a) In case of North Korea and other similar countries an argument is often used "They're more crazy than they are sane, they'll use the A-bomb first, because they're that crazy etc." .... At times I'd make the same argument about the United States. Their not sane, their crazy. In the end of the day it's just hysterical lobbing of dirt around based on no real assessment aside propaganda.
b) Fire bombing of cities. After the World War I Italian General Giulio Douhet wrote very important book, called Command of the Air which imminently got famous over the world. In that he states that for future wars aerial warfare will assume much greater role. He stated that an objective in war must from then on be gaining air supremacy and caring out strategical bombarding. His idea was that through this you can reduce your opponent to the level where he is unable to carry on the fight.
Allies, much like the rest of the world, were quite influenced of the works. Well basically every air force was. The problem about it however was that Douhet forgot to specify which targets to aim. Later thinkers developed two plans for that. First of all the "bottle neck effect." Meaning you bomb specific industrial complexes creating a shortage of that particular asset across the enemy nation. For example ball bearings or oil. Both worked well in WW2.
The other line of thinking said that the previous suggestion is not possible. Bombers flying over 5000m high are extremely inaccurate. Moreover to bomb factories you'd have to go in at day time to even have any chance of accuracy, which is much more dangerous. Instead they argued that allies must target German civilian population. The plan was to demoralize them. End of story. Demoralized people are less effective workers, demoralized nation's soldiers are less effective and all in all it can call on a coup perhaps.
In defense of the States I must say here that in Europe the British were much more keen on the latter idea than the yanks. USAAF did carry out much more day time bombing attacks aimed at industry than the RAF. Nevertheless you were part of the terror attacks on civilian population as well, especially in Pacific theater. On a side note, that's where your nutjob General Cutis LeMay learned all his tricks. He later wanted to preemptively bomb the crap out of the USSR, with nukes.
Anyway the bombing missions aimed at civilian populations had very different signature. They were launched at nights, they used fire bombs (napalm predecessors) instead of General Purpose bombs. The firestorms created by the firebombs burned the cities and the people but left the industrial equipment quite intact, brick building walls, bunkers - left standing.
A reason why Dresden has been the symbolic actions here, is quite simple. That city had no military importance what so ever. It was late in the war, they had no significant military installations not factories. Only possible target there was the railway - on the edge of the city. It was left untouched by the allies. German propaganda indeed blew up the numbers here. But it's not the only such attack that has happened: Hamburg (40 000 dead), Sweinemuende (23 000 dead), Pforzheim (20 000 dead), Darmstadt (12 500 dead), Kassel (10 000 dead).
In Pacific in Operation Meetinghouse, Tokyo living areas, built of wood, with extensive civilian population per sq mile, were bombed by over 300 B-29s carrying fire bombs. 100 - 150 000 civilians died. No military importance what so ever. By the way, we're talking about same casualty number here as nuclear attacks already.
Thus horrible attacks against civilians were carried out. They were not collateral damage, they were the targets. It was a decision made in the allied HQs. And in the end of it - their plan failed. While according to US Senate's launched survey after the war the morale in Germany did in fact decrease, German economical output achieved its' height in 1944. The nation wasn't brought do its' knees by aerial bombarding but by the Red Army.
Now fuck Korea. Just don't destroy my writing by quoting it 5 million times twisting it by demagogy. Write something nice and long in reply, it would warm my heart 
(I'm really into that WW2 aerial warfare shit)
At the very best, according to your numbers, they didn't really kill a lot of people. The Nazis killed over 11 million in concentration camps, and countless millions more in direct attacks on civilians and mass murders. If the U.S. killed a few hundred thousand, it's awful, but it fails in comparison. It's possible that a few generals here and there got stupid and ordered bombing attacks on different cities and they were never punished for it since it was mid war and everyone figured it was likely military targets, when it turned out not to be, and whatnot, but since it's not a well established trend in general the Americans were good; holding a grudge on a handful of attacks compared to the 10's of millions killed by the enemy is stupid; accidents and mistakes will happen, but the systematic slaughter of millions is hard to deny or forgive. In comparison, we'd be a far lesser evil, and this would be a fairly rare occurrence.
However, Dresden in particular was a military target. While estimates up to 500,000 or more casualties have been made, it was likely closer to 25,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
Dresden was Germany's seventh-largest city and, according to the RAF at the time, the largest remaining unbombed built-up area.[27] Taylor writes that an official 1942 guide to the city described it as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in 1944, the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops that were supplying the army withmateriel.[28] The contribution to the Nazi war effort may not have been as significant as the planners thought.[29]
The US Air Force Historical Division wrote a report in response to the international concern about the bombing, which was classified until December 1978.[30] This said that there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers in the city supporting the German war effort at the time of the raid.[31] According to the report, there were aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabrik Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); an optical goods factory (Zeiss Ikon AG); as well as factories producing electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch & Sterzel AG); gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke); and electric gauges (Gebrüder Bassler). It also said there were barracks, hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot.[32]
The USAF report also states that two of Dresden's traffic routes were of military importance: north-south from Germany to Czechoslovakia, and east-west along the central European uplands.[33] The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig.[33] Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians."[34]
An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack said:
Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance.... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.[35]
In the raid, major industrial areas in the suburbs, which stretched for miles, were not targeted.[6] According to Donald Miller "the economic disruption would have been far greater had Bomber Command targeted the suburban areas where most of Dresden's manufacturing might was concentrated".[36]
While many people died, there's little evidence to suggest that the majority of people were unconnected to the target, that there weren't any military targets there, and that that had no significant military importance. If the U.S. just wanted to kill people, they could have easily, easily targeted the main cities just to kill lots of people, such as munich, or even sectors in the cities where there were a lot more people and the economic impact could have been substantially more devastating. Instead they targeted, specifically, the factories, and while civilians might have been working in them, they were unfortunately supporting the war effort by the germans. The german Army at the time was being tricked by Hitler, that is 17 million or so of their soldiers, so that's a tragedy, as well. It's horrific, but at the time we had to defeat them in order to prevent them from taking over more places and doing more damage. If left to rebuild there likely would still be a nazi threat, today.
With the U.S.'s capabilities at the time, they could have easily specifically targeted civilians at the time, and killed way more people. Each city had distinct military targets, including soldiers and factories; sadly, in the case of hamburg, the city was unusually dry at the time, and went up in flames.
Since the U.S. wasn't just targeting economic targets, but military targets, the purpose wasn't to destroy Germany, but ultimately to liberate it. Eventually, you had to remove the guns and the soldiers to be able to do that; the attacks could have easily focused on more expensive areas or areas that had no military significance, but it was apparent they didn't do that.
While awful, it's one of the reasons I support more military spending. With more precise and accurate bombs, this type of thing can be avoided. It is inevitable that we must stop the nazis, and thus must stop their means of production for weapons in the first place; with modern conflicts, this is going to remain true regardless of the enemy. That means accuracy is paramount and key, which takes advanced technology.
Edited by Manoka, 28 December 2013 - 02:58 PM.
