Dresden

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by AKSWulfe
I went with the option that you are trying to justify Germany's war crimes by stating the Allies did the same thing. I am telling you it's different.

[/b]
Would that justify anything? "Its ok because the allies did it too"?
The idea is absurd.

We can leave it at simpler solutions, since in your mind you somehow believe that we are either a) going to change the course of history, b) are going to try young men who were fighting on the side of a just cause through this thread, or c) you just want someone other than yourself to see the allies as criminals.

[/b]
If a German soldier shoots a prisoner, would that be a warcrime?
If an allied soldier shoots a prisoner, would that be a warcrime?
If a German soldier shoots a civilian, would that be a warcrime?
If an allied soldier shoots a civilian, would that be a warcrime?

If you answer ANY of the questions above other than with a "yes" you should think long and hard on why. We can start there.

And try to remember that gulit is individual.

No, alot can be said about wwii Germany...having problems with killing innocent civilians is not one of those things though.

There's several thousand dead British, French, Russians, and many more, civilians that can't testify otherwise....

Is english your first language?

Yes it is a silly notion, considering the war crimes started the day WWII started. And coincendently, they were all on the behalf of Germany.
-SW

Well, I guess that sums up your version of events. All warcrimes were on the behalf of Germany. I take it then, that Germany is also responsible (in some twisted way) for the rape of Nanking too? Hmm, but wait, that took place before wwii, and the perps were japanese not German..how can that be?

[Wotan]

Dowding it would be easy for me to state my disdain for the American Bombing Campaign over Japan.......especially to maintain consistency

I would though however refer you to a quote by Harris

The feeling, such as there is, over dresden, could easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdness. Actually Dresden was a mass munitions works, an intact government center and a key transportation point to the east. It is now none of these things.....

Attacks on cities, like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of Alied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaing cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier........

I think most would agree with Harris's statement here. Atleast some of us in this thread. If fact some have argued this point to justify Dresden.

The fact is the nukes dropped on Japan ended the war and actually saved lives and was concieved as such.

What we have in Dresden is quite different. The planners of thunderclap knew that area bombing and in paticular the specific fire bombing of Dresden would not end the war. And in fact it did not.

There are those that argue Dresden was also a "munition works" as Harris does in the above quote. But we know those that planned the raid knew there were no such munitions works.

Then there are those that argue that the raid on Dresden would disrupt troop movements and aid the Russian break through. But we know those that planned the raid knew there were no troops moving through Dresden and the fact that the Marshalling yards were not hit and in take.

So to compare what happened in Dresden and during thunderclap to what happened over Japan is rediculous.

Especially when we can find quotes by those who planned thunderclap such as this

If we assume that the daytime population of the area attacked is 300,000 we may expect 200,000 casualties. 50% of these or 110,000 may expect to be killed. It is suggested that such an attack, resulting in so many deaths, the great proportion of which will be key personnel, cannot but have a shattering effect on political and civilian morale all over Germany.........

On top of that we have Churchills own words

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed.............The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of the Allied bombing.........

and finally miko summoned it up here

There was a huge difference between mindset and behaviour of soldiers, civilians and government in Japain and Germany.
Japanese bombings were necessary and performed by a small number of people.

Destruction of Dresden population was a pointless mass-murder devised by some hatefull brit in which thousands of americans were made accomplices.

What amazing to me is you folks who attempt to rationalize the raid on Dresden especially when the record at the time is clear. Those that planned the dresden raid knew exactly what they were doing and have even said so.

I leave you with with British MP Stokes had to say about the raid

there is no case whatever under any conditions, in my view, for terror bombing

[illo]

And coincendently, they were all on the behalf of Germany.

And who would have been guilty if germany won the war?

Have you ever seen winning side doing war crimes?


What would make tear of SS guard not comparable to tear of BC? Both are ordinary human beings. Even if both have followed orders and killed hundreds of civilians

[AKSWulfe]

Would that justify anything? "Its ok because the allies did it too"?
The idea is absurd.

So what's your real agenda then? It's either to clear Germany of something it did during WWII or to paint the Allies with the same brush.

Was every German airman, soldier, sub-mariner, or anyone that was not a high ranking official indicted for warcrimes?

I don't believe so, it was all of Hitler's henchmen and the Waffen SS.

Is english your first language?

Yes, but this looks like to me "No, alot can be said about wwii Germany...having problems with killing innocent civilians is not one of those things though." that a lot can be said about germany, killing innocent civilians is not one of those things... in other words, they did not kill innocent civilians. That's the biggest load of cow manure I've heard in a long time- they initiated the killing of civilians when they bombed London.

Well, I guess that sums up your version of events. All warcrimes were on the behalf of Germany. I take it then, that Germany is also responsible (in some twisted way) for the rape of Nanking too? Hmm, but wait, that took place before wwii, and the perps were japanese not German..how can that be?

You are ignoring what I'm saying, perhaps hoping I will slip up and admit I don't know what I'm talking about. Although it's quite clear that your agenda is to either elevate Germany's criminals/military to allied status or to lower the allies to Germany's status during WWII.. either way, Germany invades Poland without a declaration of war? Proceeds into France, and then to Britain? Germany bombed several towns, villages, cities and bombarded with artillery too as it crossed Europe in it's Blitzkrieg.

What exactly is your point? So far the only thing I can find is that you are trying to make criminals out of allied bomber crews, the same ones who brought Hitler's Wehrmacht to it's knees and ultimately forced Germany's surrender.

I don't know what your agenda is here, but it sure stinks of something rotten.
-SW

[AKSWulfe]

Both might be ordinary human beings, but one lead to the future still being there for Jews, and other non-white/aryan people... I'll give ya a hint, they didn't have a swastika on their flags.

and Hortlund, quite trying to insinuate things I never said.
I take it then, that Germany is also responsible (in some twisted way) for the rape of Nanking too? Hmm, but wait, that took place before wwii, and the perps were japanese not German..how can that be?

You answered that yourself, we are talking about Germany vs the Allies DURING WWII. I stated, I thought clearly, that the war crimes started the day WWII started... notice how I said war crimes and the start of WWII? Therefore, the rape of Nanking and Japanese do not play into this.

So stop the roadkill, stick to what I said otherwise I'll give up on this "debate" and let you wallow in your own pity for those poor misunderstood Nazis.
-SW

[Wotan]

the only real question here is do you believe the targetting of civilians for no military reason is justified?

Those who were in the know about the Dresden Raid have themselves labeled it "terroristic" and admitted that it was specifically targeted at civiliian casualties.

Forget you rationalizations and call it what is was, what is was labeled by churchill himself......

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed.............The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of the Allied bombing.........

[Elfenwolf]

All I know of the German Military of WW2 was from watching episodes of "Hogan's Heroes." I would hate to think that Sargeant Schultz is considered a war criminal...or Colonel Klink, or even General Bulkhalter...however, that shiftless little SS Major with the "mollester" mustache was a real dick and I hope he got hung with the rest of the hard-core Nazis.

[J_A_B]

Regardless of morality, the destruction of Dresden DID have a positive effect on the Allied war effort.   In a total war (like WW2) you win it by completely destroying the enemy's economy.   You must destroy their ability to feed their people, their ability to produce war materials, and their ability to resist. Completely leveling a large city has MASSIVE economic implications--and in early 1945 Germany was in no position to sustain this sort of damage.  Every destroyed house, every homeless family, all of that was a drain that the German economy could ill-afford.  

Had the Allied command been smart they would have started these firebombing campaigns sooner; had these raids begun in early 1943 and leveled every major German city I find it unlikely that the war would have lasted into 1945.  In the end fewer people would have likely been killed overall, too.

Is it immoral and cruel?  Probably, but war is inheretently cruel.  All that matters is ending it ASAP to save as many of your own people as possible--you can't worry about enemy civilian casualities.  In a total war you must destroy your enemy.  The total destruction of a country is a savage, terrible thing and this is why wars in general (and WW2 in particular) aren't usually noted as bright times in human history.  Debate all you want, the fact is in a total war the sole idea is to save your country by destroying the enemy--there is no reason to "ease up" on them just because they're losing.  War is not romantic and it certainly isn't nice.  

Dresden and the Holocaust cannot be compared.  Yes, both involve killing of many, many innocents.  However, the Holocaust had utterly no military value (indeed the murder of 6 million Jews actually weakened the German economy).  Destruction of a city DOES have strategic military value because it weakens the enemy's economy.  Dresden may have had little tactical value, but the strategic (read: economic) value to destroying it was there. The object of the Dreden raid was to shorten the war (debatable as to whether it actually did).  The sole purpose of the Holocaust was to exterminate the Jewish people.  This is why the Dresden raid was immoral, but the Holocaust was purely evil.

One thing cannot be debated--WW2 was one of the worst episodes in human history; pray we never repeat it.

J_A_B

[Pongo]

Harris was an ass. His morality even if you only consider his attitude to the lives of his men is non defendable, much less his attitude to towards the lives of the French and German civilians that he killed. His morality is indistinguishable from a Nazi war criminal. Murderous bureaucrat.
But
If the German people had been willing to take the casualties to stop their evil masters instead of the free peoples of the world paying the price I might have more sympathy.
If the Swedes had been willing to pay some of that price instead of trading high grade steel for the gold from Jewish teeth I might have more time for a Swede trying to teach us some moral lesson about the war. The Swedish lesson is clear.

The Germans started that war because Adolf believed that the weak democracies didn’t have the gut to wage total war. He was wrong. The people he had convinced paid the price for believing and supporting him. Yet with the most powerful army in the world behind him Uncle Joe never made the same mistake, could Dresden have helped him form that opinion?.

[Nashwan]

There was a huge difference between mindset and behaviour of soldiers, civilians and government in Japain and Germany.
Japanese bombings were necessary and performed by a small number of people.

What is the difference between the US raids on Tokyo etc and RAF raids on Germany?

1) There is no “official” German estimate. There is one official allied estimate.

There are estimates by the offical German agencies responsible, namely the Dresden police.

2) Bodies recovered has pretty much nothing to do with actual number of casualties. Although the reading is far from pleasant I suggest you read a bit about the subject. Many simply disappeared, the ones getting caught outside close to the aiming point…others..this is gross, but since you seem to question the numbers I guess we have to get into the gory details…. Many times the rescue personnel would open the door to an airraid shelter and find nothing but a gooey mess. How many people? Who knows. Sometimes they used bathtubs to transport the remains. Bathtub filled with gooey mess, and a paper attached to it with scribblings like “150?” or “75-100” on it.

Knowing Dresden quite well from my years at school, I visited Dresden April 14, 1945. Together with the fire police officer in the staff of the Chief of Police (BdO), I drove through the areas of main damage and looked at them with the eyes of a Hamburg experienced person.
The number of killed, then, was named already as between 30 and 35  thousand. This was a well-founded estimate based on the number of recovered victims until then (March 31: 22 096 persons)... We can take for sure, today: the amount of losses in Dresden 1945 was not higher than in Hamburg in 1943.
Hans Brunswig, head of the fire police in Hamburg

35,000 people, including refugees, were registered missing following the raids. Around 10,000 of these later turned up alive.

21,271 burials and cremations were recorded following the raids.

According to Walter Weidauer, author of Inferno Dresden, only in four cases was it impossible to establish the number of bodies in a location, and those four instances ammounted to no more than 100 bodies.

3) “The most widely accepted figure now” is far from 25 000. There is no “widely accepted figure”. Dresden stirrs up too much emotions for that.

Certainly the Nazi apologists want to hang on to their fictions.

However, I was speaking of more accepted historians, and most of them seem to settle on a figure of 25-35,000.

[StSanta]

Now the argument pops up again.

The Nazi's bombed London. The Nazi's were a pretty nasty bunch.

The Brits deliberately target German civilians, but on a grander scale. Because Germany started, the Brits calling the air raids are war heroes.

Put in a more neutral way:

Action P is morally objectionable at time T.

Country A does action P on country B at time T.

Country B, at time T+n, does action P to country B, justifying it on the basis that country A did it at time T.

At time T+n, the morally reprehensible action is now fully justified because country A did it before time T+n.

Said in other words: a man of one family skins a girl of the family next door alive, then cooks her and eat her brains.

The next door family, upon learning of this, promptly break into his house, take his son, skins him alive, cut of his limbs, remove his guts and then proceed to boil and eat him in his entirety.

The police drops by. Who should the police arrest?

That A does action B to C doesn't make action B done to A by C afterwards justifiable.

If you're the good guy, you don't do evil things deliberately and for no real purpose.

About casualties: the US has a grim reminder of how hard it is to locate remains on Sept 11. After several months, not all remains have been found.
With lots of collapsing buidings and plenty of fire - and very limited resources, it is hard to expect that the Germans in Dresden could do much better. Lots more were killed than bodies were found, and that's about the end of that.


If the Nazis kill 16 million "undesireables", is it morally justified to kill 500,000 Germans to stop them?

This is misrepresenting what happened. The firebombing of Dresden wasn't done to stop the Germans. They held little strategic value and actually directed resources *away* from the real war from places where they could do more good. The Brits, having experienced the Blitz, knew such terror bombing would not crush the moral of the civilian population.

Sign in Berlin says it all: "you may break our walls, but you'll never break our hearts".

The answer to your question is yes, and that the question is irrelevant with regards to the discussion of the Brit bombing of Dresden.

Not revenge, revenge would be to kill them after the war to punish them.

I disagree. For a thing to be an act of revenge, it does not have to happen after the war has ended. The Brits wanted to get even for the earlier humiliation they'd suffered, and they did get even.

Furing the war, if ou believe it would stop the Nazis, would you have bombed German cities?

A very good question. Yes I would. There are many legitimate military targets in cities. I'd target those.

But would I, knowing the futility and pointlessness of it, order thousands of sorties against civilians in cities - mind you, with the intent of purpose of killing them, not military installations? No, I most certainly would not.

I would. To condemn millions to death because you are to squeamish to kill hundreds of thousands is immoral.

Agreed. To needlessly target civilians because you're pissed and wanna get even is immoral too.

Remember, Harris believed he could win the war through bombing, just as LeMay did in Japan. You are now judging his morals on wether he was successful or not, which seems really bizare.

No. I ain't saying a *thing* about using bombers to drop on military targets - to bomb the enemys forces so hard they have little to resist with when the invasion comes. But Harris was around during the Blitz. he saw what it did to his own countrymen Rather than shake their resolve, it made it more firm. He knew it, yet still ordered the massive strikes against civilians.

I said:
This is the same argument I've seen over and over. Because A did something reprehensible, B, C and D
are allowed to do the same, only now it is not reprehensible. Now it's justified. It's a false argument

Not justified becuse they deserve it, or as punishment.

I am trying to point out to you the difference between modern wars and WW2.

When the Serbs or Iraquis were bombed, the west could do so carefully, taking their time to pick out individual military targets, and attack them with fairly high precision. There was no real rush, because the regimes being  attacked weren't mssacring people on anything like the scale.

The Americans in their bombings of Germany seemed to be able to target specific military targets. And, they never agreed to bomb just to terror bomb. And, if there's a real rush, it seems odd to me to divert so many resources away from where they could be useful to a place where all they could do was kill toejameloads of civilians.

The idea of Thunderclap was to break the Germn's morale, show them that although they were beaten, things would  get worse until they surrendered.

By terror bombing their cities. The idea was flawed. This was shown during the Blitz, and it doesn't seem like the bombing of Dresden shook the German morale as a whole very much - on the contrar, it probably made a lot of people very angry, firming their resolve to at least give some back (odd how that cycle starts).

If it had worked, it would have saved a million lives. It didn't, so it becomes immoral? [/b}

It had already been established that terror bombing really didn't work. He still went ahead with it.

And, you could turn this around: if the Germans had been succesful with their Blitz, would this be morally justifiable?

Not in my book. YMMV.

We could talk about the Blitz, and I'd say *the exact same things* I am saying now - only I'd add that they'd be even worse for doing it the first time. (And aye, I know they did it in Spain, too, on a much smaller scale).

[Nashwan]

But Harris was around during the Blitz. he saw what it did to his own countrymen Rather than shake their resolve, it made it more firm. He knew it, yet still ordered the massive strikes against civilians.

You KNOW what Harris believed?

Harris ran Bomber Command from early 1942, when the outcome of the war was still in doubt. Right from the first, he carried out a policy of area bombing.
You contend he did this purely from revenge, knowing it wasn't effective, knowing therefore that it could cost Britain the war?

As regards effectiveness of area bombing:

The Germans started the war with tactical bombers, tried precision bombing of Britain, switched to area bombing.

The RAF tried precision bombing, switched to area bombing.

The US tried precision bombing in Europe and Japan, switched to area bombing in Japan (even before the nukes), and carried out a great many area raids in Europe towards the end.

The USSBS gives the following figures for accuracy:

Air Force and Technique Percentage of Hits Within the Plants
8th AF visual aiming 26.8
8th AF, part visual aiming and part instrument 12.4
8th AF, full instrument 5.4
RAF, night Pathfinder technique 15.8
Weighted average 12.6

Take out BC figures, and you will see the USAAF managed an average accuracy of 12% or less. These figures are for attacks against three oil plants, each with an average area of over 1 sq mile.

So only 12% of bombs would hit a target a mile square.

Where do you think the bombs were actually falling when they bombed a factory in the suburbs?

About casualties: the US has a grim reminder of how hard it is to locate remains on Sept 11. After several months, not all remains have been found.
With lots of collapsing buidings and plenty of fire - and very limited resources, it is hard to expect that the Germans in Dresden could do much better. Lots more were killed than bodies were found, and that's about the end of that.

Well, the Berlin police chief, who had plenty of exerience in the matter, seemed confident enough to predict a figure.

The man in charge of recording the bodies recovered, Theo Miller, seemed fairly certain that no more than 20% should be added to the casualty figures for unrecoverable bodies.

Reichert, the Dresden historian, seems fairly certain that there weren't large numbers whose bodies were never recovered, as do Bergander and Weidauer, who have both studied the matter thoroughly.

The Hamburg fire chief, who went to almost all the German cities hit by firestorms as an advisor. seemed pretty certain  as well.

What credible evidence have you seen to suggest otherwise?

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by AKSWulfe

So what's your real agenda then? It's either to clear Germany of something it did during WWII or to paint the Allies with the same brush.

My agenda? As I have said quite a few times before, bring the criminals to justice, do not punish the innocent. Why do you find that idea so offensive? In some cases, allied soldiers behaved just as bad as German soldiers. Why do you defend those allied soldiers? Why cant you just say: Yeah, allied solders committed crimes too? Why are you falling over yourself trying to come up with various excuses? Why defend the indefensible? Does the color on the uniform of the criminals really matter that much to you?  

Was every German airman, soldier, sub-mariner, or anyone that was not a high ranking official indicted for warcrimes?


No, does this mean that in your opinion those who weren't indicted were innocent?


I don't believe so, it was all of Hitler's henchmen and the Waffen SS.


Actually it was the SS not only the Waffen SS.


Yes, but this looks like to me "No, alot can be said about wwii Germany...having problems with killing innocent civilians is not one of those things though." that a lot can be said about germany, killing innocent civilians is not one of those things... in other words, they did not kill innocent civilians. That's the biggest load of cow manure I've heard in a long time- they initiated the killing of civilians when they bombed London.


I find this slightly amusing actually. First I say something you obviously misunderstood. You start arguing against then thing I never said.  I point out that you misunderstood what I wrote. This does not seem to deter you however, and you happily continue to argue against what I never wrote. Feel free to continue this debating against yourself.


You are ignoring what I'm saying, perhaps hoping I will slip up and admit I don't know what I'm talking about. Although it's quite clear that your agenda is to either elevate Germany's criminals/military to allied status or to lower the allies to Germany's status during WWII.. either way, Germany invades Poland without a declaration of war? Proceeds into France, and then to Britain? Germany bombed several towns, villages, cities and bombarded with artillery too as it crossed Europe in it's Blitzkrieg.


Oh, you have shown plenty of times already that you dont know what you're talking about.
This one is fantastic: "elevate Germany's criminals/military (btw..wtf does that "/"mean? Should it be interpreted as "and/or", or as "its the same thing"?) to allied status". What exactly would that status be? Brave killers of women and children? Heroic rapists? Glorious executioners of unarmed prisoners? (If you doubt any of those crimes, please let me know, and Ill present some sources).  Do remember that the Soviet union was one of the allies, and their track-record aint exactly spotless in this area.

What I have been trying to say is that guilt is individual. There is no "allied level" or "German level". The idea is strange. What, for example would the "allied level" be? The soviet level or the French level? What would the German level be? That of the SD or that of the kriegsmarine?

What difference does a declaration of war make? The soviet union (The "allies" remember) did not declare war on Finland before its invasion, does this change anything? France and England declared war on Germany, not the other way around. As for the " Germany bombed several towns, villages, cities and bombarded with artillery too as it crossed Europe in it's Blitzkrieg" …point being?
 

What exactly is your point? So far the only thing I can find is that you are trying to make criminals out of allied bomber crews, the same ones who brought Hitler's Wehrmacht to it's knees and ultimately forced Germany's surrender.


Yeah, the allied bomber crews sure brought Germany to her knees and forced Germany's surrender. See above about not knowing what your talking about.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by J_A_B
Regardless of morality, the destruction of Dresden DID have a positive effect on the Allied war effort. In a total war (like WW2) you win it by completely destroying the enemy's economy. You must destroy their ability to feed their people, their ability to produce war materials, and their ability to resist. Completely leveling a large city has MASSIVE economic implications--and in early 1945 Germany was in no position to sustain this sort of damage. Every destroyed house, every homeless family, all of that was a drain that the German economy could ill-afford.


I disagree.
1) There is no difference between "total war" and "normal war" …there's just "war".
The "total war" idea came from Goebbles and was used for PR purposes only.
2) There are more ways to win a war than destroying the enemy's economy.
3) By Feb 1945 the German economy had already collapsed. Dresden did not change this fact.


Had the Allied command been smart they would have started these firebombing campaigns sooner; had these raids begun in early 1943 and leveled every major German city I find it unlikely that the war would have lasted into 1945. In the end fewer people would have likely been killed overall, too.


Exactly how do you reach the conclusion that if you level every major German city, fewer people in the end would have been killed overall? Lets assume the German population in 1943 was 70 000 000, of these, say 35 000 000 lived in the cities you want destroyed. Calculate with a casualty rating of 10 % killed and 30 % wounded in each city raid. 10 500 000 casualties. All civilians too. Great plan. Its right up there with the British (naturally) idea to use spread the plutonium produced in the Manhattan project over German crop fields.        


Is it immoral and cruel? Probably, but war is inheretently cruel. All that matters is ending it ASAP to save as many of your own people as possible--you can't worry about enemy civilian casualities.


Probably? "Is it immoral and cruel to specifically target civilians with the objective of killing as many of them as possible?" -Probably?

War is horrible enough in itself, we dont have to strive to make it worse.


In a total war you must destroy your enemy. The total destruction of a country is a savage, terrible thing and this is why wars in general (and WW2 in particular) aren't usually noted as bright times in human history. Debate all you want, the fact is in a total war the sole idea is to save your country by destroying the enemy--there is no reason to "ease up" on them just because they're losing. War is not romantic and it certainly isn't nice.


Civilians are not, must not, and can not be valid targets of war. Civilians are indeed essential for the enemy's war economy, his infrastructure, his morale etc. They are also comparatively easy prey. In fact, the only thing that stands between civilians and their nations enemies is the armed forces of their nation. This however does not mean that since civilians are so essential for the enemy's war effort, it makes them a viable target of war.

The enemy's infrastructure, his factories, rail network, his bridges etc, they are all viable targets. They could, and indeed should, if possible be destroyed. His hospitals, schools, kindergardens, fire brigades etc are not. Why? To answer that question we would have to try to peer down into the moral and ethic values we have in the western civilization. To some extent these values can be seen in the laws of war that we have all agreed upon in several different conventions.
In my humble opinion the fact that civilians are not viable targets of war, is so fundamental and basic, that I thought anyone would agree on this.

We do not want armies or airforces targeting residential areas in order to kill the workers at the enemy's factories. We do not want fighters to strafe schoolyards and kindergardens in order to kill as many kids as possible (this would of cource lead to a significant drop in morale for the enemy, as well as a prevention of ever having to face those kids in the trenches 10 years later).
With your line of reasoning you are walking a very dangerous path on very very thin ice.

[J_A_B]

I wouldn't bomb the enemy cities to rubble for the sole purpose of killing civilians, I'd do it for the purpose of destruction of the enemy economy and infastructure.  Massive numbers of civilian casualities would be an unfortunate side effect of my tactics. True terror is killing people for no reason whatsoever, which this is not.

You will note that what I would do is what everyone DID do, given the chance.  Everyone was inflicting as much damage on each other as possible.  I'm not saying it's "right" to fight this way; but when the survival of the free world is at stake and the utter destruction of your enemy is the only way to win that's what you have to do.  This is what WW2 was, like it or not.  Debating whether it was "right" or "wrong" is pointless.  There is a REASON people say things like "War is Hell"--because it IS.  With the passage of time it's easy to forget how horrible war is.  War is savage, dehumanizing, immoral, terrible beyond reason.  Dresden is a painful reminder of what war is.  War isn't the romanticized notion of "good versus evil"; war is cities reduced to rubble and piles of dead burnt bodies.  Veterans tend to not want to discuss what went on; nightmares and emotional scarring is not uncommon among Vets.  Think about horrors such as Dresden and you'll know why.

Do you think the Allied (or even Axis) aircrews liked the fact that they were killing thousands of civilians?  Do you think submarine crews liked watching crew after crew drown as they torpedoed unarmed merchant ships?  Do you really think killing was makng these people feel all warm and fuzzy inside?  With the exception of a tiny number of sick individuals, of course not.  But there was no choice; WW2 was an "us or them" situation.  

And all wars are NOT equal.  Claiming that is claiming that the conflict in Afghanistan (I hesitate to call it a war as the media does) is no different than WW2, which is obviously a false premise.  To win a conflict on the scale of WW2, it is indeed necessary to completely devastate the enemy's economy--this is why the Axis could not have won after 1940.  Regardless of their successes in the field, they didn't touch American infastructure or Soviet infastructure east of the Urals.  Hindsight is always perfect.  The fact is, if you were living in 1945 then the war in Europe wasn't over until V-E day and up until then there was no reason to ease up on the Germans just because they were losing.

You blame the Allied command. Why not blame the Germans for not suing for peace when it became obvious they couldn't win?  They gave the Allies no choice.  

This is why I prefer AH's imaginary battle between non-existant countries.  I'd rather leave WW2 in the history books where it belongs.

J_A_B