Report: Dresden bombing killed fewer than thought

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The Allied firebombing of the eastern German city of Dresden in 1945 killed no more than 25,000 people - far fewer than scholars' previous estimates running as high as 135,000 - a special commission has found. The team of a dozen experts, including university professors, archivists and military historians, said Wednesday that four years of research so far has confirmed 18,000 deaths and showed that police and city administrators at the time believed there were about 25,000 victims of the bombing. The research is to continue until 2009. Since the end of World War II, scholars have varied in their tally of people killed by waves of British and US bombers on Feb. 13-14, 1945. Some estimates have run to 135,000 or more. In his 2005 book on the bombing, British historian Frederick Taylor argued the real toll was between 25,000 and 40,000. The high civilian death toll and the devastation of the centuries-old city center have been a source of controversy for decades - as has the dispute over whether the Allies were justified in targeting the refugee-choked city. The Allies hoped the bombing would hurt the Nazis where they would feel it most, and help force their capitulation.