Especially the German air force in 1940.
These would be the same Luftwaffe pilots that not once shot down a British parachute during the BoB, despite the fact that it was not a war crime to do so and despite the fact that it would have benefitted the Luftwaffe's campaign. The only case of shooting down of parachutes was of RAF/Polish squadrons of Luftwaffe pilots over British soil, which most definetly is a war crime.
Oh Edgar, most of the 'atrocity' propaganda is just that, propaganda. Perhaps you've just not developed the critical attitudes needed to detect baloney or like many folks prefer to keep these preconceptions as part of your identity. Creation or mongering of atrocities is perhaps the only way a population can be brought to war. Your own country is a highly accomplished, brilliantly subtle and very shameless practitioner of this art. That's why one of your primeminsters left in disgrace and was known as Tony Bliar. The fabrication that Germans (in WW1) were rendering the dead into soap being one of the first such lies.
Focusing propaganda on the non event of Stuka's dive bombing and straffing civilians detracts from the reality that the kind of campaign the German General Staff was waging was outstandingly successfull and quite frightening. That was the purpose of this 'lie'. Propaganda, public relations is the most important aspect of a war; more important than aircraft. The US found this out in Vietnam and as a result its military analysts dusted of books by von Clausitwitz whose country Prussia had suffered under Napoleon noting that a population had to be prepared mentally and attitudinally for a war.
I recall browsing Anthony Bevoirs "history" of the Spanish Civil war. There he thoughlessly regurgitates the allegation that Luftwaffe pilots straffed school girls (nothing less than school girls with their pig tail hair will do). Despite lots of endnotes and footnotes everywhere else Bevoir doesn't footnot or reference this at all, he just slips it in thinking no one will notice. He is one of those thematic Historians in which and affected style of haughtly sarcasim and dripping opprobrium is more important than integrity and research. In his case mostly from other peoples books. A Wikipedia article is far more trustworthy.
No doubt these straffing incidents did happen on both sides but they were relatively rare and when they are traced back there is little evidence for them.
Incidently it was folks that practiced area bombardment and dehousing, not STUKA pilots that killed civilians just like it was not snippers (the most hated of soldiers) that killed civilians.
