My $.02
My dad served in The War. He died in '99 at 87. I had an uncle who was a chemistry PhD who worked @ Los Alamos (birthplace of Fat Man and Little Boy) although he never could tell me exactly what he did there, of course. I'm a war baby, born in '42 and mother & I spent the first 3 yrs of my life @ her parents'--this was pretty normal given the conditions.
The ONE thing I don't like abt. nuclear weapons is the genetic toll they take on the next generation, and the ones after that, who had nothing to do with the conflict. That is the basic difference as I see it between Dresden on the one hand, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki on the other. When the fires were out in Dresden, that was it, the damage was over. No one born later in Dresden was born genetically damaged, crippled, deformed, etc.
Now, having said that, in 1945 we were fighting for the survival of our civilization, against an implacable enemy. We used the best weapon we could lay our hands on to stop that enemy cold. That's all.
