Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Sat, 1 Dec 2001, Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> > No, it is not all right. The Dresden-Hiroshima came late in the game
> > after the war was pretty well lost.
>
> As I said, that is also when 3/4's of the bombing in WWII took place:
>
>
Dresden & Hiroshima should not, I think, be confused with the "strategic bombing" of 1944, or even perhaps with the first two months of 1945. In 1944 Germany was losing but had not yet lost the war; the bombing of Dresden came, essentially, after the war was over. And Hiroshima also came after the war _could_ have been over. They were utterly gratuitous from any possible connection (terroristic or military) with "winning the war," and thus have to be explained in other than 'ordinary' strategic terms. (I forget when the fire-bombing of Tokyo occurred.)
I can vaguely remember the headlines at the time of the Hamburg bombing: they celebrated the "1000 plane raid" (but did not of course mention any of the horrors mentioned in this thread) -- and while the war might have been decided (at least in retrospect) by then, it was not "over" in the sense it was in the spring and summer of 1945.
I suspect Dresden was either experimental (the population being used as laboratory rats) or a matter of letting the generals have their playtime. Hiroshima -- I imagine most on this list agree -- was strictly part of the diplomacy of the coming Cold War.
Carrol