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How many died from the bombing?

Updated: 8/23/2023
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12y ago

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Dresden lies on the banks of the Elbe River in East Germany. The city was founded in the 1200s and became the capital of the Kingdon of Saxony. Dresden was an important commercial, as well as art, center.

The city was almost completely destroyed by massive bombing raids that took place between February 13 and April 17, 1945. Over eight hundred Allied aircraft took part in the assaults. The bombings destroyed many architectural monuments. Experts estimate tht between 35,000 and 135,000 people were killed. (see edit below for the fallacy of this staement)

Dresden was so badly damaged that some officials suggested the entire city be leveled and a new one built. A compromise was eventually reached that allowed for the rebuilding *EDIT* By all available research done by myself and other researchers with no political axe to grind the absolute maximum number of people killed during the dresden bombing is 35,000. I have a standard answer to this question which is copied below. I am an accredited researcher with access to the Public Records Office in Kew, London. The biggest problem with dealing with the matter of the bombing of Germany is that it is judged against modern morals and standards of behaviour. Civilians have suffered during war from the beginning of time. When the barbarians sacked Rome they slaughtered men women and children. When the French stormed Spanish towns during the peninsular war the citizens inside were killed and the towns raped and pillaged. The powers during the 19th century and the early 20th laid down ever more stringent rules about conduct during war trying to prevent these excesses but until the Geneva Convention came along there were no hard and fast "rules of war". In 1945 the Geneva Convention did not prohibit the general bombing of a town to destroy its industrial capacity. We have to look at Dresden in the light of the morality of the time. Some people in Dresden and elsewhere claim that the Bombing of Dresden by the RAF AND the USAAF is a war crime. In my opinion it was not

I am not in any way denying the fact that what happened in Dresden was horrific and appalling. I do deny that the men who undertook the mission have any crime to answer for.

The bombing of Dresden has been used since 1945 as a tool to beat the RAF about its conduct of "terror bombing" during WW2. The bombing of an industrialized town from the air in an attempt to destroy its industry or cause such loss of morale amongst its inhabitants that they ceased to work was NOT a crime by the Rules of War in 1945. The bombing of Coventry, London and other British Cities in 1940 and 1941 was also NOT a War Crime. Within Europe we did not have the "industrial areas" afforded to towns in the New World. The factories were in and around the areas where the workforce lived. One side of the street would be the factory wall; the other side of the street would be the workers houses. Unfortunately this lead to what, nowadays, is called "collateral damage"

Dresden burned so heavily for several reasons.

It was a medieval city with many wooden buildings.

There had been a dry winter in the region which meant many buildings were tinderboxes.

The population were not used to air raids and did not therefore have the knowledge that you need to put incendiaries out quickly

The raid had little opposition because its Anti aircraft defence had been taken away by the Germans for use on the Eastern front. Therefore the bombers were able to put their loads in a concentrated space with little or no opposition.

Dresden was not "chosen for destruction". This was a raid on an industrial centre which went exactly right with horrifying consequences due to many circumstances some of which I have listed above.

Why did so many people die?

The 35000 people that died (absolute top number using all available, reliable sources) did so because of the reasons above and the fact that Dresden's Air Raid Precautions were appallingly bad. There were few, if any, properly constructed public shelters despite money having been allocated for them which was spent by the local burghers on Air Raid shelters for their homes in the suburbs.

People therefore sheltered in basements of houses which, due to the firestorm above filled with noxious fumes and killed the occupants before the houses collapsed onto them and burned their corpses.

Many people have claimed in the last 62 years that Dresden was a quiet peaceable town going about its business and waiting for the war to end. Read the paragraphs below which are taken from research by myself and many others for the truth about "quiet, peaceable, nothing to do with the war" Dresden.

In early 1945 the war was far from over. The Allies were still camped outside the borders of Germany, V2 rockets were still falling. The Allies had just fought the battle of the Bulge where the supposedly defeated Germans suddenly punched a huge hole in the Allied lines, German Rocket and Jet aircraft were coming off the production lines and proceeding to rip the hell out of the allied air fleets.

It was an operation undertaken due to many reasons.

1. A request from the Russians at the Yalta conference in February

1945. General Antonov "We want the Dresden railway junction bombed"

Meeting between the Chiefs of staff as reported by an interpreter. Records kept at the Public Records office in Kew

2. It was a German base of operations against Marshall Koniev`s left flank as he advanced into Germany. (See above)

Captured German High Command documents from Berlin in 1945 state that "Dresden is to be fortified as a military strongpoint, to be held at all costs." These statements are also backed up by decrypts from Ultra at Bletchley Park.

3. Munitions storage in the old Dresden Arsenal.

4. Troop reinforcement and transport centre shifting an average 28

troop trains through the marshalling yards every day. Intelligence from Russian and other sources stored in the Public Records office in Kew

5. Communications centre. Most of the telephone lines connecting

High Command to the Eastern front went through Dresden.

6. Quote from The Dresden Chamber of Commerce 1944. "The work rhythm of Dresden is determined by the needs of our army."

There were 127 factories in the Dresden Municipal area. The most

famous of these was Zeiss the celebrated camera and optics maker. In 1945 it was turning out Bomb aiming apparatus and Time fuses. (If you think the Dresden China Works making those lovely shepherdesses are more famous, they are actually made in Meisen 12Km down the River and always have been.)

A factory that previously made Typewriters and sewing machines was making Guns and ammunition

The Waffle and Marzipan machine manufacturer was producing torpedoes for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe.

The Arts and Crafts workshops in the old town were using their woodworking skills to make the tail assemblies for V-1s.

Other factories were turning out such non warlike goods as Searchlights, Aircraft components, Field Telephones and 2 way radios.

Yet another quote, "Anyone who knows Dresden only as a cultural city would be very surprised to be made aware of the extensive and versatile activity that make Dresden ONE OF THE FOREMOST INDUSTRIAL LOCATIONS OF THE REICH. (My Capitals)

Sir Arthur Harris? A Post war exponent of the bombing campaign?

Nope both wrong.

It comes from the Dresden City Council Yearbook of 1942. The men who carried out these acts did so in the desire to make a world in which their descendants and countrymen, of whom I am one, could live in freedom from persecution and with a freedom to ask questions and form their own opinions. To those of you who feel it necessary to label them war criminals may I ask if you think that you could have asked a similar question under Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan? Ray.

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15y ago
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6y ago

80,000
90,000-166,000

Sources for the following: Wikipedia, World War II Pacific and Southeast Asia

Q: How many Japanese people died in the bombing of Hiroshima? 70,000.

Q: How many died in Nagasaki? 25,000.

Q: How many died from all effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, due to radiation effects from fallout, food and water contamination, and food shortages? 250,000 total.

Q: How many Chinese civilians did the Japanese army kill in the immediate aftermath of the Dolittle bombing raids of 1942? 250,000 civilians.

Q: How many Japanese civilians were killed in the Dolittle bombing raids? 50 (fifty).

Q: How many Chinese civilians did the Japanese kill, including the Manchurian war of the 1930's and the late consolidations of 1945? 17 million.

* Look it all up on Wikipedia and many other sources. There's no reason for WikiAnswers to spout blatant nonsense. *


I searched the web for a definitive figure for those killed at Hiroshima by the "Little Boy" uranium bomb on August 6, 1945. I found figures ranging from 65,000 to 200,000, with the larger figures generally attached to the most recent writings. Astonishingly, there just doesn't seem to be any scholarly study of this subject, but only proclamations by people with a stake in the matter. The Manhattan Engineer District survey In 1946, the Manhattan Engineer District published a study that concluded that 66,000 people were killed at Hiroshima out of a population of 255,000. Of that number, 45,000 died on the first day and 19,000 during the next four months. In addition, "several hundred" survivors were expected to die from radiation-induced cancers and lukemia over the next 30 years. (This report is also known as the Oughterson Commission study.) This is the low-ball estimate, evidently because it was based on a census of households in Hiroshima and therefore did not account for the deaths of soldiers and Korean forced laborers, who are generally numbered at 20,000--though I can't find any solid justification for that figure. If they all died, which is very unlikely, and if we add a thousand deaths instead of the several hundred estimated by Oughterson's group, then we seem to be talking 87,000 fatalities directly attributable to the explosion. The American researchers did an extensive random sampling of the surviving population, asking how large their family was and how many had been killed. From the results it was calculated that 25.5% of the civilian population had been killed. The great unknown, of course, is how large the population was at the time of the explosion. Where the Manhattan Engineer District gave a figure of 255,000--a figure based on the June 1945 rice-ration records, which survived the blast--others have posited 300,000 or even 400,000 including military and "day workers" (the eumphemism of choice for the Korean slave laborers). These populations would not have been shown on the rice-rationing records. But even if 400,000 people were present in Hiroshima on August 6, the death toll ought not to exceed 102,000, if the American methodology was sound. The Hiroshima police study Also in 1946, the Hiroshima police estimated the dead at 78,150 and the missing at 13,983, for a total of about 92,000 if all the missing are presumed dead (again, a very unlikely hypothesis). So this estimate is not radically different from the American estimate. Perhaps significantly, the police study gave a figure of 129,558 for total casualties, including those with minor as well as major injuries. (These figures are suspiciously precise, but never mind that.) Today's "consensus" figure--that is, the one you see most often where the writer is not trying to prove a point one way or another--seems to be 130,000 dead. Writing for Air & Space magazine in the 1990s, I discovered to my horror that at least one editor didn't know the difference between a casualty and a fatality. Is this simply another case of counting all the wounded as dead? The Japanese Reconstruction Survey One possible source of confusion is where to stop counting the deaths of survivors. In 1978, the Japanese Reconstruction Survey compiled the times of death for 16,007 people known to have been present in Hiroshima. This survey found that 73.4% had died by 1 November 1945, and that an additional 5.6% had died between then and the October 1950 census. Interestingly, the latter Death Rate is 1.1% a year--almost exactly the normal mortality rate for the Japanese population. From this I conclude that the methodology of the Manhattan Engineer District report was sound. Counting deaths as of the end of 1945 must have captured essentially all of them. Recent estimates The Radiation Effects Research Foundation website gives a range of 90,000-140,000 1945 deaths at Hiroshima out of a population of 310,000. The Hiroshima Peace Site website gives a figure of 140,000 deaths by December 1945, out of a population of 350,000. The Guinness Book of Records gives a suspiciously precise figure of 155,200 killed by Little Boy, including deaths from radiation within one year. In all three cases above, there is no information on where the figures come from. The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki estimated in 1978 that 346,000-356,000 people were present in Hiroshima at the time of the bombings, with fatalities of "some 200,000". This seems to be a bit of a stretch, since the last census conducted by the Japanese government prior to the bombings, in February 1944, showed a population of 343,034, The Committee is thus claiming a net gain in population during the final year of the war, when widespread evacuations were going on during the fire bombings and other cities were rapidly losing people. In 1998, a Japanese delegation in India presented this version: "At that time, Hiroshima's population was 400,000, of which 140,000 died by the end of 1945, 90 per cent of them within a week of the explosion." So far, so good--that tracks other recent Japanese estimates. But the statement continues: "People continue to die even today, from the after-effects of radiation.... As of [1997], there were 202,118 registered deaths due to the Hiroshima bombing." So here we have 62,000 deaths added to the total, with the count continuing at least into 1998. Clearly we are in an entirely different field by now. A 21-year-old in 1945 would have been 74 in 1998, and therefore have already lived past his normal life expectancy! It's true that lives were shortened by the blast--but then, they were shortened by the war itself, and especially by the malnutrition that was general in Japan in 1945. Even if that hypothetical 21-year-old, laid to rest in 1998, would have otherwise lived into his eighties or even nineties, can we fairly attribute his death to Little Boy? After all, nobody is counting the American prisoners of war who have died in the past ten years, and calling them fatalities of the Japanese PW system. In refreshing contrast to the accelerating figures published above, the City of Hiroshima has a project called Actual Status Survey of Atomic Bomb Survivors. The survey from 1979 to 1999 accumulated the names of 88,800 individuals present in Hiroshima in August 1945 who died before the end of the year. Certainly some of these died from other causes; just as certainly, some died who will never be known. Conclusion From all that I have read, the 1946 consensus figure of 90,000 dead seems about right to me. Deaths after December 1945 evidently were not very numerous, and they seem to have been adequately accounted for in the 1946 studies. Even the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (cited above) seems to confirm this. The foundation's website concludes that the number of excess deaths among 50,000 survivors who got a severe dose of radiation comes to only a few hundred, and certainly not as many as a thousand. Three things seem to be going on here. First, there is the confusion between fatalities and casualties--that may well beto be how the original jump from 90,000 to 130,000 took place. Secondly, there is the problem that once a figure has been widely circulated, it ceases to impress, and there is a very human tendency (especially among journalists) to hype it a bit: you want the reader to say wow! Thirdly, there is a strong constituency for anything that serves to demonize the United States in world affairs--a constitutency that exists not only in Japan, as the victim of the bomb; and in Europe, resenting America's dominance in world affairs; but also in American universities and journals of opinion. Take them all together, and they seem to have exaggerated the death toll at Hiroshima by more than 100 percent.
90,000-166,000
The blast instantly killed about 75,000 people, but as time passed radiation contamination brought the death toll up to somewhere around 200,000.
There are a number of different estimates as concerns the death toll in Hiroshima. See the answers below:

66,000 people were killed at Hiroshima out of a population of 255,000 according to a study by the Manhattan Engineer District. That number is based on the survey of 1940. During the last 5 years between 1940 and 1945, Hiroshima had many worker flown in and the Birth Rate at that time tell us that the number has to be higher.

90,000 to 166,000 people were killed in the Hiroshima bombing from things like radiation new developed cancers that some people still carry around today.

At least 70,000 people were killed immediately, and another 90,000 died later due to injuries and burns. In addition, there are about 200,000 people on record who died of cancer and other conditions that were likely caused by being exposed to radiation.
According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the population in Japan in October 1940 was estimated to be 73,114,308; in November 1945 the population was estimated at 71,998,104. Japan was visibly a thriving country that was hit very hard by the bombing.
140,000 people in Hiroshima died and 80,000 people in Nagasaki.

Over one hundred thousand died instantly and seventy thousand died later from burns and radiation sickness or cancer.
See website: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
90,000-166,000
66,000

That depends on what you mean. For example, 166,000 total died from the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WWII. The bomb was nicknamed "Little Boy".
at least 75 thousand
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The immediate death toll was estimated at 50,000 to 80,000 (blast and firestorm). The deaths from all causes during the following months may have been between 100,000 and 160,000 according to various estimates.
90,000-166,000
According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the population in Japan in October 1940 was estimated to be 73,114,308; in November 1945 the population was estimated at 71,998,104. Japan was visibly a thriving country that was hit very hard by the bombing.
80,000 people died directly; another 10,000-50,000 died as a result of the aftereffects.
your mom but about 130,000 people died
On August 6, 1945, at 9:15 AM Tokyo time, a B-29 plane, the "Enola Gay" piloted by Paul W. Tibbets, dropped a uranium atomic bomb, code named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan's seventh largest city. In minutes, half of the city vanished. According to U.S. estimates, 60,000 to 70,000 people were killed or missing, 140,000 were injuried many more were made homeless as a result of the bomb. Deadly radiation reached over 100,000. In the blast, thousands died instantly.

The city was unbelievably devastated. Of its 90,000 buildings, over 60,000 were demolished.
Roughly 100,000
90,000-166,000
more than 60% of people of hiroshima died in this attack

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12y ago

The bombing raid on Hamburg on September 24, 1943 resulted in an estimated 15,000 deaths; the raid on September 28, 1943 resulted in an estimated 30,000 deaths. See the link below for more information on the bombing of Hamburg.

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10y ago

The bombing of Dresden happened towards the end of World War II. It occurred on February 13, 14, and 15th 1945 and killed approximately 23,000 people though the true number may never be known.

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16y ago

Wildly divergent figures circulate. The figures given by serious scholars tend to be in the range c. 25,000 - 35,000. Figures like 135,000 and so forth originated with Goebbels.

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12y ago

90,000-166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000-80,000 in Nagasaki.

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14y ago

hundreds of thousands people died.

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SSchool teacher

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80000

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2

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