Dresden - the city that burned for seven days

IT was known as "Florence on the Elbe", a baroque jewel, home to architectural treasures, including a magisterial church, and renowned for its fine china. It was also still intact after almost six years of war.

But on the night of February 13, 1945, all that changed. Overnight, it was smashed into smithereens.

The bombing of Dresden is one of the single most contentious Allied attacks of the Second World War. Previously seen as a city with little military or strategic value, it was reduced to rubble in a matter of hours, with half of all the city's dwellings destroyed or seriously damaged.

Even now, there is no accurate and widely accepted figure for the number of people who died that night. Estimates range from 25,000 to several hundred thousand; it is likely that more people died at Dresden than in the atomic bomb attacks on Japan in August of 1945.

For Bomber Command, it was a legitimate target, and its destruction would damage both the enemy war effort and the morale of Germany's citizens. To the raid's opponents, it was nothing short of a war crime, an atrocity which undermined the Allied claim to the moral high ground in the war against the Nazis.

In 2005, ceremonies across Dresden marked 60 years since the bombing, but in a demonstration of the raid's enduring power to divide, the anniversary also saw a march to remember the victims of an act of "mass murder" against the German people. A survey found almost a third of Germans under 30 found the term "bomb holocaust" an acceptable description.

ON a visit of reconciliation to the city in 1992, the Queen was greeted by egg-throwing demonstrators, angry at the failure to lay a wreath at the cathedral or to apologise. Earlier that same year, the Queen Mother was caught up in the controversy when she unveiled a statue of Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the head of Bomber Command during the war and the man held responsible for ordering the raid.

Dusk was falling on that February night in 1945 when hundreds of Avro Lancaster bombers started taking off from airfields in East Anglia. After heading towards France, they turned north-east towards Dresden. The German early warning system had been destroyed by the Allies, meaning the Luftwaffe's fighter defence could be easily outmanoeuvred. Dresden had not previously been targeted by bombing and was virtually undefended by anti-aircraft weapons. Unhindered by the enemy, and with unusually clear skies, it was perfect bombing conditions.

During the course of the night, 773 Lancasters dropped 2,659 tonnes of bombs on the city, made up of 1,477 tonnes of high explosive bombs, and 1,181 tonnes of incendiary bombs. It was the incendiary bombs which caused particular damage, igniting fires in the city which caused devastation, particularly in the older and more densely built-up areas.

Initial Allied estimates were that 85 per cent of the city was destroyed, and the inner old city was virtually wiped out.

The majority of buildings in the suburbs were gutted, although the outer suburbs were largely unaffected. In all, 78,000 buildings were demolished, some 50 per cent of the city's total, and another 27,000 damaged but repairable. Eight out of every ten of the city's homes had been damaged to some extent.

Estimates of the total dead have been harder to pin down. A pre-war population of some 650,000, making it the seventh largest city in Germany, had been swollen by a huge influx of refugees, fleeing the advance of the Red Army from the east.

Initial RAF estimates were that from 8,200 to 16,400 people had been killed; the Dresden city government now puts the figure at 35,000, but some sources suggest it could have been up to 400,000. The number of refugees in the city means a true figure may never be reached.

The incendiary bombs, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as magnesium or phosphorous, created firestorms across the city. Dropped in clusters, as the area caught fire, the air above became superheated and rose rapidly, sucking in cold air from ground level with such force that people were sucked into the flames.

One witness, Margaret Freyer, described what she saw: "The firestorm is incredible, there are calls for help and screams from somewhere but all around is one single inferno.

"To my left I suddenly see a woman. I can see her to this day and shall never forget it. She carries a bundle in her arms. It is a baby. She runs, she falls, and the child flies in an arc into the fire."

Temperatures in the firestorm reached 1,200 degrees. Many of the victims were burned to cinders. The city burned for seven days.

Because the city had previously been untouched by bombing, air raid shelters were inadequate and many people instead clustered in cellars. Survivors described fleeing from cellar to cellar, as each was hit in succession by the relentless bombing.

Eleonore Kompisch, a refugee who had fled to Dresden, said she almost choked to death in a smoke-filled cellar, as mothers around her slit their children's wrists to give them a speedier death.

But dawn brought no respite. Over the next two days, the US Air Force carried out a series of daylight raids on the city, 527 aircraft dropping 1,247 tonnes of explosives, primarily on Dresden's marshalling yards.

Initially, the bombing was hailed a success by the RAF, but within days the judgement of Bomber Command in destroying the city was being questioned, particularly after German propaganda inflated the number of casualties.

THE decision to target an entire city was in keeping with Bomber Command's policy of area bombing, on the grounds it would bring about a collapse in morale among German civilians and bring an early end to the war. The RAF also argued that Dresden did have military and strategic significance, warranting the raid.

Dresden was a commercial and transportation centre of Germany, commanding the north-south route to Czechoslovakia and the east-west route along the German uplands, and was at the junction of three key railway lines, from Berlin to Vienna, Munich to Breslau and Hamburg to Leipzig. The city's factories produced aircraft components, poison gas, anti-aircraft and field guns and other equipment destined for military use, making it a legitimate target in the Allies' eyes.

The attack on Dresden was also a demonstration of support to the Soviet Union. The Argonaut conferences of January and February 1945, bringing together British, American and Soviet leaders, established Dresden as a priority for the Allies in response to a Soviet request to disrupt German communication links, hindering movement of troops from the western to the eastern front.

Nor was the bombing of Dresden exceptional. The RAF had used similar numbers of aircraft in raids on Hamburg in 1943, and dropped 16,000 tonnes of explosives on Cologne in October 1944, six times as much as hit Dresden. And although the February 13 raid did not prompt the German surrender, it did result in the total demoralisation of a city.

In the final military action of the war against Germany, the Red Army captured Dresden, on May 8, 1945. VE Day.

But doubts over the morality of destroying Dresden have persisted: that the bombing was an act of brutality on a city which had less to do with winning the war and more to do with revenge for the Luftwaffe's bombings of London, Coventry and other cities; that it was influenced by news of the treatment of Jews in the newly-liberated concentration camps, and that it was a calculated assault on German culture.

Within weeks of the raid Winston Churchill, although he supported the bombing campaign, moved to distance himself from it, drafting a memo denouncing area bombing as "mere acts of terror and wanton destruction", and that it "remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing".

Bomber Harris has shouldered much of the criticism over Dresden. In his memoirs, he acknowledged that many people considered the raid unjustified, but said: "The attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself".

But perhaps the final judgement should go to Robert Saunby, Deputy Air Marshall at Bomber Command: "That the bombing of Dresden was a great tragedy none can deny. It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself.

"Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanised or civilised, and if one side attempted to do so it would be most likely to be defeated. That to me is the lesson of Dresden."