Dresden Marks 70th Anniversary Of Firebombing

The 70th anniversary of the Dresden firebombing is being commemorated today - one of the most controversial military actions of the Allied Forces during World War II.

Germany's seventh-largest city had been spared the destruction seen in Berlin and Hamburg for most of the conflict.

But on 13 February 1945, British and US bombers wreaked devastation in a bid to demoralise German civilians and force the Nazis to surrender.

Corpses littered Dresden's streets following the attack, with cultural landmarks including the city's opera house turned to rubble. There were few public air raid shelters for refugees, and thousands of bodies were discovered near cellars which could not withstand the firebombing.

Some historians believe the destruction changed little about the outcome of the war - describing it as a tragic waste of human life.

Nazi propaganda at the time claimed the death toll from the bombings stood at 200,000 - more than the total of those immediately killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear blasts combined.

However, an independent study commissioned by the city in 2008 concluded that 25,000 citizens died in the attack - many of them from collapsed lungs.

The number of people killed was likely exacerbated by the fires which ravaged the streets afterwards. A vacuum was created at ground level as superheated air rose rapidly, and the subsequent winds were so powerful they could uproot trees and suck people into the flames.

Irrespective of the death toll, many survivors insist the bombing was unjustifiable and amounted to a war crime.

Eberhard Renner, who was 12 at the time, lost schoolmates and neighbours during the attack - and remembers encountering the body of a woman in the street, one week after the bombs fell.

"She was burned to a cinder, had become very small, but her hand was held up and on it was her gold wedding band, shining, not blackened at all. I will never forget that scene," the now-retired architecture professor said.

"To sacrifice 25,000 women and children, innocent people? That's a war crime."