Dresden, one of Germany’s largest cities, was nearly destroyed by Allied bombs.
Just as the British suffered during the Blitz in the early days of the war, German citizens suffered during intense Allied bombing. At least 300,000 people died, with many more wounded. The German city of Dresden was nearly destroyed in February 1945, with more than 25,000 people killed.
German soldier Rudolph Eichner, who was recovering in a Dresden hospital, recalled, “There were no warning sirens. We were completely surprised and rushed back down to the cellars of the hospital. But these quickly became hopelessly overcrowded with people who could no longer find shelter in their own burning buildings. The crush was unbearable, we were so tight you could not fall over … Apart from the fire risk, it was becoming increasingly impossible to breathe in the cellar because the air was being pulled out by the increasing strength of the blaze … We could not stand up, we were on all fours, crawling. The wind was full of sparks and carrying bits of blazing furniture, debris and burning bits of bodies … There were charred bodies everywhere … The experience of the bombing was far worse than being on the Russian front, where I was a front-line machine gunner.”9
Japanese cities also suffered bombing attacks, which intensified as Allied air forces steadily got closer to the Japanese home islands. In the last seven months of the war, U.S. firebombing caused massive amounts of damage to Japanese cities. Although it is hard to know just how many people died, it is estimated that as many as 500,000 people may have been killed and millions left homeless.
The most notorious example of mistreatment of civilians was the Holocaust against Jewish people and other groups that occurred in Germany and German-occupied territory during the war. Once in power in 1933, the Nazis set up prisons called concentration camps across the country for those they considered their enemies. They included Germany’s Jewish population.
After the war began, German plans extended to eliminating the entire Jewish population of Europe, in what was known as the Final Solution. Camps were set up in Eastern Europe to murder vast numbers of Jews, along with people from other groups, including political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, homosexuals, and people who were called gypsies. The most infamous extermination camp was Auschwitz in southern Poland, where more than 1 million people were killed. Approximately 6 million Jews died in Nazi camps during the Holocaust, along with several million others.
