IKE: "the Japanese were ready to surrender & it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing"

[Tagurrit]

94. Yes we did bomb Dresden but..

it was primarily a British venture. We had planes there but the operation was run by "Bomber" Harris of the UK. Culturally a disaster because of the old town being targeted but "only" 25,000 people lost their lives. I say only because in some raids in Japan the number may have been 4 to 8 times that. An unnecessary tragedy yes but at least understandable given this was total war. V2's, V1's, and the Nazi's working on an Atomic bomb that there is no question they would have used on London, not to mention the systemic destruction of whole races and classes of people in the Holocaust. Dresden was used as a war manufacturing center to some degree and most importantly the Allies overestimated the number of factories that were there but that's understandable given that the German's didn't publish information about factories in the newspapers. Erring on the high side isn't the same kind of mistake that Hiroshima was. Hiroshima was unnecessary then and now while Dresden had a logical reason to happen then and that reason might have faded after we found out after the war that we had overestimated the amount of military activity that was going on. I had friends in Dresden during the bombing. The stories they tell are horrific but everyone of them are now proud American citizens. Comparing Dresden with Hiroshima is like comparing apples and oranges. The US using the Atomic bomb on Japan was totally different.