20th century
In the early 20th century, Dresden was particularly well known for its camera works and its cigarette factories. During World War I, the city did not suffer any war damage, but lost many of its inhabitants. Between 1918 and 1934, Dresden was the capital of the first Free State of Saxony as well as a cultural and economic centre of the Weimar Republic. The city was also a centre of European modern art until 1933.
After the Nazi seizure of power, two book burnings were organised in the city in 1933, one by the SA on Wettiner Platz, the second one by German Student Union at the Bismarck Column on Räcknitzhöhe.
From 1933 to 1945, the Jewish community of Dresden was reduced from over 6,000 (7,100 people were persecuted as Jews) to 41, mostly as a result of emigration, but later also deportation and murder. The Semper Synagogue was destroyed in November 1938 on Kristallnacht.
During the German invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, in September 1939, the Gestapo carried out mass arrests of local Polish activists. Over 1,300 people were executed by the Nazis at the Münchner Platz, a courthouse in Dresden, including labour leaders, undesirables, and resistance fighters. Around two-thirds of the executed individuals originated from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The bombing stopped prisoners who were busy digging a large hole into which an additional 4,000 prisoners were to be disposed of.
During the war, Dresden was the location of several forced labour subcamps of the Stalag IV-A prisoner-of-war camp for Allied POWs, and seven subcamps of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, in which some 3,600 men, women and children were imprisoned, mostly Polish, Jewish and Russian. In April 1945, most surviving prisoners were sent on death marches to various destinations in Saxony and German-occupied Czechoslovakia, whereas some women were probably murdered and some managed to escape.
Dresden in the 20th century was a major communications hub and manufacturing centre with 127 factories and major workshops and was designated by the German military as a defensive strongpoint, with which to hinder the Soviet advance. During the final months of the war, the city, in addition to its roughly 600,000 inhabitants, harboured some 300,000 refugees who had fled the Red Army's advance into Silesia.
Dresden was attacked seven times between 1944 and 1945. The bombing of Dresden by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) between 13 and 15 February 1945 was controversial. On the night of 13–14 February 1945, 773 RAF Lancaster bombers dropped 1,181.6 tons of incendiary bombs and 1,477.7 tons of high explosive bombs. The inner city of Dresden was largely destroyed. The Dresden Historians' Commission, made up of 13 prominent German historians, in an official 2010 report concluded that casualties numbered between 22,500 and 25,000.
The Allies described the operation as the legitimate bombing of a military and industrial target. Several researchers have argued that the February attacks were disproportionate. As a result of the bombings, mostly women and children died. The Albertstadt garrison was not specifically targeted.
After the war, Dresden became part of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. The damage from Allied air raids was so extensive that a narrow-gauge light railway system was constructed to remove the debris. This seven-line railway system employed 5,000 staff and 40 locomotives. The last train remained in service until 1958, though the last debris clearance team was only disbanded in 1977.
Dresden became a major industrial centre of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), with a great deal of research infrastructure. It was the centre of Bezirk Dresden (Dresden District) between 1952 and 1990.
The East German authorities razed the ruins of many churches and palaces in the 1950s and 1960s (such as the Gothic Sophienkirche and the Wackerbarth-Palais) and rebuilt much of the city in a "socialist modern" style for economic reasons and to break with its past as a royal capital and bourgeois stronghold. Buildings of socialist classicism and spatial design and orientation according to socialist ideals (e.g. the Kulturpalast) were built at the Altmarkt. Large prefabricated housing estates were built on previously undeveloped land in Prohlis and Gorbitz. Damaged housing in the Johannstadt and other areas around the city centre were demolished and replaced with apartment blocks. The Äußere Neustadt (Outer New Town) as well as the villa districts in Blasewitz, Striesen, Kleinzschachwitz, Loschwitz and Weißer Hirsch were largely preserved.
Some historic landmarks were saved or reconstructed. Among them were the Ständehaus (1946), the Augustus Bridge (1949), the Kreuzkirche (1955), the Zwinger (1963), the Dresden Cathedral (1965), the Semperoper (1985), the Japanese Palace (1987) and the two largest train stations. The ruins of the Frauenkirche were allowed to remain as a war memorial.
From 1955 to 1958, a large part of the art treasures looted by the Soviet Union was returned, which meant that from 1960 onwards many state art collections could be opened in reconstructed facilities or interim exhibitions.
Until the end of the Cold War, the 1st Guards Tank Army of the Soviet Army and the 7th Panzer Division of the National People's Army (NVA) were stationed in and around Dresden. From 1985 to 1990, the future President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was stationed in Dresden by the KGB.
On 3 October 1989, a convoy of trains carrying East German refugees from Prague passed through Dresden on its way to West Germany. Local activists and residents joined the growing civil disobedience movement spreading across the GDR by staging demonstrations and demanding the removal of the communist government.
