Leaving Prague, I had the opportunity to stop in Dresden for several hours. Dresden is a controversial site of WWII. In February of 1945 (a few months before the end of the war), the Allies bombed the entire city. The city wasn’t used for any sort of strategic purposes. There was no meaningful reason for us to bomb the city.
The Allies claimed that the bombing was a preventative measure that ensured that the railway station would not be used to move troops. Wouldn’t it make sense (if that was the case) to just bomb the railway station? The Allies used incendiary bombs (after carpet bombing the city) to make sure that Dresden was devastated. Nearly 40,000 German civilians were killed during the three days of bombing. There are few structures that survived the war.
I used the stop in Dresden as an opportunity to divide the trip from Prague to Berlin. I had a cold cucumber soup for lunch (which was delicious because the temperature was 98 degrees) and walked around a bit. It was pretty, but I wouldn’t spend more time than what I did within the city.
After leaving Dresden, I ended up making it to Berlin in the late afternoon. I hurried up and made it to the Topography of Terror before they closed to view an exhibit about the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. The exhibit focused on the photos that Jewish (as well as Nazis) took from 1940-1944 of Jewish life in the ghetto. See the posting about the concept of a ghetto for pictures.
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