soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Aug 24, 2:35 pm, " " wrote:


> My handbook *Crimes of War -- What the Public Should Know* ( .
> Norton & Co., 1999) has a number of cross-referenced entries
> relevant to the issue, such as indiscriminate attacks; principle of
> proportionality; civilian immunity; wanton destruction; collateral
> damage; cultural property and historical monuments.
>
> Today, a dozen civilians killed through bombing creates extremely
> negative publicity. Too late for the hundreds of thousands
> that perished during the air wars in WW II: they were simply born
> at the wrong time. Arguing about the number that were incinerated or
> suffocated in Dresden changes nothing about the total fatality
> numbers across Japan, or Germany.
>
> At the end of the day, this remains an issue the Allies have to
> face. One reader of a book on Dresden wrote in an (American) Amazon
> comment, that area bombing represents "a military run amok."
>
> ES


Upfront, I'm no big fan of the effectiveness of area bombing - it
wasted many lives on both sides(air crew and civilians) and may not
have had the intended affect of ending the war sooner.

But a couple of points.

1) The allies certainly thought it was going to have an impact on the
war - and ending the war sooner reduced casualties, both civilian and
military. So I would not ascribe to indifference what could better be
thought of as optimism and naievete.

2) You make zero mention of Germany. Certainly they bombed London and
other British cities at night throughout the war and had to know that
they had the same issues with killing civilians. They also built
terror weapons such as the V1 which was inherently too inaccurate for
military targets - point it at a big city and plan the fuel runs out
when over it. And does not "wanton destruction" on one side breed the
same on the other?

James