[Annotator’s Note: The sound goes in and out throughout segment.] Manfred Bahman’s city [Annotator’s Note: Dresden, Germany] was bombed in February 1945. There was fire everywhere and he did not know where to go. His family made a dash out into the street from their building with an emergency pack. There was a park not too far from where he lived. As they headed that way, everything was blocked by downed trees and burned buildings. His mother fell several times as they made their way out of the perimeter of the city. Bahman saw that Dresden was in ruins everywhere he looked. Around nine o’clock in the morning, they could finally see light coming through the smoke and debris in the air. The family that was with Bahman said they wanted to go back to their apartment to grab something they forgot. Bahman thought this was a bad idea, but the family left and separated from his family. Bahman, his mother, and sister Raney [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling] continued walking further away from the city. They saw some late explosions going off in the background. They finally reached a street that looked normal. Nothing was damaged and they were in perfect condition. Bahman and his family stopped at his mother’s friend’s bungalow on the outskirts of the city. His sister’s eyes were in pain from all the smoke of the bombing, so she was able to take time and wipe them. Around 12 o’clock midday, the sirens went off again. The Americans were coming to bomb the city. The British bombed during the night and the Americans bombed during the day. There was no basement they could go to, and they looked out of the window and saw the sky blanketed with planes and “dropping their blessings.” When the bombing was over, His mother’s friend said she wanted to leave the city with them, so she packed her belongings and secured a cart. They all began their journey to leave Dresden. Dresden’s population was about the size of Pittsburg [Annotator’s Note: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania], plus refugees that were there fleeing the Russians. Everyone was marching out to get away from the city. His family reached a small village and they stayed with a farmer for the night before heading back out on the road again. They reached the foot of the mountains where a village had emergency shelters with food stations. The next day, they went out on their journey again and reached a railroad station with service. The platforms were packed with people boarding freight cars or wagon cars. The cars were quickly filled, but his family was able to get aboard. It took several days for the train to get them to west Germany where his aunt lived.

Manfred Bahman and his family fled Dresden [Annotator’s Note: Dresden, Germany] after the Allies had destroyed the city by aerial bombardment [Annotator’s Note: Bombing of Dresden, 13 to 15 February 1945, carried out by American and British air forces]. They reached West Germany to seek refuge with his aunt. His family eventually took refuge at a country estate outside the town of Braunschweig [Annotator’s Note: Braunschweig, Germany]. Before the bombing of Dresden, Bahman was scheduled to report for service in the Volkssturm [Annotator’s Note: Nazi Party national militia made up of conscripted men between the ages of 16 and 60 beginning in 25 September 1944] in the next week. The Americans came though Braunschweig with Patton’s [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] tanks. Because there was no government, people came through and pillaged the town until the allies could set up a military government. Eventually Braunschweig came under the British zone. Bahman’s brother who was serving in the military was missing. They later learned he became a prisoner of the Russians and was not released until the 1950s. Bahman remarked on a book entitled Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor and respects the scholarship, but disagrees with the author’s final analysis. Bahman, a member of the Hitler Youth [Annotator's Note: also known as the Hitler Jugend in German, a youth organization of the Nazi Party for young men] at the time, explained that soon after their escape from Dresden, Bahman's family ran into Americans swaggering down the streets with their helmets cocked to the side. They offered cookies and chocolate, Bauman remembers, but he refused to let his sister get near them. He told her not to take anything from them, because "they are our enemies." His Hitler Youth uniform was destroyed in the Dresden bombing. As a warning, the government told citizens to have an emergency pack in case of a bombardment which included important papers, money, and clothes. They were receiving his father’s pension from his work at the railroad until his family moved to West Germany.

Manfred Bahman and his family fled Dresden [Annotator’s Note: Dresden, Germany] after the Allies had destroyed the city through aerial bombardment [Annotator’s Note: in February 1945, British and American air forces bombed the city several times]. Bahman remarked on a book entitled Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945, by Frederick Taylor explaining that he respects the scholarship, but disagrees with the author’s final analysis of why the Allies bombed the city. He does not think the bombing of the city was out of military necessity because the military barracks nearby were not targeted. He remarked about the meeting in Yalta [Annotator’s Note: The Yalta Conference, 4 to 11 February 1945; Yalta, Russia. Members of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union governments met in regards to postwar organization] in regards to the war’s end in Europe. This is when Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] asked to be the first to enter Berlin [Annotator’s Note: Berlin, Germany]. They also discussed how Berlin would be divided among the Allies. Bahman believes that Stalin requested that the Allies bomb Dresden because very few cities in East Germany had not been bombed like in West Germany. Although Bahman feels there was no military reason for the attack, he conceded that the Germans had done the same thing in London [Annotator’s Note: London, England], with equal failure. He met a British pilot a few years after the war, and over a bottle of Scotch, this pilot told him they knew that their targets were all civilians. "I was sick to my stomach," the pilot told him.

In February 1945, Manfred Bahman and his family fled Dresden [Annotator’s Note: Dresden, Germany] after the Allies had destroyed the city through aerial bombardment when he was 15 years old [Annotator’s Note: American and Briitsh air forces repeatedly bombed the city in February 1945]. [Annotator’s Note: Video goes black at 0:46:37.000-0:47:01.000.] Bahman will speak to veterans at an upcoming event about his experience during the bombing of Dresden. He was born in January 1930 in Dresden. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] came to power three years after he was born. Bahman’s father worked for the German railroad administration as a station manager outside of Dresden and joined the Nazi party early on. He was a World War 1 [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] veteran and was “sucked into the Nazi movement.” His mother, on the other hand, did not care for Hitler and the Nazi movement. As a child, he never saw any political tension between his parents. He grew up with an older brother and younger sister. The Lutheran pastor that baptized Bahman was a close friend of his father and in the Nazi party. The pastor said Hitler was the new light and would bring Germany to paradise. Bahman spoke about a split in the Christian church in Germany and spoke about Dietrich Bonhoeffer [Annotator’s Note: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church] and his teaching of the bible. Bahman’s father continued to be promoted and his family eventually moved to Berlin [Annotator’s Note: Berlin, Germany]. His father died in 1941 at the young age of 45. He described his relationship with his father as loving, but not very close because he was always out of town. His brother joined the Hitler Youth [Annotator's Note: a youth organization of the Nazi Party for young men] program and Bahman was drafted into the Junior Hitler Program at age 10. His mother was a strong Christian and ensured that her children went to Sunday school and received the sacraments. She did not care to register Bahman for the Hitler Youth program until a young soldier came to the house and threatened her to register him. After his father died, his mother moved the family back to Dresden because she did not care for Berlin. Bahman’s brother soon enlisted in the German Navy.

In 1940, Manfred Bahman joined the Junior Hitler Youth [Annotator's Note: a youth organization of the Nazi Party for young men] program at age 10 and described the time as wonderful. They went on outings, hiked through the countryside, marched, played games, and sang songs. As time progressed, he followed in his brother’s footsteps and joined the Sea Scouts that would eventually lead him into the Navy. This was his great goal at the time. The environment was very nationalistic. He was a super patriot and if he saw any enemy, he would mow them down with a machine gun. One time when he was 13 years old, he was picked out of his class and selected to attend an elite Nazi school paid for by of the Nazi government. His mother was against this and refused to sign anything that would allow him to go. His mother did not buy into the Nazi party and thought they were showmen. In the fall of 1944, Bahman was sent to a pre-military camp for the Navy. He was taught how to sail and signal. His Hitler Youth program taught him to be anti-communist more than anything. On a personal level, he thought that communists were not on the same level as the Germans. However, in Germany, there was the extreme right who were the Nazis and then the extreme left who were communists. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] pushed the fear of the Russians and called them sub-humans. This became a rise of racial superiority in the Nazi party. However, Bahman said that did not bleed very much into the Hitler Youth. What fired the youth up was that they were the spearhead of the future.

Manfred Bahman lived in Dresden, Germany during the rise of Nazism and was part of the Hitler Youth program [Annotator's Note: a youth organization of the Nazi Party for young men]. “Victory or Bolshevik chaos” was a mantra that was ingrained in the youths’ heads. The Nazis thought that the Bolsheviks was not refined and were considered sub-human. He spoke about how Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] played Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] at the beginning of the war. From the winter of 1944 on, the joyous movement had changed drastically. German cities were being bombed, food and goods were becoming scarce, and Americans and Russians were at the doorsteps of Germany. All the cities had to have blackouts because of the air raids. German civilians knew that it was only a matter of time when the war would be over. The air raids of Berlin [Annotator’s Note: Berlin, Germany] and other cities did not demoralize the civilians, but made them want to fight harder, similar the British and the London [Annotator’s Note: London, England] air raids. German officers tried to murder Hitler on 20 July 1944 and Bahman can recall the Nazi propaganda regarding the event. Cities were being bombed, except Dresden, because the thought was there was no reason for the Allies to bomb the city. [Annotator’s Note: Video break at 1:30:21.000.]

On 13 February 1945, Manfred Bahman and his family fled Dresden [Annotator’s Note: Dresden, Germany] after the Allies had destroyed the city through aerial bombardment when he was 15 years old. There were staggering aerial bombs on marshaling yards near the city. On 13 February, he remembered it was Mardi Gras day, but the city did not celebrate it too much because of wartime. He was coming home in the evening from school. When he reached home, Bahman read a letter from his older brother, who was an officer in the German Navy, ate some dinner, and then went to bed. When the sirens began wailing at 10 o’clock that night, Manfred refused to take it seriously. Dresden had absolutely no military value. German officials were so certain the city was safe that 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. Bahman grabbed the emergency bag and headed to the basement with his family. Everyone sought safety in the basement of his five-story apartment building. As he descended into the basement and looked out the window, he saw British scout planes, also known as Christmas trees, in the distance. "Holy shit!" he said. He remembered the first wave of bombs hitting the ground and the impact of the explosion and the vibration of the ground. Seconds seemed like hours to him. After the first wave came through, his area of the city was not bombed because the British concentrated on the center of the city. At two o’clock in the morning, the alarms sounded again and a second wave came through which pounded his area of the city. Bahman believed at this moment he was converted by fire. He could remembered women and children were crying in the basement. Bahman mumbled a prayer, “Lord have mercy.” It felt like an eternity until the bombing finally stopped. Bahman and an older man went and looked at the apartment building to see the condition. Other buildings were on fire, but his building was not. It was a mess with glass everywhere. They went up to the attic and saw that sparks were coming in from the other buildings. Bahman and the man tried to extinguish the sparks, but the fire caught. He went back into the basement to tell everyone to leave the basement. They traveled through the holes of the basement from one building to the next until they got to the butcher building [Annotator’s Note: Video abruptly ends].