When I saw the title ‘Accepted’ History Has Dresden Wrong., by Marc Dauphin, I feared the worst. Usually when I read about someone disagreeing with the conventional version of a well known historical atrocity, the authors are trying to minimize the death toll, or even deny that it happened, e.g. holocaust deniers. However, this article is different.

The subject is the fire-bombing of Dresden in Germany by allied bombers February 13-14, 1945. According to Bombing of Dresden in World War II, “Up to 25,000 people were killed.” Dauphin reports “a bit less than 30K bodies recovered,” but argues that the actual death toll was much higher.

Everybody involved had a reason to downplay the number of deaths. The Nazi authorities because they had failed to provide defenses against the raids (no AA guns-they had been taken away to defend other cities, no fighter coverage-no gasoline for them, no shelters). The approaching Soviets because they didn’t want to acknowledge the capacity of Western air power, and, of course, the Western Allies, probably through some form of moral alienation (aka shame — nevertheless, less than one month later the USAF did the same to Tokyo).

The consensus arrived at was to count the number of bodies recovered and keep it at that. Even today, sources say “up to” 20,000 people died in that particular bombing. Some sources will ‘allow’ up to 35,000 dead.

Dauphin gives a gruesome description of what happens in a firestorm like that created by the bombing. An unknown number of bodies were completely incinerated in 1400^oF and higher temperatures, leaving no trace to be recorded later.

The issue is further complicated because we do not know how many people were in Dresden at the time. There were at least 100,000 refugees in the city, possibly a lot more, in the city, fleeing the advance of the Soviet army in the eastern parts of Germany.