Dresden Survivor: I Would Have Killed You

After listening to Pastor Manfred Bahman speak to 120 vets at last night's LV Vet Roundtable, I don't know how the hell the Germans lost WWII. He was smart, charming and one of the most thoughtful speakers I've ever heard. Most of all, he's one of the lucky ones to survive the Allied firebombing of Dresden during the waning days of the war.

"If I had my druthers at that time and had a machine gun, I would have killed you," he bluntly stated.

This former member of Hitler Youth was just fifteen years old when the RAF and Americans firebombed Dresden. His Nazi father had died four years earlier in Berlin. His older brother was in the German Navy. So Manfred was the man of the house.

On February 13, 1945, it was Mardi Gras in Dresden. Although that City was known as the Florence of the Elbe, the celebration was subdued. "The war was practically over and everbody knew it," explained Dr. Bahman.

So when the sirens began wailing at 10 PM, Manfred refused to take it seriously. This City had absolutely no military value. German officials were so certain the city was safe they never even bothered to build air raid shelters. Bahman lounged in bed like any teenager until a neighbor pounded on the door to tell them that planes were just ten minutes away.

Everyone sought safety in the basement of his five-story apartment building. Little did they know that this would become a death trap for many of them.

With the scientific efficiency you might expect from a Hitler acolyte, Dr. Bahman explained how firebombing works. First, high explosive bombs are dropped, preferably in a star pattern, and those create air drafts. They are followed by phosphorus bombs, which consume the oxygen in those air drafts and result in a firestorm with howling winds. Basements become tombs because the people hiding in there are asphyxiated, after which their bodies are carbonized.

With the humanity you might expect from any human being, Dr. Bahman explained his own reaction. "Holy shit!" he said. "The horror does not stop." He talked about time stopping, and seconds seeming like hours.

As buildings around them erupted into flame, Manfred told his mother and sister they must leave. Another family came with them. They dodged falling debris in the ghost light created by the fires and continually made their way to the outskirts of the City, where he thought they'd be safe. Unknown to him, the bombing started in the center of the City and made its way to the outskirts. After two harrowing nights in Dresden, Bahman and his family were refugees, heading West.

As Dr. Bahman tells it, nobody really knows how many people were killed in this City of 600,000. Official counts place the loss at 30,000, but it might be twice that number, especially since Dresden was at that time sheltering refugees fleeing from the Russians in the East.

Dr. Bahman and his family left Dresden, but my father was there as an American POW. He and fellow POW Kurt Vonnegut, who later wrote Slaughterhouse Five, hid in the meat lockers underneath a slaughterhouse during this incineration. Years later, Vonnegut said that one POW blurted out, "I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight." I can't help but think that was my dad. That was his humor.

Soon after their escape, Bahman's family ran into the Americans, swaggering down the streets with their helmets cocked to the side. "They were nice guys, offering chocolate," Bauman remembers, but he refused to let his sister get near them. "Don't you dare take anything from them," he told his sister. "Don't you know they're our enemies?"

This Hitler Youth would later marry one of his "enemies" and become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Despite the horrible tragedy of Dresden, it probably saved Bahman's life. He was scheduled to report for service in the Volkssturm in the next week. "My dreams of military glory went to ashes in the firestorm of Dresden."

Although Bahman feels there was no military reason for this attack, he conceded that Germans had done the same thing in London, with equal failure. "Once you get that kind of treatment, your spine stiffens, and you say, 'No! You bastard.'" He also mentioned that he met a British pilot a few years after the war, and over a bottle of Scotch, this pilot told him they know their targets were all civilians. "I was sick to my stomach," the pilot told him. "I got drunk for a whole week."

Because he spent so much time talking about Dresden, Bahman had no time to discuss his activities as a member of Hitler Youth, but has promised to come back and discuss that topic in a separate lecture.

He did mention that, as a fifteen year old, he "had no idea of the incredible horrors going on under his nose." He also thanked the WWII vets in the room. "Had it not been for you, we would not have been liberated from the horror of Nazism."

After his speech, I spoke briefly with the Reverend. I stupidly had thought he might have seen my father or Vonnegut, but their paths never crossed.

The LV Vet Roundtable meets at the Lehigh County Senior Center on the final Thursday of every month, and always features entertaining speakers who share their oral history.

Before last night's speaker, Debbie Garlicki of the Lehigh County DA's office made a plea for combat vets to volunteer as mentors to combat vets suffering the depression that often follows a soldier when he returns home. She reported that combat soldiers understand other combat soldiers better than anyone else, and many returning soldiers "don't know where to turn."

If you are a combat vet and would like to help, you can reach Debbie at (610) 782-3230, or you can email Paul Fiske.