Imagine you are this child
Imagine you are a child.
Es ist Februar. Bitterkalt.
You crouch with your mother and your little sister in an overcrowded basement beneath the burning city.
Outside, a storm of fire rages.
Not a natural event.
Man-made.
The heat seeps through the walls.
The smoke burns in your lungs.
Screams echo from all around.
And then you hear it:
The roar of the next bomber squadron.
You don’t know if you will still be breathing the next moment.
This was not a fantasy.
This was Dresden.
Exactly 81 years ago.
A City Without Protection
One million people—a whole city plus hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled from the Red Army—crowded into streets, basements, and public squares.
Dresden was no longer a fortress.
It was a vast, defenseless hospital city.
No anti-aircraft guns.
No fighter planes.
No hope.
Only people praying that the horror would pass.
It did not pass.
The Night of the Firestorm
On the night of February 13 to 14, 1945, the first marker flares fell from the sky like malevolent stars.
Ten minutes later, thousands of bombs and air mines rained down.
The old town was ablaze within minutes.
Three hours later came the incendiary bombs—650,000 of them.
A firestorm erupted the likes of which the world had never seen before.
People melted on the asphalt.
Trees exploded.
Lungs burst in the inferno.
Mothers held their children tight until both burned to death.
Grandparents suffocated in the “torture cellars of modernity,” as Ernst Jünger called the bunkers.
The Morning After
The next day, the survivors crawled out of the rubble.
Often in nothing but nightgowns.
Barefoot.
Coughing.
Burned.
British low-flying aircraft hunted them.
They fired at those fleeing.
At mothers carrying children in their arms.
At elderly people who could barely walk.
On February 15, American bombers dropped bombs again.
As if hell had not already been vast enough.
Phosphorus and Flames
Phosphorus burned through skin and flesh.
People kept burning—even when they threw themselves into the snow or jumped into the Elbe.
A survivor reported on it in 2015 on the ARD news.
With a trembling voice.
With eyes that still saw the flames 70 years later.
And to this day, the official line is:
“Phosphorus? Not deliberately used against civilians.”
That is a lie.
And it hurts.
How many truly died?
In the past, the Red Cross spoke of 275,000.
Adenauer cited around 250,000.
Other sources 300,000.
Today it is said to be 25,000.
“Probably fewer.”
With one million people in the city.
With total destruction.
With bodies reduced to ash.
Anyone who cites higher numbers is immediately labeled a “right-wing extremist.”
But the dead do not lie.
The survivors do not lie.
The images of a mother who painted her escape from hell in 1985 do not lie.
Look at them.
Download them.
Feel what that does to a human being.
81 Years Later
Today, politicians once again stand there with wreaths.
They speak of “causes in National Socialism.”
Of “no instrumentalization.”
Of “25,000 victims.”
The shells change.
The script remains the same.
Candles.
Human chains.
Empty phrases.
The truth?
Is locked away.
The voices of the eyewitnesses?
Silenced.
The pain remains
Meanwhile, leftists chant:
“Bomber Harris, do it again!”
And hardly anyone says it loudly and clearly:
This is inhumane.
It hurts.
It hurts endlessly.
It Is About Dignity
It is not about offsetting crimes against one another.
It is about not betraying your own dead.
It is about granting mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents at least the dignity of not diminishing their number.
To say to the survivors, to their faces:
Yes, it was cruel.
Yes, it was a crime.
Yes, it was unnecessary.
The Dead Bear Witness
The at least 250,000 dead of Dresden bear witness.
They accuse Churchill and Harris.
They accuse the bomber pilots.
And they accuse us.
Because we remain silent.
Because we relativize.
Because we count as if it were a matter of statistics.
81 years have passed.
The wounds have not healed.
They are still bleeding.
Do Not Remain Silent Any Longer
Stop relativizing.
Stop betraying the dead.
Speak their names.
Share their stories.
Cry if you feel the need.
But do not remain silent.
In Remembrance
In remembrance of every single soul who died that night.
For every mother who could not save her child.
For every child who never grew up.
For every grandfather who vanished in the flames.
They deserve more than candles.
More than empty phrases.
They deserve the truth.
And we owe it to them.
In Marla we trust.
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Book Recommendations on the Topic (Affiliate)
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📘 Der Untergang Dresdens – David Irving
👉 https://amzn.to/4rfry4O
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