Most people hear a lot about the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many are made to feel guilty because of supposed racist overtones etc. Both incidents in Japan resulted in the immediate death of 120,000 Japanese (some estimates are significantly higher), while the bombing campaign in Dresden entailed raining destruction on the city for three whole days which killed 135,000 Germans, and yet we hardly ever hear about it. Why?
shareNot sure what the 'racial overtones' comment means, but I'll wager the bombings in Japan are more infamous due to the unique and unprecedented use of using nuclear weapons in wartime- as opposed to the use of conventional bombing used- though with horrific effect and overkill- in Dresden.
shareThe novelty of the atomic bombings, a single bomb unleashing so much destruction, is what makes them notorious and memorable. However, they are merely the culmination of a sustained bombing campaign on Japan designed to destroy Japan physically and psychologically. One incendiary bombing of Tokyo in early March 1945 killed upwards of 100,000 (estimates vary) and is considered to have been the deadliest single-night bombing raid in history, bigger than Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
The documentary The Fog of War features Robert McNamara, best-known as one of the architects of the Vietnam war as Secretary of Defense under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but whose early career began during World War Two as a member of the strategic planning group that determined the Japanese targets to be bombed. McNamara, who had refused to acknowledge any culpability regarding Vietnam right up until his death, nevertheless admits freely in the film that had the Allies lost the war, and the Axis powers had instituted war crimes trials as the Allies had done, he and others would have been prosecuted for war crimes for their actions against Japan.
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