The Wikipedia source seems to be comparing apples to oranges. The casualty figure for Berlin is for 5 years, and the casualty figure for London is for 6 months, but just about everything else is a figure for only a handful of days. And follwing the links reveals that it's not because these cities were only attacked for a few days.
Most Americans probably learn a lot about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and thus don't realize that the bombing of Tokyo killed more, and perhaps had a greater role in ending the war than the dropping of the atomic bombs
well oddly I was the other way around. I tried any number of Japanese cities and discounted London because I didn't see how it would be so high. Some of the comments on the means of calculation seem to bear this out.
But at least they insist that if you don't eat your meat then you can't have any pudding. I mean, how you can have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
I'm German and the first city that came to mind was London, then Coventry (not in the list). Then Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne (not in the list either). Then I was stumped and tried Russian and Polish cities, although I didn't think those received so many air raids. Only then did I think of the pacific theatre.
Interesting facts about bombing of Belgrade in WWII. Belgrade was bombed twice. First time in 1941 by Germans and second time in 1944 by British and American air forces. In both cases it was on Easter Day. Germans have killed about 3500 people and our allies have killed about 1200 citizens of Belgrade and 18 German soldiers.
I tried Coventry since that bombing was so famous - an interesting quiz how it puts numbers in perspective. To this day I cannot understand why the allies didn't atom-bomb something symbolic (eg Mt Fuji) to minimise civilian casualties while still making the point dramatically.
As of January 2019, the US was still issuing purple hearts to soldiers that were originally created for the million plus anticipated casualties from invading Japan.
Not saying I personally agree with the atom bombings, but my Biochemistry professor recently told us about his father, who flew a bomber in World War 2. He was about to be deployed to the Pacific Theater at the end of 1945, and he may not have survived (and by extension my professor may not have existed) had the bombings not occurred. Full disclosure--my professor is pretty awesome and has done some amazing research (even playing a role in a major paper published on COVID last year).
So I'd say nerdalert and Jerry both have good points. At cruel as it sounds, the atom bombings may have saved many lives in the long run. At the same time though, it was still morally wrong to target a densely packed city. Would it have scared the Japanese equally if America targeted a small village or national monument? No way to really tell, but it's interesting to consider that alternate version of history.
the official numbers are not correct, they dont take into account the missing people or refugees that had been flooding into the city. The records of the men who gathered and burned what was left of the bodies certainly says more than 25,000. Berlin lost way more than the figure here as well. Half a million German civilians at least died due to bombing in the war.
The numbers in this quiz seemed very far off to me as well. With some quick research from a few different sources, casualty estimates range anywhere from 35,000 to 135,000. However, there have been some more recent historians who claim a much lower total, more in line with the number in this quiz, and that's the source Wikipedia evidently believes.
Extensive firebombing + huge city + buildings made of paper and wood. I've seen figures that state as many as 100k people were killed in a single day from this.
Which is strange why no one complains about the deaths in Tokyo, while they complain about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the use of atom bombs, even though they had less casualties combined.
It is not so strange when you consider the issue from the ethics of warfare. There is a general thread of argument that says that warfare should be costly and difficult. The horrors of war are a significant barrier to the will to enter into war, which gives people (and by extension states) the motivation to avoid war through diplomatic processes whenever possible. Only when the costs of war can be mitigated by lowering one's own loss of life (cf. drone bombing, a single atomic bomb from a single bomber versus thousands of conventional bombs from hundreds of bombers with scores of wings of escort fighters, etc.), mitigated by "getting away with it" internationally (cf. Russia with Crimea and Georgia/South Ossetia, Iraq's severe misjudgment with Kuwait), and/or supremely justified (cf. West vs. Communism) do the horrors of war become "worth it." Atomic warfare makes destroying your enemy too easy and thus too tempting, unless your enemy can destroy you too. Even then, the outcome sucks.
The figures correspond only to immediate deaths. The drama with atomic bombs is not the people who die with the initial blast, but the fact that much more victims will come in the following years (some of them decades after the conflict itself has been resolved, and suffered by children that weren't even born back then).
Quite strange for this quiz to miss all the dead on the Eastern front - completely destroyed Warsaw and Minsk, Stalingrad (now Volgograd), of which only a burning husk was left by the end of the battle, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), which was bombed about daily for well over 2 years, Moscow, right there next to the Nazi lines full of bombers, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa... But then again, it would be hard to separate direct bombing victims there from those killed by guns, artillery, disease, starvation and extermination. Still, they all deserve to be mentioned.
Tokyo's figure of 90,000 was the worst SINGLE raid on 9th March 1945 (it destroyed central Tokyo, but other raids destroyed 6x more urbanity). In total an estimated 180,000 - >200,000 Tokyoites died in the bombing - the most destroyed piece of human urbanity ever. This was why it was never the site of the A-bombs, as the city had already been destroyed.
Also other cities were wiped out by mass bombing during BATTLES, notably Warsaw and Manila which each saw in over 100,000 deaths and in terms of percentage, were the most wiped out cities ever.
But if you want a serious answer, I looked up the bombing of Darwin and it killed "only" 236 people. That would be considered a lot in modern times, but barely anything during World War 2. Also, the bombing in Darwin was a single day thing, whereas most of the cities here were bombed repeatedly for months, sometimes years. With all due respect to those who lost their lives in the Darwin raid, I think the fact that I have never heard it nor learned about it in school suggests it wasn't a particularly important event in the history of World War 2.
According to statistics from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Chongqing), Japan’s bombing of Chongqing during World War II caused more than 30,000 civilian casualties (the table on the data page listed in this quiz only counts One of the most important accidents resulted in 4,000 casualties). I hope the author can investigate and include it.
So I'd say nerdalert and Jerry both have good points. At cruel as it sounds, the atom bombings may have saved many lives in the long run. At the same time though, it was still morally wrong to target a densely packed city. Would it have scared the Japanese equally if America targeted a small village or national monument? No way to really tell, but it's interesting to consider that alternate version of history.
http://www.dresden.de/en/02/07/03/historical_commission.php
Also other cities were wiped out by mass bombing during BATTLES, notably Warsaw and Manila which each saw in over 100,000 deaths and in terms of percentage, were the most wiped out cities ever.
But if you want a serious answer, I looked up the bombing of Darwin and it killed "only" 236 people. That would be considered a lot in modern times, but barely anything during World War 2. Also, the bombing in Darwin was a single day thing, whereas most of the cities here were bombed repeatedly for months, sometimes years. With all due respect to those who lost their lives in the Darwin raid, I think the fact that I have never heard it nor learned about it in school suggests it wasn't a particularly important event in the history of World War 2.