3 ms·
Surprised to see this on HNs front page when there's an Oscar-winning documentary that makes this pretty clear (Errol Morris's "The Fog of War"). Vonnegut also
by brunorsini 13y ago
Surprised to see this on HNs front page when there's an Oscar-winning documentary that makes this pretty clear (Errol Morris's "The Fog of War").
Vonnegut also talks about this on Slaughterhouse-V:
"The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons. On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people.
So it goes."
(Chapter 9)
The nuclear attacks served their purpose, sure, but they were definitely not decisive for the outcome of the war.
- lobster_johnson 13y agoVonnegut was very probably wrong about the Dresden numbers. One of the people to popularize a disproportionally high death toll from the firebombing of Dresden was David Irving — later discredited and now largely known for his fascist leanings and his denial of the Holocaust — in his first book [1]. The modern estimate, from a report done by the city of Dresden in 2010 [2], is is that around 25.000 people died. He's more right about the Tokyo bombing. Richard Rhodes, in his fantastic "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", cites 100,000 dead and 1 million injured. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Falsification_of_evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War... [2] http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommission_Dresden1945_Abschlussbericht_V1_14a.pdf http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommi...