UPDATE: Dresden, 70 Years After the Firebombing

"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."

PJ Media

. . . "The survivors recall the bombing, in which an estimated 25,000 people were killed — burned alive, sucked into the vortex, their bodies exploding in the heat, heads raining down out of the sky like bowling balls as people were ripped apart in the maelstrom. Here’s one:

Soviet troops were pressing into Germany from the east and the other Allies from the west, but for 12-year-old schoolboy Eberhard Renner the war seemed far away. Dresden had been spared the destruction suffered by other cities like Berlin and Hamburg, and Renner clung to the hope that the Saxon capital would stay off the target list with the war so clearly near its end.

Even as air-raid sirens started screaming 70 years ago Friday, Renner’s father dismissed the attack as another reconnaissance mission. Then the bomb fell into Renner’s backyard. It blew the thick oak door off the shelter where the family had taken refuge, slamming him and his mother to the ground. Somebody yelled that the roof was on fire, and they ventured out into the streets as the bombs rained down.. . .

 "The Atlantic has a vivid and moving collection of photos of the destruction here. And then there’s this:"

UPDATE: BBC's insult to hero pilots: Veterans rage over Dresden coverage that attacks Britain as being 'worse than the Nazis' but ignores RAF's sacrifice

. .  ‘If the war had gone on for another year, how many millions more would have been killed at Auschwitz?

" ‘By all means cover it but the one-sided BBC coverage has incensed me.’

"A woman who wrote a letter to the Daily Mail added: ‘The BBC is beyond belief. Do we hear you “celebrating” the “hell” that was Swansea burning, or Coventry, or Plymouth, or Portsmouth – with the same unctuous sympathy as you are showing for Dresden? We have nothing to be guilty about.’

"Military historians and former military top brass defended the bombing of Dresden.

"Historian Frederick Taylor told the Mail: ‘Thousands of innocent civilians as well as soldiers were dying every day as battles raged in east and west – not forgetting the concentration camp inmates who were still being murdered by starvation, violence, disease, and forced marches.

"‘How could any resource – including the massive Allied air forces – be left unused in trying to shorten the war and save many, many thousands more innocent lives? There should have been more room for another view.’ " . . .