CalBear said:Again, I must differ with you. Any reasonable review of "Bomber Harris" and his record makes it clear that he had a stunning desire to kill German civilians, even to the point of hurting the military requirements of the allies. I would point you to he refusals to shift his attacks from German civilians to French transportation infrastructure targets in the run-up to D-Day. It was only after the most dire of warnings that he reassigned the RAF to preparation of the ground of THE INVASION OF OCCUPPIED EUROPE! The Strategic Bombing campaign was supposed to be Strategic, had Harris agreed he would have jumped at the opprotunity to help the Invasion succeed. He did not.
War is the application of force. Using the tools available in WW II large scale civilian deaths were unavoidable when that force was applied, as the American bombing campaign in the Pacific made clear. The American firebombing campaign againt Japan was acceptable only because the Japanese had decentralized it's industry into the homes of the workers, making those homes legitimate targets (although had the Allies lost the war, you can be sure that LeMay et al would have been in the Dock for genocide). Germany never did this, yet Harris firebombed area targets, without any particualar interest in concentrating on factories or other military targets, from the moment he had sufficient bombers.
As I have mentioned in other posts, additional research into this position may be helpful.
Calbear
Where do you get that from?
Its also the 1st I've heard about any decentralisation of Japanese industry. Seems rather unlikely as the bombing of Japan was only started late in the war so they had less incentive, as well as capacity, for spreading their industry. Never heard anything except it was bombing of urban areas becuase that was the best way to hurt the Japanese.
Steve