Bombing of Dresden

The bombing of Dresden was a joint operation by the British and the Americans to bomb the ancient German city of Dresden towards the end of World War II. (PROSE: The Turing Test) The event became one of infamy. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus, Just War, Who Killed Kennedy)

Background
During World War II, the Royal Air Force and US Air Force joined together under Bomber Command and began a strategic bombing campaign against German cities. Often inaccurate due to high-altitude flying, the operations were nevertheless highly destructive. (PROSE: A History of Humankind)

Following the re-entry of the Western Allies onto the European continent in June 1944 which sent the dominant Germans into retreat, (PROSE: The Taint, The Shadow in the Glass) many western German cities came within close range of the Allied air forces. Air raid tactics were underway against Italian cities in that respective theatre, although not without controversy. As the German war machine unravelled, the same tactic was introduced in the north of Europe to ensure the Allies maintained the initiative. (PROSE: The Turing Test)

Allied bombing missions launched from the Western Front intensified, inviting comparisons with the Blitz in 1940. Committed Nazis such as Major Poetschke of the 1st SS Panzer Division believed the Blitz had been justified for strategic reasons, while Allied tactics in 1944 were purely acts of aggression designed to annihilate the German nation. (PROSE: Autumn Mist)

Focus on Dresden
Dresden was not the only city hit during the bombing campaign. Nuremberg and Chemnitz were also targeted, as were railway lines and many bridges crossing the Rhine, which caused havoc for German transport and logistics.

Dresden came to the attention of British Intelligence at the start of December 1944 when Bletchley Park intercepted an unidentified code originating from the city. They feared that it was a new German code replacing the cracked ENIGMA codes, while Alan Turing suggested it was merely a test. In reality, the code was not German in origin; it was produced by aliens known as the "strangers" as they attempted to use their quantum resonator to turn themselves into code and depart Earth as quantum particles. The Eighth Doctor had been trying to reach the city since June to find the strangers but was only able to depart after 31 January 1945.

Factories in Dresden had already been struck by the bombing campaign, resulting in civilian deaths and fires which left charred corpses in the streets. However, this was just a prelude to what the city would eventually experience. (PROSE: The Turing Test)

Prague in occupied Czechoslovakia, despite its distance from their target, was also struck by USAF bombers after they mistook it for Dresden. (PROSE: The End of Now)

The firebombing
In February 1945, the RAF and USAF launched a joint attack on Dresden with large quantities of incendiary bombs. In a very short time, large areas of Dresden caught fire which spread to an inferno and engulfed many buildings, aided by a late winter wind blowing through the city. Thousands of civilians perished in the flames, the heat and the explosions, especially those unable to find suitable shelter.

The Eighth Doctor at least hoped that the destruction would interfere with Herbert Elgar's attempt to keep the strangers from departing. This proved wishful thinking and the Doctor and Joseph Heller were forced to kill Elgar. The strangers activated the resonator and departed during the bombing.

The Doctor, Heller, Alan Turing and Graham Greene sought shelter in the crypt of the church from which the strangers had departed. When they determined it was safe enough, they ventured into the burning streets to help any civilians in need of rescue. (PROSE: The Turing Test)

Squadron Leader Ian Gilmore witnessed the bombing of Dresden while flying on a mission over enemy territory. He tried to forget the sight. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) The fire destroyed the city. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)

Aftermath
Once the fired died down, the survivors emerged from the ruins of their city. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)

Turing recorded part of his involvement in the Doctor's mission to Dresden but committed suicide in 1954 before it was completed. Greene continued the story but wrote no further than the beginning of the bombing. He recorded that he saw no purpose in the attack. The final part of the tale was written by Heller at the Doctor's request following Greene's death in 1991. To Heller, the destruction of Dresden demonstrated the reasons for his reluctance to partake in area bombing, an attitude he had displayed since June 1944. Greene and Heller never found out the fate of Mrs Cohn, an elderly resident of Dresden whom Greene had met when he was invited into her and her husband's home just prior to the raid. (PROSE: The Turing Test)

The parallel Earth devastated by the Inferno Project was compared by to the fate of Dresden, in the sense that, although the event was catastrophic, some people still managed to survive. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)

The Seventh Doctor named Dresden as one of the many atrocities of the war, on par with Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, Coventry, Hiroshima and Kwai. (PROSE: Just War) To him, the conflict consisted of "Everything from the Holocaust to Hiroshima, with Dresden along the way." He found it particularly regrettable that the events in Dresden had been perpetrated by the Allies, who otherwise held the moral high ground in the war, rather than the Axis. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) In this way, the bombing of Dresden echoed an earlier British raid on the French town of Granville on 5 March 1941, for which the Doctor felt he bore some responsibility. (PROSE: Just War) In terms of scale, Dresden was eclipsed later that year by the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war in the Pacific. (PROSE: Atom Bomb Blues, Endgame, COMIC: Sky Jacks)