Chrome crash loading large XML

HTML

See JavaScript Console for output.<br/>
Two loads (~56 MB XML each) will crash Chrome (on Windows XP):<br/>
<button id="btn" type="button">load</button>

JavaScript

var parser = new DOMParser();
var xml;

function log(msg) {
    console.log(msg);
}

function logResponse(xhr) {
    var timestamp, metaList ;
    if(xhr.status == 200) {
        log('length: ' + xhr.responseText.length);
        if (!xhr.responseXML) {
            xml = parser.parseFromString(xhr.responseText, 'application/xml');
        }
        //metaList = xhr.responseXML.getElementsByTagName("meta");
        metaList = xml.getElementsByTagName("meta");
        if (metaList && metaList.length > 0) {
            timestamp = metaList[0].getAttribute('osm_base');
        }
        log('timestamp: "' + timestamp + '"');
    } else {
        log('error: ' + xhr.status + ' - ' + xhr.statusText);
    }
}

function sync(url) {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('GET', url, false);
    xhr.overrideMimeType("text/plain");
    log('loading ' + url + ' ...');
    xhr.send();
    logResponse(xhr);
}


function next() {
    var url = "http://overpass-api.de/api/augmented_diff?id=" + sequence + "&bbox=8.97171,47.61588,9.86022,47.92094";
    sync(url);
    sequence--;
}

var sequence = 83552;
document.getElementById('btn').onclick = next;