Quote:
Originally Posted by NeonSamurai
See I would argue that many of these attacks were criminal as they purposely targeted non-combatants. The Blitz, Dresden, the carpet bombing of cities by the allies late in the war, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. All the powers involved in WW2 were guilty of intentional terror bombing.
I see a huge difference between that and collateral damage.
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I think the difference between criminal and non-criminal still is that in WWII it was thought that shattering the combat moral of the German population (or the Londoners) by putting their cities to ruins, was possible. That is what made it a military "tactic", although one that did not work: it did not break public moral, but brought people closer together in stubborn determination. But that we know onyl since afterwards, and today.
To imply present moral standards on situations back then and inside that war, imo does not match.
I agree though that the victims of such bombing raids againbst cities were no collateral damages, but the intended target of such attacks. But again: not a target for gaining personal satisfaction or revenge by for example committing mass rapes like the Soviets in berlin and the Japanese in Nanking, but a target due to miliutary assumnption on how that would help to break the combat will of the German and help to let the enemy collapse form within.
I am not in the historic knowledge since when, if ever, Allied commanders realised the tactic did not work. If at some point they realised that it was ineffective and id not work for the desired result, from then on continuing such attacks would have been a "crime", imo. By my thinking, it then no longer is an issue covered by the standards of war, but the moral standards of peacetime, since it would have been then a tactic that serves no military purpose anymore. (I argued in past threads that it makes no sense to imply peacetime standards onto acting in war, but that war has its own set of standards and needs, and that these are very different from those in peacetime. It already starts with that at war you do not get punished for doing what when doing it in peacetimes you would serve life in prison for: killing other humans).
BTW, the Nazis had started with targetting cities. During the conquest of Poland already, at the very beginning of WWII, Warsaw was subject to extremely intense artillery shelling and dive bombing attacks. This later repeated often during the war in Russia.