Quote:
Originally Posted by August
Only because you're looking at it with hindsight. Wonderful thing that hindsight. It allows you to make all sorts of moral judgments from the comfort of your living room without recognizing that things weren't all that clear at the time they were happening.
The answers to those questions in the beginning of 1945 with an UNdefeated Germany still months away from surrender is an unequivocal yes, just it would be for any other military action that might end the war sooner.
Like I said before. In a fight to the finish you keep punching until your opponent goes down. You don't ease up just because he's on the ropes.
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No no no. Hindsight has nothing to do with it. In the pacific theater for instance , General LeMay knew perfectly well what he was doing when he ordered the strategic bombing raids against japanese cities. And when high altitude bombing raids didn't bring enough devastation he ordered low level flights during the night. The tokyo raid make 100 000 dead. Civilian dead. This is not war, this is massacre. He was so aware of this that he publicly stated that should the US lose the war he would have been convicted of war crimes.
The whole strategic bombing doctrine was born and developed in England and the US. Other countries used it with more or less success but the art of SB was taken to its extreme with the british and americans. Germany didn't even have a long range bomber force when it entered the war. All medium and light bombers. So yes Germany has it reponsabilities, but so do the Allies.
And winning the war is no excuse to put under the rug many "questionable" actions. Its as if after 60 years we still have this image of Germany as the empire of evil, and the Allies were the knights in shining armor fighting the dragon for truth and justice. Go beyond the propaganda and you see that the allies were every bit as ruthless and oportunistic as the germans.
And what about the japanese ? Eh they lost the war also, and yet even in 2010 they still don't aknowledge their responsabilities in the war. They negate everything, and lets not even go into the japanese occupation of china.