The Allies have constantly accused quite rightly the Axe and especially the Nazis to break the Geneva convention which explicitly forbids to attack cities representing no real threat in the course of a war.At the end of the war the allies did exactly what they reproached to their enemies, by bombing Dresden then Hiroshima and Nagasaki.This movie shows what it was to live with that constant threat over one's head and the consequences of the massive bombing of the town. Of course there are goofs, of course there are situations which are mostly improbable or impossible to happen in such situations. But it's not the point and the important thing in such a movie.The important thing is to make conscious young generations who were not even born during WWII of the horrors of war, of hate, of excess nationalism and sense of superiority which all leads to such situation and their terrible aftermath.In 1962 I was 21 and I spent 3 months in Reutlingen, a town near Stuttgart. The family who was my host were former residents of Dresden. They had lost everything. In the rumbles of the house totally destroyed Mrs. Kaiser had recovered a beautiful blue crystal vase. Under the tremendous heat of the bombs, the vase had become oval from its original cylinder shape. I then really understood what it must have been.There's nothing more to say. We have all of us Allies and especially, England, the USA, Russia and our enemy Germany, all without exception, committed a major war crime. We punished one side and had not the courage to face facts and do the same for our side. This is not excusable whatever the motives presented.I'm of this generation who has a full responsibility for the occurrence of WWII and its huge massacre. The Allies especially the French (I'm French) and England for having set up the Versailles treaty and the reparations plan they persisted to have brought to its total accomplishment, ruining the German economy and by doing so setting up the conditions for an extremist mad man to exacerbate the nationalism and the desire for vengeance of the German nation. You never, never take a positive result from hatred, desire of revenge, by humiliating your enemy. Israel today is exactly doing the same mistakes with the Palestinians, the USA by thinking they know best and never make mistakes and by their contempt of others civilizations and culture. All these crazy behaviors are slowly setting up the conditions for future deflagrations, but if these occurs they will not last 5 or 6 years but a few hours and the result will be an empty planet....

I knew about the bombing of Dresden and how it had destroyed the city, yet seeing it enacted brought home the horror in a way reading about it doesn't. Although the main characters were fictionalized, they enabled us to related to how their lives were affected.The ending was sad, but I was traumatized all over again when the "Peace be with you" came on - - in English, Arabic, French, and some other language that I hadn't recognized. At first I thought, "Yes, we need to remember and not repeat that horror" and was glad to see Peace in other languages -- - until it ended and I found that Hebrew had been omitted. It was like Jews didn't exist - they wiped them out in this ending as well as during the War. It was and is still very disturbing. It would have been better not to include Peace.

This film took up three hours, including commercials, on the History International Channel last night. But it felt like three weeks. It wasn't the cheap, stagy and unintentionally funny depictions of the bombing of Dresden. It wasn't that the film is stripped of almost all context surrounding World War II. It wasn't even that the bombing itself was often made to appear as nothing more than a major inconvenience for a goofy love story. No, it was the wooden featureless characterizations that sucked the life out of the story. Oh, and the fact that if it is possible for a movie to be obsequious, then Dresden is that movie. Perhaps a better title would have been DRESDEN--AS URIAH HEEP WOULD HAVE EXPERIENCED IT.It is especially the latter point that so irritates. Was the bombing of Dresden a war crime? The makers of this movie believe so. But in the typically emasculated way that Germans have come to approach World War II, they can't bring themselves to say so without braying about "peace" and "no more wars--anywhere" like they're Mother Teresa. And, also typical of German obsequiousness towards the British in particular, there is an unwieldy effort to grovel before "Britishness", while loading all the "guilt" for Dresden on to one person, Arthur Harris.Did I say one person? Well, not quite. At the beginning of the movie, there is an exclamation from the leading character, Anna, with whom we are all supposed to sympathize. "Damned Americans!", she screams, while watching as far off bombs fall. And a few minutes later, a radio voice intones warnings about the "American Terror Bombing" being inflicted upon Germans.Note the word, "terror". Got that? It's really the Americans behind the inhumane targeting of German civilians. No matter that the American strategy for almost all the war in Europe was the "precision" bombing of industrial and war manufacturing sites. No matter that it was the British who enthusiastically adopted "area" bombing of civilian targets in Germany--before the Germans had themselves even targeted English ones. No matter that the Americans bombed during the day, suffering more casualties in the process than the British, in order to hit precision targets, while the British bombed civilians under the cover of night. No matter that the Americans, essentially, were brought into the RAF's true terror bombing campaign kicking and screaming against it. No matter that most American officials, from FDR to Gen. Dolittle, opposed targeting civilians, while Churchill and his generals couldn't wait to do so.No, in DRESDEN, both the Germans and British, except for "Bomber" Harris, are innocent of a doctrine, it is intimated, created by the evil Americans. And only the might and power of a love story between a German nurse and a downed British bomber pilot can adequately explain the "truth" of the atrocity. Right.Oh, by the way, for the younger and likely less well read readers of IMDb, the first and still so far only major literary effort to give a thoughtful voice to Dresden's bombing was the pacifist novel penned by Kurt Vonnegut--an American POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing. I guess Germany's ZDF couldn't find a pretty nurse for Billy Pilgrim.

As an English man living in Germany, it was interesting to see a German made production on the historical events surrounding the bombing of Dresden. One needs to understand, this is not a documentary, it is for the masses, so one should treat it as such. As an Englishman in Germany, I always hear one side, the Brits were war criminals, it, the bombing should never have been allowed. I mention this to my British relatives and friends and they have completely the opposite view. To give credit, the film provides both sides of the argument. It shows Bomber Harris giving his opinions as well as the reservations of some of his subordinates. It shows the horror of the bombings on the civilians. It shows the persecution of many persons including Jews and the extreme depravity of the Nazi regime. Combined with a rather hard to believe love story (Robert appearing at Anna's engagement party, dressed as a Nazi), it was fun entertainment backed by some significant history. Remember, as a love story with some history, it reached a much larger target audience than a pure documentary would have done. And it was entertaining and a tear jerker, at least for my wife. So lay off, it's good decent entertainment, whilst bringing over some of the historical background.