Munich Detonates WWII Bomb (opens in new tab)

They did not. I've read in a German newspaper today that a piece of the metal casing has been found 300 meters off, near one of the main roads of Munich. They coated the bomb in straw and sandbags to minimize the shrapnel as best as possible, though.

Munich is the home of BMW, and a major industrial centre of the southern part of Germany. As such it was a desirable target for the Allied war effort. According to Wikipedia, 42% of the city was destroyed during the bombing campaign:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_...

74 air raids, 60k bombs plus a few million incendiary devices, about 90% of the city center destroyed.

There was lots of industry (BMW, Dornier) in Munich, a few important airports and it was the Capital of the Movement, i.e. the place where the whole Nazi BS started[1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

Munich was targeted by many air raids throughout the war. This was the era were an air raid was hundreds of bombers dropping thousands of bombs. In the start, there would have been an attempt at 'precision'. Initial allied air raids nominally targeted factories and other industrial chokepoints. Turns out their accuracy was so low that at some point they just switched over to bombing the city in general.

Also, towards the end of the war, the western and eastern "fronts" basically swept through all of Germany. Munich was attacked by American forces near the end of the air (they also liberated the near by concentration camp while they were at it). Fighting was not as fierce as other urban battles.