According to the Klemperer diaries, there were 1600 Jews left in Dresden on this date. They were scheduled to report to Gestapo headquarters on the 16th. The raid destroyed the Gestapo offices along with the records, so Klemperer, his wife and presumably other Jews on the list were able to flee to the West and survive the Holocaust. This fact alone would justify the raid, and apparently there is evidence that German troops and weaponry were being held in the city. Feb. 13, 1945 nat schmelzer 2007-10-05 00:05:44 2007-10-05 00:05:44 0 Regarding the Allied decision to target Dresden, some proponents of the war crime position argue that an awareness of the devastation known to be caused by firebombing and the effect on the civilian population below was greater than that justified by military necessity and establishes their case on a prima facie basis. This goes without even mentioning that Dresden did not have a military garrison, that most of the industry was in the outskirts and not in the targeted city centre,and the cultural significance of the city. In addition to Stanton, the aforementioned president of Genocide Watch, Simon Jenkins contends that a mass assault against civilians simply constitutes a crime against humanity. Author Kurt Vonnegut, who as an American POW was in Dresden before and during the firebombing,has written extensively on this warcrime on the internet. British historian Anthony Beevor wrote that Dresden was considered relatively safe, having been spared previous RAF night attacks, and that at the time of the raids there were up to 300,000 refugees in the city seeking sanctuary from the fighting on the Eastern Front. The author, journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens is of the opinion that many small German residential districts were destroyed for no reason other than as live target practice for new bomber crews, and that the Allies incinerated German cities in 1944 and 1945 simply because they could. The Allies were aware of the effects of firebombing as British cities had been subject to them during the Blitz. In Fire Sites, German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich posits that Winston Churchill's decision to bomb Germany between January and March 1945 constitutes a war crime, because he claims that the RAF's relentless bombing campaign against German cities in the last months of the war served no military purpose. Countering the claim that Dresden was a significant military target, Friedrich's earlier book, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945 focuses on the evidence showing that the German forces were in full retreat by February 1945. He argues that the impact on civilians was out of all proportion to the military goal, reiterating the argument that the Allied forces were aware of the destruction caused by incendiary bombs. Friedrich also argues that the Allies had known that future attacks were likely to cause ever increasing numbers of civilian deaths. "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." The case for the bombing as a war crime antonwithagen 2007-10-09 10:22:54 2007-10-05 14:23:38 0 A reconstruction of the bombing of Dresden. The writer/producer/director has provided no film shot by him at the time (of the bombing), interviewed no one, at the time prior to the bombing, who was British, American, nor German at the time (of the bombing) This purported video is a poor attempt at historical rewrite at best and an uninformed historical fiction at worst. The video is simply another attempt to self define the video makers as liberal US haters. viewers must remember that liberalism is a mental disorder. Raid on Dresden Wallbight 2007-10-06 03:43:43 2007-10-06 03:43:43 1 3 1.00