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.

After Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945, Dresden was part of the Soviet occupation zone, which became the communist German........

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