In the late evening of February 13, 1945, British and US bomber squadrons began devastating air raids on Dresden. By midday on February 15, large-scale fires had spread, killing thousands of people and almost completely reducing the historic city center to rubble.

After the air raids the survivors piled up the dead bodies, burning them to prevent the spread of disease. The pictures taken by photographer Walter Hahn are etched in the memories of many Germans.

Even 80 years after the bombing of Dresden in World War II, the debate about the number of victims persists. Behind this is often the attempt to instrumentalize the air raids for particular political purposes.

Claim: "If you've never heard of the Fire Bombing of Dresden, you are missing a big part of history. It was in World War 2, where the allies fire bombed a civilian city in Germany. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people lost their lives. It's generally glossed over in your history class because it doesn't fit the narrative ...," claims this post on X from January 17, 2025. Another X user speaks of 100,000 to 130,000 victims. The figure of 250,000 has also been circulated among right-wing extremists, as this banner by a group of activists in Einbeck, Lower Saxony, showed in 2020.

DW Fact check: False.

According to research compiled by a commission of historians over many years and published in 2010, the number was significantly less than hundreds of thousands. The researchers speak of "up to 25,000 people" who were killed in the air raids from February 13 to 15.

Estimate of the number of victims in the GDR

After Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945, Dresden was part of the Soviet occupation zone, which became the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949.

"In the GDR, the former Allies and now Western powers were stylized as 'warmongers.' Dresden was the symbol of this," said Dresden-based sociologist Claudia Jerzak.

Based on an analysis by ruling party bureaucrat Max Seydewitz published in 1955 in his book "Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden" ("Destruction and Reconstruction of Dresden"), the GDR regime estimated the number of deaths at 35,000 and did not question this until the end of 1989/90.

After the Peaceful Revolution of 1989/90 which led to the reunification of the two German states, nationalism took hold, said Jerzak. Right-wing extremists then took up the National Socialist (Nazi) propaganda that had created the "myth of Dresden as an image of a senselessly destroyed, innocent city of art and culture."

In 2004, the lord mayor of Dresden and the Saxon state parliament appointed a Historical Commission to counteract the recurring speculation about the number of victims.

Results of the Dresden Historical Commission 

After more than five years of work, the researchers presented their final report in 2010. According to this report, historical data from the Dresden police headquarters show that the authorities at the time estimated the total number of deaths at 25,000. The Historical Commission compared the registers with numerous other sources and investigations and found them plausible and comprehensible.

Based on the meticulous records kept by the National Socialist authorities, the historians were also able to refute the widespread theory that tens or even hundreds of thousands of refugees from the German eastern territories stayed in Dresden and perished undocumented.

"Every refugee train that stopped at a Dresden train station had to leave the city again within 24 hours because space was extremely tight during the war," Matthias Neutzner, a commission member, told DW. "This means that we can assume that the number of refugees who were in Dresden that night was in the region of several thousand people."

"For 50 years, we assumed a figure of 35,000 dead, but now we have been able to prove with scientific methods that it was 25,000," said Dresden-born Thomas Kübler, head of the city archive and also a member of the commission.

This finding has stirred many emotions. One example of this is a post on X, in which the far-right AfD party in the state of Saarland claims that the numbers are "still kept small today."

Where did the false claim of several hundred thousand come from?

Different figures had already been circulating shortly after the attacks.

The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, for example, had already given an estimate on February 25, 1945: "No one knows exactly how many people died [...], but according to information a few days after the devastation, the number is closer to 200,000 than 100,000."

The Nazi-run Federal Foreign Office picked up on this article in a telegram in which it instructed the diplomatic mission in Bern to quote this exact wording in its communication about Dresden. A copy of the document can be found in the Federal Archives.

The Historical Commission classifies this order as part of the "intensive and successful campaign of foreign propaganda [...] against the Allies' conduct of the war." Svenska Dagbladet does not cite any evidence for its estimate. The few remaining correspondents from neutral Sweden in Berlin had probably simply adopted the inflated figures presented to them at press conferences by the Nazi authorities.

Later casualty figures lack reliable sources

Like other social media users, the Russian Foreign Ministry does not cite sources when it mentions the figure of 135,000 dead in a post on X in 2023.

David Irving, the highly controversial author and notorious Holocaust denier, cited the same figure as early as 1966 in one of the new editions of his book "The Fall of Dresden" (first published in 1963). 

Regarding the number of victims in Dresden, Irving referred to an alleged "Tagesbefehl 47" (Daily Order no. 47) issued by a high-ranking SS and police leader on March 22, 1945. However, in the book "Inferno Dresden" published in the same year, Walter Weidauer, the long-serving mayor of the city of Dresden, considered it "proven" that "the ominous ‘Daily Order no. 47' is a forgery."

Weidauer, as well as later the British historian Richard J. Evans, who testified as an expert witness in a court case against his fellow countryman Irving in 2000, concluded that Irving must have known that this document — and others — were not valid.

In 2005, contemporary witness and author Wolfgang Schaarschmidt caused a sensation with his theory that 40,000 victims of the bombing were secretly buried in a forest near Dresden. However, the Historical Commission was able to show that the evidence cited was not conclusive. A secret burial at this location was also completely implausible for propaganda and logistical reasons.

Continued revisionism attempts by the right

How neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists keep the revisionist myth of Dresden alive to this day is also shown by a leaflet from the small neo-Nazi party Der Dritte Weg from 2021: "The murderers of Dresden are the warmongers of today! (...) We demand: (...) an end to the mockery and denial of the German victims."

However, there is no doubt that the bombing of Dresden took place: "All these findings do not lead to any other qualification of the events of 1945, namely that Dresden was the victim of this bombing," clarified city archivist Kübler.

Accordingly, the city of Dresden will once again commemorate the destruction and the victims of the bombing with a human chain on February 13 this year.

Anna Bakovic contributed to this fact check.

Edited by: Ines Eisele

Correction, February 13, 2025: An earlier version of this report incorrectly identified Matthias Neutzner as Michael. DW apologizes for the error.