Dresden Bombing
I came across this some while ago: sadly, I have forgotten where! Could even have been on these august forums...thought it worth posting, after the BBC did it's usual hatchet job.
Since 1945, Dresden has been used to beat the RAF about its conduct of "terror bombing" during WW2. Many sources claim that Dresden was merely a quiet peaceable little medieval town going about its business and waiting for the war to end. In fact it was a major industrial centre and rail junction. As it was stated in the Dresden City Council Yearbook of 1942 - “Anyone who knows Dresden only as a cultural city would be very surprised to be made aware of the extensive and versatile activity that make Dresden one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich”.
There were 127 factories in the Dresden municipal area, most of which were converted to war production from their former peace time use. Some examples: Zeiss turned out bomb sights, u-boat periscopes and time fuses. A former typewriter and sewing machine factory made guns and ammunition and a catering machine factory switched to producing torpedoes for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. Arts and crafts workshops in the old town were making tail assemblies for V-1s. Other factories were turning out searchlights, aircraft components and field communications equipment. From the Dresden Chamber of Commerce in 1944 - "The work rhythm of Dresden is determined by the needs of our army." (The famous “Dresden” China was, as it always has been, made 12 mile away in Meisen).
During the Yalta conference in February 1945, at the Chiefs of Staff meeting, General Antonov specifically asked that the Dresden railway junction be bombed. Records held at the Public Records office in Kew confirm this request. General Antonov wanted Dresden attacked because it was a German base of operations against Marshall Koniev`s left flank that stood in the way of his advance into Germany. The troop reinforcement and transport centre shifted 28 troop trains a day through the marshalling yards. This is also confirmed in intelligence reports held in the Public Records office in Kew. Besides the physical contribution to the Eastern front, Dresden was a communications centre through which most telephone and telegraph lines connecting High Command to the southern flank of the Eastern front passed.
Finally, and most convincingly, captured German High Command documents from Berlin in 1945 state that "Dresden is to be fortified as a military strongpoint, to be held at all costs." British wartime records that were only recently de-classified reveal that this was known to the British and Russian commanders, as the orders to the German local defence commander were intercepted and deciphered by Ultra at BletchleyPark.