>The Dresden-Hiroshima came late in the game
>after the war was pretty well lost.
More WV.
>The Allies pursued the policy of mass terror bombing of civilians with
>increasing ferocity throughout World War 11, raising it to unspeakable
>dimensions. Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the
>many cities which were transformed into fiery crematoriums for their
>working populations. In Germany, Allied bombers deliberately massacred some
>600,000 civilians; in Japan hundreds of thousands died under U.S. bombs. In
>sum, almost one million civilians were deliberately massacred by Allied
>terror bombing.
>Incinerating the German Proletariat
>
>in their drive to raze entire cities, the Allies eventually succeeded in
>provoking through incendiary bombing a horrible new phenomenon in warfare,
>the firestorm. They discovered that by concentrating sufficient fire in one
>area they could create an infernal microclimate in which an entire city was
>transformed into a blast furnace, enormously multiplying the bombs'
>murderous effects. The areas which were chosen for immolation were
>invariably the working-class districts.
>
>The first firestorm took place in Hamburg, which the Allies bombed in July
>1943, targeting the most heavily built-up and densely populated area. As in
>subsequent firebombings, both incendiary and high-explosive bombs were
>dropped; the latter were used to destroy metallic roofs and windows and
>expose the building interiors to the conflagration: "People died within
>seconds of being subjected to the unimaginable heat, dying from oxygen lack,
>carbon monoxide poisoning, even incandescence" (Chaz Bowyer, Air War Over
>Europe [1981]). Some 50,000 civilians died in Hamburg. In the civilian bomb
>shelters the intense heat melted metal pots and pans. Photos taken when the
>shelters were opened show piles of grey ash outlining where the bodies had
>lain.
>
>Allied bombers continued to wage an escalating war of extermination against
>Germany's cities. Toward the fall of 1944, as the Allies achieved supremacy
>in the skies over Germany and could concentrate their fire undeterred, they
>succeeded with regularity in provoking firestorms - in Kassel, Würzburg,
>Darmstadt, Heilbronn, Wuppertal, Weser, Magdeburg, and culminating in the
>incredible butchery of Dresden. The Allies experimented on the best way to
>provoke the desired effect. Different bombing patterns were tried to give
>the deadliest concentration of incendiary bombs (the optimum was found to
>be a "fan" pattern which was then used on Dresden).