David Irving’s ACTION REPORT Swiftsourcea
puzzle

“51,000
dead” in Dresden?

WE were puzzled by this oddly precise figure: why not "fifty thousand?"
But a reader has pointed out to us that Bodenschatz, speaking in
German, may have stated "250,000", the figure more commonly quoted in Berlin at the time --
"zweihundert-fünfzigtausend" — and the British, transcribing the conversation from wartime disc phonographs, may have misheard this as
"einund-fünfzigtausend".

These CSDIC transcripts do occasionally show such phonetic misinterpretations.
Elsewhere Bodenschatz spoke of the larger figure.

See Also