Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
You're refuting historical perspectives using modern sources, but it's difficult to comprehend the point of view of an earlier time. The official strategy of both sides in the European war was to stop the enemy's production by "unhousing" the factory workers. The fact that the workers themselves may have been incinerated in the process was viewed as a secondary concern. Public acceptance was gained by propaganda that dehumanized the foreigner.
A change in weapons wouldn't have necessarily changed the strategy; a more accurate weapon could still have been used to to bomb civilians more accurately.
If I`ve interpreted you correctly, I`m not very sure about your first point, there were debates in the British Parliament during the war itself on the whole topic of if it was morally tenable to bomb civilian areas, this is not a new area of debate which was only explored by modern novelists and anti-war activists. Some of those very much against the whole idea on a logical basis included Sir Henry Tizard, Churchills chief scientific advisor. (his main argument was more orientated towards the fact he believed such bombing didn't achieve the results that the resources put into it justified, in these discussions Tizard (with a level of irony off the charts) was opposed by Lindemann, who was a friend of Churchill - who was born in Baden-Baden, Germany- of all places...).
Some details of this are available to read about here:
When Does Personality Make a Difference? Lord Cherwell and the Area Bombing of Germany on JSTOR
"Frederick Lindemann", somewhat amusingly, was 'redesignated' as "Lord Cherwell" in 1941. Sucessfully obfuscating his birth history, (oops did I say that? )
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