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According to historical documentation cited here, the purpose of the attack was to inflict the maximum loss of life on the civilian population, and particularly to kill as many refugees fleeing the Red Army. It was planned and executed by those at the highest levels of the British and American governments, who instructed the Allied Bomber Command to lie to pilots and their crews. At 10 PM on February 13, the first attack wave, consisting of the British number five bomber group, began. This air force, which consisted of 2,000 bombers with additional support craft, dropped over 3,000 high explosive and 700,000 incendiary bombs directly on the city center. Incendiary bombs, described as highly effective for producing maximum loss of human life, were used, with the loads carried by these bombers being 80% incendiary. The primary goal, according to British air commander Sir Arthur Harris, was to set the city well on fire. The fires caused all bodies of water within the city limits, including the Elbe River, to be set ablaze, as white phosphorus was a primary component of the incendiaries. With a chemical temperature of some 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, this combustible agent was thrown into every nook of the city. Those unable to bear the torment tossed themselves into the burning waterways, dying in thousands by drowning or burning on the water’s surface.
Despite the visibility of marked drop areas containing hospitals, sports stadia, and residential zones, bomber crews obeyed orders and rained down a fiery death upon the inhabitants. Tens of thousands were devoured in this early stage as the incendiaries began hundreds of fires, aided by a stiff wind coalescing into one massive firestorm. Precisely on schedule, three hours after the first attack wave, a second massive armada of British bombers arrived, again loaded almost exclusively with high-volume incendiary bombs. The residents of Dresden, their power systems destroyed in the first raid, had no warning of the second. The timing of the second armada was designed to ensure that a large quantity of surviving civilians would emerge from shelters to escape the city, and to catch firefighters and medical personnel from neighboring towns unawares, both of which occurred, resulting in hundreds of first responders dying needlessly. By 2 AM, Dresden’s burning hulk was visible from over 200 miles away, and the flames would continue to burn for a week. Parts of bodies, fragments of charred clothing, metal scrap, and ash scattered in the surrounding countryside; in some basements, rescue workers found liquefied remains and had to shovel yards of rendered human fat congealed into pools before reconstruction could begin. But the operation was not over, for the following afternoon, on Ash Wednesday, four fifty flying fortresses with P-fifty one fighter support arrived to finish the job.
Before this, Dresden had been a fairytale city of spires and cobbled streets. The US raid on February 14 was described as having brought the German people to their knees, and it is claimed that the Mustang fighters, suddenly appearing, fired on everything that moved, including riverbanks and walking civilians. It is stated that, despite efforts by Western authorities to downplay the loss of life, sufficient primary evidence and firsthand accounts entered the historical record before these were scrubbed. The death toll is asserted to be over 150,000, with some estimates as high as 300,000, and it is claimed that, in relative terms, more destruction befell Dresden in a single day than was inflicted on the whole of Great Britain during the entire war.