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From: gjk@lanl.ARPA (Greg)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.rumor
Subject: How bad the attacks on cities were in World War II
Message-ID: <4259@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 15-Jun-86 10:48:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl.4259
Posted: Sun Jun 15 10:48:49 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Jun-86 22:46:25 EDT
References: <133@petrus.UUCP> <513@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: gjk@a.UUCP (Greg)
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Organization: Los Alamos
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Xref: watmath net.politics:16837 net.misc:9816 net.rumor:2703

In article <457@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> davidra@batcomputer.UUCP (Penguin (Rabson)) writes:
>I've heard a rumor that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as bad as they were, made
>everyone forget about Dresden, where more people died equally awful deaths.
>
>Is this true?
>
>The moral is that war was at least as bad before Trinity as after.

No, more people died in Hiroshima than in Dresden.  The most common estimate
I've heard for Dresden is 40,000 deaths, while for Hiroshima it is 100,000
deaths.  I don't know what the figures are for Nagasaki.  It is true that
more people died in Tokyo during the war than in Hiroshima.

However, what these bombings have made everyone forget about is Leningrad,
where more people died than in Hiroshima + Nagasaki + Tokyo + Dresden +
Hamburg + Berlin + London plus many other cities.  Many of us in the US think
that war is only bad when we or our allies kill people.  In fact, many of us
outside of the US think this way.  In fact, altogether too many people think
this way.
-- 
Greg
gjk%a@lanl.arpa and greg@harvard.harvard.edu