dresden. 464 00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,960 The precise combination is deliberately designed 465 00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:14,880 to get inside the buildings and start fires. 466 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,160 Large explosives, like the 4000-pound cookie, 467 00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:21,240 blow the roofs off a street or a square of houses, 468 00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:25,520 and then hundreds of light incendiaries fall into those open roofs 469 00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:26,880 and set everything on fire. 470 00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:31,600 And the combination, of course, blew buildings apart 471 00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:33,280 and then lit many fires. 472 00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:37,120 And once those fires got on the way, 473 00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:41,680 they began to converge and converge and converge. 474 00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:47,160 Dresden's tightly packed medieval streets and wooden houses 475 00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,120 are the perfect fuel for the flames. 476 00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,880 And tonight, a steady wind fans them across the city. 477 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:02,680 Fire fed itself and it started to pull oxygen in 478 00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,960 from all around, a self-feeding fire. 479 00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,360 Something that one can't even begin to imagine, 480 00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,160 it's kind of an outer ring of Dante's Inferno. 481 00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:19,280 And just a few hours later, 482 00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:24,880 a second huge wave of over 500 bombers arrives. 483 00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:31,200 A coldly calculated tactic Harris has picked up from the Luftwaffe. 484 00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:35,200 This second raid was deliberately timed 485 00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,600 to give the firefighters on the ground enough time to get out there 486 00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:40,080 and try and put out the fires. 487 00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:44,560 And then another enormous quantity of bombs rains down. 488 00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:48,960 And the second raid started, it was more frightening 489 00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:50,960 because we were outside. 490 00:33:51,280 --> 00:33:54,880 My sister was hysterical, I had to calm her down. 491 00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:58,480 By now the rare conditions have come together 492 00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:02,560 to form an unstoppable high-speed inferno, 493 00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:04,760 known as a firestorm. 494 00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:08,680 It effectively creates a tornado on the ground. 495 00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:13,640 Super-heated air that automatically sucks at very high speed, 496 00:34:13,720 --> 00:34:17,520 air in from the surrounding area and creates very high winds, 497 00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,760 strong enough to lift people, uproot trees, 498 00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,360 move vehicles and suck them all into the flames. 499 00:34:23,720 --> 00:34:29,080 The destruction of the city is much, much more effective. 500 00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,800 As day breaks, the Americans arrive. 501 00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:43,760 Their bombers are heading for Dresden's military marshaling yards 502 00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:45,080 and industry. 503 00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:49,480 The American Air Forces liked to state 504 00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:52,360 that they only engaged in precision attacks. 505 00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:56,240 But when they bombed Dresden, of course the city was covered 506 00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:00,320 in a great rolling cloud of smoke from the previous night's raids. 507 00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:04,080 So essentially, they engaged in another area attack. 508 00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:07,800 One bomb group actually completely misidentified the target 509 00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:10,560 and bombed Prague instead of Dresden. 510 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:16,560 When the Lancaster bombers land back in Britain, 511 00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:22,400 RAF Bomber Command is astounded by the effectiveness of the mission. 512 00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:28,120 They've lost just six planes from a sortie of 800. 513 00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:33,640 The next day, the Allied press trumpet the success of the raid. 514 00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:36,880 Bomber Command was using the techniques 515 00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,040 that it used at Dresden routinely. 516 00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:43,880 And it just so happened that everything at Dresden went perfectly, 517 00:35:44,240 --> 00:35:46,840 it just ran like clockwork. 518 00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:57,880 Just a few days later, a German backlash gathers momentum. 519 00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:05,280 Rumors coming from inside Germany hint at the scale of the human tragedy. 520 00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,880 And anger grows among the population 521 00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,040 to the complete absence of air raid defenses. 522 00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:16,160 The Nazi Elite is worried about, is there is going to be this implosion, 523 00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:19,016 that everyone's going to go, "Do you know what, I've had enough of this 524 00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:20,440 and I'm just going to surrender." 525 00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:25,080 Party Boss, Mr. Mutschmann, fled Dresden 526 00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:29,160 and was somewhere in the surrounding mountains. 527 00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,600 He was a deserter and a pig. 528 00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:37,520 People said they would kill Hitler 529 00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:39,440 if they got their hands on to him. 530 00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,400 But to everyone's surprise, the Nazi regime does little 531 00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,360 to suppress the details of the horrific Allied raid. 532 00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:56,040 With the enemy now at the gates, the Nazi's propaganda chief, 533 00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,520 Joseph Goebbels, takes a bold new tack, 534 00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:02,320 and spins the bad news. 535 00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:11,120 Goebbels decided that not to minimize Dresden 536 00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:14,120 but to maximize it, to go right up to the max. 537 00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,000 What he's trying to do with Dresden, he's going, 538 00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:19,320 "You know, this is the barbarity that we're dealing with, 539 00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,600 you know, these awful people who are wanting to destroy everything 540 00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:26,400 that is good about Germany, but you've got to keep going, 541 00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:28,480 you've got to keep fighting because the alternative 542 00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:30,800 is complete annihilation and destruction." 543 00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:35,640 Goebbels unleashed something very wild after the Dresden raid. 544 00:37:35,720 --> 00:37:39,400 I mean, you could almost call it like a sort of propaganda plague, 545 00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:41,160 and it was infectious. 546 00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:45,960 Goebbels leaks horrific photos and eye-witness testimony 547 00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,720 from inside Dresden anonymously 548 00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:52,520 through the neutral press in Sweden and Switzerland. 549 00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:55,480 SWEDISH DAILY NEWS 25th FEBRUARY 1945 550 00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:56,720 He tells them 551 00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:58,680 Nearly 200,000 victims of the Dresden raid. 552 00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,760 That up to 200,000 civilians have been killed. 553 00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:04,120 It was useful to Goebbels 554 00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:06,920 to interpret this as a terror attack, 555 00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:09,720 in his attempt to win world public opinion, 556 00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:13,800 and in his attempt to paint the Allies as terrorists. 557 00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:18,760 And so he was very aggressive in trying to reach the neutral press 558 00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:23,280 in particular, to tell the tale of this awful thing 559 00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:24,800 that happened to Dresden, 560 00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,960 to rally the German people and to shock the rest of the world. 561 00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:32,720 It would have been very easy to have gotten shocking pictures 562 00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:36,960 of deaths of non-combatants at Dresden. 563 00:38:37,720 --> 00:38:40,800 I think for a propaganda minister that would have been easy work. 564 00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:46,320 Many of the inhabitants believed the city was immune from bombing 565 00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:50,400 and didn't take the air raid siren seriously at first. 566 00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:56,440 The eye-witness reports and pictures reveal the merciless hell 567 00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:58,320 at the Dresden firestorm. 568 00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,720 The story of Dresden transforms 569 00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:07,000 from Nazi failure into Allied cruelty. 570 00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:10,960 The scene would have been one of complete havoc. 571 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:14,080 People in terror trying to escape, 572 00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:17,920 trying to keep track of their children or their loved ones, 573 00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:20,080 people calling out for one another, 574 00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:24,840 people being separated by buildings that were exploding. 575 00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:29,680 The terrible winds that children wouldn't have been able to stand up in. 576 00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,400 I can't even imagine what it would have been like, 577 00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:35,800 especially as a mother with a young child, 578 00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:38,760 trying to keep a child safe in this kind of environment. 579 00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,360 I ran through the burning streets 580 00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:45,520 and my face and hair was singed. 581 00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,400 There was some awful scenes, a number of people died 582 00:39:49,720 --> 00:39:54,520 when they passed an open entrance, the suction was such 583 00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:55,960 that they couldn't fight it 584 00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:59,040 and were dragged into the burning building. 585 00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,760 Those who could, ran to the park or into the reservoir. 586 00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:08,360 But they were boiled alive or blasted 587 00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:10,200 by the second wave of bombers. 588 00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:14,720 Some took refuge in the old interconnected cellars 589 00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:18,000 under their homes, as they'd been told to. 590 00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,440 But they were cooked alive by the heat. 591 00:40:22,720 --> 00:40:26,160 The super-hot air started infiltrating, 592 00:40:26,240 --> 00:40:28,320 coming down through the cellars and actually shooting 593 00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:30,840 through the breakthroughs, even faster in some ways 594 00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:32,480 than it was spreading above ground. 595 00:40:32,720 --> 00:40:35,040 So there really was no escape and this is the true horror 596 00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:36,880 of the Dresden firestorm. 597 00:40:38,240 --> 00:40:39,680 Bodies are being melted. 598 00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:43,160 Enormous numbers of casualties on the ground actually lost their lives 599 00:40:43,240 --> 00:40:45,520 as a result of suffocation or poisoning, 600 00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:47,400 rather than they were actually burnt to death. 601 00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:52,640 There was really no escape except to run, but then where? 602 00:40:53,240 --> 00:40:56,800 People tried to tramp through melting streets 603 00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,040 and found their shoes stripped off their feet, 604 00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:03,120 and they could no longer move and died where they stood. 605 00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,000 Whether you survived was simply a matter of luck. 606 00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:11,440 Two days later, Dresden is still burning. 607 00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:15,760 It takes a recovery team seven hours 608 00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,240 to get into the city's one main air raid shelter. 609 00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:27,840 Once inside, they find nothing but green, brown liquid, and bones, 610 00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:32,840 all 1,000 people inside have simply melted. 611 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,880 Well, it was horrendous quite honestly. 612 00:41:37,240 --> 00:41:41,760 My father was found only identified by his teeth. 613 00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:47,440 There were a lot of German soldiers who were on their stations 614 00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:49,040 in the Altstadt, 615 00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:51,400 and people really got killed. 616 00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:55,400 Bodies and bodies, hanging heads down and legs down. 617 00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:02,240 Bombing the city centers, and by this, causing chaos, 618 00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:05,760 we have to focus that it was about killing civilians. 619 00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:08,480 Kill as many civilians as possible. 620 00:42:08,720 --> 00:42:12,080 And the more civilians you kill, the bigger the chaos will be, 621 00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:16,960 the greater will be the effect on ending, shortening the war. 622 00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:19,960 But of course it was not worth it. 623 00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:24,280 We have no evidence whatsoever that it achieved any effect. 624 00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:29,280 The main streets were again serviceable after a couple of days. 625 00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:31,360 And even the factories were not destroyed. 626 00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,280 The factories, the airfields, all things you could use 627 00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:37,640 for military purposes were not destroyed. 628 00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:44,520 News of the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Dresden 629 00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,160 soon reaches Allied journalists. 630 00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:54,680 A young American reporter sneaks the phrase "terror bombing" 631 00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:59,200 past the sensors and it's published all over the United States. 632 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:04,000 The story shocks a previously insulated public. 633 00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:08,840 It just sounds different from what we've heard before, 634 00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,160 exploiting refugees in a crowded city. 635 00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:14,520 And the reporters picked up on that. 636 00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,480 There was a media storm produced in the western press, 637 00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,360 this was the point at which questions were beginning to be asked 638 00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:22,960 in the British Parliament, and you very much got 639 00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:25,120 the British Government on the back foot now. 640 00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,320 Goebbels' master plan starts to play out. 641 00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:34,400 A catastrophic failure of the German air defense 642 00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:38,000 evolves into a model crisis for the Allies. 643 00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:43,080 And when he seeded the story in the neutral press, 644 00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:45,400 Goebbels lied. 645 00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:49,200 He exaggerated the death toll, 646 00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:53,240 taking the true figure from the Dresden police report 647 00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:55,440 and adding a zero. 648 00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:59,640 The real death toll is 25,000. 649 00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,440 Goebbels produced this huge figure for Dresden 650 00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:07,840 that's one of the most successful pieces of fake news 651 00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,560 in the history of fake news. 652 00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:17,280 So, it's not the numbers which were announced by Goebbels, 653 00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:19,120 so in the 200 thousands. 654 00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:22,760 The town of Dresden a couple of years ago 655 00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:24,600 set up an academic committee 656 00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:28,080 who should definitely clear how many people were killed in Dresden. 657 00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:32,560 And their maximum estimate is 25,000. 658 00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:36,880 It's a huge number, but it's not ten times that number. 659 00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:41,760 And when you go to concentration camps and you see the monstrous way 660 00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,800 in which the Nazis behaved, and what they did to others, 661 00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:49,520 the idea that they've got the nerve to challenge what the Allies were doing 662 00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,360 on something like Dresden is absolutely outrageous. 663 00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:58,440 The Allies take the bait nonetheless and turn on each other. 664 00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,480 The United States blame the British 665 00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:04,040 for the indiscriminate bombing at Dresden. 666 00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,360 The Americans worked very hard to distinguish themselves 667 00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,960 and claim that they were not doing area bombing. 668 00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:16,880 They didn't want to be tarred with the same brush as Bomber Command. 669 00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:21,600 With the US Air Force denying responsibility, 670 00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:25,800 the actions of RAF Bomber Command come under scrutiny. 671 00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:32,040 And Winston Churchill fears he might be held responsible. 672 00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:38,240 By now the prime minister has no need for the bombing campaign. 673 00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,080 The Western Front is moving again 674 00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:45,520 and the Soviets are deep inside Nazi Germany. 675 00:45:46,720 --> 00:45:50,320 So that March, he starts to distance himself 676 00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:52,520 from the policy of city bombing. 677 00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:55,920 He's always been slightly torn over the bombing of cities, 678 00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:57,040 the area of bombing. 679 00:45:57,400 --> 00:45:59,400 He's flip-flopped really between the two. 680 00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:03,360 And I think the storm of protests that there was after Dresden 681 00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:06,400 has actually made him pretty guilty about the whole thing. 682 00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:10,360 He began to worry about how his own actions 683 00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,240 might be judged by historians. 684 00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:18,520 And at this point, he basically changed course 685 00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:23,040 and sent a minute saying that we really shouldn't engage 686 00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:27,280 in this kind of activity anymore, and we should avoid anything 687 00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,480 that even remotely looks like terroristic bombing. 688 00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:35,600 As Churchill distances himself from area bombing, 689 00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:38,360 the blame for the Dresden attack shifts 690 00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:43,000 to Bomber Command's ruthless leader, Arthur Harris. 691 00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:46,960 Now clearly, Harris was willing to carry out the campaign, 692 00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:48,040 that was his job. 693 00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:51,720 But increasing attention focused on Harris as the person 694 00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:54,280 who had envisioned the raid, 695 00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:57,960 but in fact, Churchill himself had been critical 696 00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:00,080 in spurring the Dresden Raid. 697 00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:02,520 Harris is fairly incensed by it 698 00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:06,000 and famously expresses the opinion 699 00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,840 that Dresden is not worth the bones 700 00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:10,760 of one British grenadier. 701 00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:13,680 After Dresden, 702 00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:18,120 the reputation of Bomber Command and Arthur Harris 703 00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:20,040 lies in tatters. 704 00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:22,600 Harris after the war becomes somebody 705 00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:24,760 that no one wants to embrace. 706 00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:26,320 He's not a hero. 707 00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:29,960 In many ways the single largest part of the British war effort, 708 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:34,720 Bomber Command, becomes someone that no one wants to be associated with. 709 00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:41,800 The final snub for Bomber Command from Churchill 710 00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,880 is that in his VE speech, he mentions just about every branch 711 00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:48,960 of the armed service and what they’ve done and where they’ve served, 712 00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:51,640 apart from one and that is Bomber Command. 713 00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,400 It takes 67 years 714 00:47:56,640 --> 00:48:01,320 for the 55,000 men who served and died in RAF Bomber Command 715 00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:04,400 to finally get a memorial in London, 716 00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:07,680 alongside the other British Armed Forces. 717 00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:12,320 And the morality of the area bombing of Dresden 718 00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:17,040 is a difficult question, debated to this very day. 719 00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:22,560 We have to balance our great sympathy for the Germany civilians 720 00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:24,120 who were caught there and destroyed, 721 00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,440 with the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people 722 00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:31,080 will be killed by Germans in the coming months. 723 00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:36,760 So, Dresden is a legitimate target and also Germany is resisting. 724 00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:39,640 It's an odd thing. It's almost like the victory of the Allies 725 00:48:39,720 --> 00:48:43,120 in the Second World War was so complete that the Germans have become victims. 726 00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:46,960 It's, of course, hard for a democracy 727 00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:48,680 who fights against Hitler. 728 00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,320 It's a bit like, "Definitely, good against evil." 729 00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:54,440 But there was no limit. 730 00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:57,720 The more civilians we kill, the better it is. 731 00:48:58,720 --> 00:49:01,040 There's nobody who says, "Stop, we can't do that." 732 00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:05,080 And there's a point at which you have to look at yourself 733 00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:09,000 and say, "What have I become in doing this?" 734 00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:12,960 and I think this is where Dresden is relevant. 735 00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:14,560 It's a warning. 736 00:49:31,820 --> 00:49:36,320