Dresden photos

I would like to re-answer that question. Atomic bombing of two cities in rapid succession, followed up with a conventional basting, in the PTO is credited with shortening that war and saving lives. How much it shortened and how many lives were saved is speculative. In July 1943, the ETO still had about 22 months of killing to go. The Allies knew the war was far from over. The RAF made a slow steadily escalating attack on German industry and morale. Rather than delivering a 'one-two' knockout punch. Not that they didn't try to. They simply lacked the force to do so. The fact is that WSC never gave them the air fleet that they required and put them under Ike when Normandy got under way. He didn't use them as war winners.

'Hamburg put the fear of God into me. If the air raids continue on the present scale, within 3 months we shall be relieved of a number of questions we are at present discussing. We shall simply be coasting downhill, smoothly and relatively swiftly.' Albert Speer 29 July 1943.

After Hamburg, Milch said, 'Gentlemen, we are no longer on the offensive. It's much blacker than Speer paints it. If we get just five or six more attacks like those on Hamburg, the German people will just lay down their tools, however great their willpower. There can be no more talk of night-fighters in the East or putting an umbrella over our troops in Sicily or anything like that. The soldier on the battlefield will just have to dig a hole, crawl into it and wait until the attack is over. What the homefront is suffering now cannot be sufferred much longer.'

'On three nights in late July and early August 1943 it struck Hamburg in perhaps the most devastating single city attack of the war

: I would like to re-answer that question.

That would presume you've answered it the first time.

To refresh your memory, you stated that any whole-killing of civilians by the bomber command in Europe was justified due to the Holocaust.

Now, there is no evidence that the Allies knew of the Holocaust prior to adopting the policy of mass-bombing of civilian areas.

Therefore, the Holocaust is neither a reason, nor a justification for the decision to employ that method of warfare.

'Or do you contend the allies KNEW of the holocaust prior to, say, the fire-bombing of Hamburg?'

: Atomic bombing of two cities in rapid succession,

also has nothing to do with the question above.

Maybe not, but there were a whole load of other reasons. Germany started bombing civillians in WWI, in the Spanish Civil War and many cities at the beginning of WWII. Later, Germany carried out attacks on civillians with the V1 and V2 rockets.

The horror of Allied bombing is only put into perspective because they were able to perform it on a much bigger scale than Germany. If you start something, you can't complain when the situation is reversed.