Dresden does hold a place in the history and the historiography of wartime bombing which is quite important. As I just mentioned, one of the first histories of allied bombing on Germany was about Dresden. And even this book Underexposed which is published in the first part of the last decade, so the noughties if you like. References between 100,000 and 130,000 dying through conventional bombing over two nights, three raids if you take the day time raid as well. Those numbers are generally discredited. Most individuals who study this area now, would look to figures of 28,000 to 35,000 people dying. Now I do not want to make it appear that, that is a less significant number. That's a small town eradicated on one night. But, the reason I raise this is that the numbers in the tens of thousands come from David Irving. And he used Berlin, to begin with, as a way of writing a history of the II World War which emphasized the allied atrocities as much if not more, as the German atrocities during that time. Now colleagues at Royal Holloway were involved with a libel case that David Irving took a number of years ago when he was described in the print media as a holocaust denier. He lost that case, and has actually spent time in jail in continental Europe, for denying the extent of the Holocaust in Germany and Austria, this is a particularly sensitive issue. Now, does it matter? That 100,000 people died or 28,000 died, both are horrific numbers. This image shows a degree of destruction through conventional weaponry, which is truly devastating. We contrast that with the Blitz over a period from 1940 into 1941, perhaps 70,000 people died. The estimate you'll see about the effects of bombing, vary widely. But some of the images I'm going to talk to in a little while, are quite emotive. And convey both the images of camaraderie and destruction. And I just want to reference one more image here. This is February of 1945. This is August of 1945. And that's the devastation of the first atomic bombing in Hiroshima. Now the blitz terrorized London. It's something that I feel uncomfortable with being a Brit thinking about the degree to which the Rule Airforce and the US Army Air Force from British bases did the same or worse in Germany. I think there is a very important aspect of this of the allied bombings, that it was keeping the war going, it was carrying the front line through the air to the Germans and was an important part of moral at the time. But it has only been recently that we find a memorial for the brave crews and I mean that in all seasons, who flew the aircraft over France and Germany during the second World War. And that there has been even a partial rehabilitation of Arthur bomber Harris. You've got to bear in mind if you go back to 1945 Winston Churchill was beginning to distance himself from the bombing campaign at the very end of the war. And Bomber Harris' knighthood came from the king directly and not from the political apparatus who make those recommendations. So just in this context, I'm using quiet striking images would like you to go back and think about the issues of complicity, holocaust denial, and the particular perspective that we would take on the mass bombing raids of Germany later in the war. Compared to what we would in 1940 consider mass bombing raids of London. But with aircraft that carried a relatively small load compared to what the allies delivered to Germany later in the war. Now that's not a terribly encouraging point, but let's just keep on going along these lines. Because you will find enough web sites that will give you good images around the blitz itself. And let's start with the BBC, who've done a lot on these lines. This is a photograph, it's a little bit difficult to see, of Winston Churchill walking through the ruins of a bombed out London. Now if you go through a number of different sites which I've referenced on the Coursera website for this course, you will find other and similar images. This is coming from MSN and it's a portfolio of photographs. Again a shared common experience. This is of the use of the underground as a bomb shelter. Here are the remains of Coventry. Coventry Cathedral was bombed out. For those of you that live in Britain, well Coventry has a particular place at the heart of many Britons. If you see the bombed out remains of the medieval cathedral standing next to the very modern cathedral, which was put up immediately next to it, it gives you some idea of A, the extent of damage and B, the commitment to renewal and recovery thereafter. And as you can see, only the outer parts of the cathedral are actually still in existence. This is November of 1940. As I said, strategic bombing of production areas. Coventry was known for its motor cars, etc. Here's another image of Leicester Square severely damaged, this is October of 1940. And you can go through this particular set of photo montages of the destruction more generally. Okay. Again, photography used for propoganda. German photography using photographs saying that towns like Bristol had been destroyed entirely. So the images and the propaganda associated with the use of these images isn't purely on one side. And the idea that the "camera never lies", a rather hackneyed phrase but one which I think is important putting this forward is quite important. It is evident. I quite like the quote which is on the cover of Underexposed, "Pictures can lie and liars use pictures". It's not necessarily an issue of manipulation per se or that we're going to come back to that later in the course, it's also what do you reveal. And these photographs I think are quite telling about the extent of destruction. But how were they presented to the British public and the German public at the time? One of the things that we talked about before is how we might consider black and white photography having greater authenticity. Well, just as a contrast to this, here's another page from Life Magazine. Which again, looks at London in color. And it's just something you might want to think about, going back and considering what again, the cultural and collective memory of the second World War is. Steven Spielberg, in putting together both Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. Effectively said his memories, he considered the Second World War to be a black and white event. Not literally, in terms of good and evil, but the way that most of the news reporting and most of the images from the time were captured. I mean, if you think of something like Schindler's List, the very, very effective use of color, moments through the main film and at the end do rather counterpoint that particular perspective. But just think about, go through this site on Time and see how your opinions changed. Seeing these colored images of destruction as opposed to the black and white ones. Now to be perfectly honest, I think this is an interesting and additional resource but I [INAUDIBLE] one that's been absolutely sold on the idea that if you really want to give the reader a feeling of solidity, In a particular piece. You present it in black and white.
