The Horrors of War

Like most modern wars, World War II was a total war, as described in Chapter 7. It aimed not only at the enemy's armies, but at the people of the enemy's country. So it's not surprising that millions of civilians were killed.

Hitler's armies and his later policies were certainly more cruel than those of the Allies. Hitler ordered the Holocaust. Toward the end of the war, he gave orders for all of Germany to be leveled rather than surrender. And he destroyed himself by his own suicide, and millions of soldiers and civilians by suicidal strategies like his attack on the Soviet Union. At the same time, German soldiers, following policies laid down by Hitler and Himmler, became known for their abusive treatment of prisoners and civilians.

Yet many of the policies of the Allies caused terrible damage--more, according to many historians, than was needed to win the war. The so-called "area bombing" campaign--which today would be called "saturation bombing" or "carpet bombing"--is an example. In 1940, the British set out to destroy German military targets--oil refineries, munitions plants, etc.--by bombing raids. They soon found that, if they flew by day, their bombers would be shot down. And if they flew by night, their bombers didn't have the equipment to bomb accurately. Rather than give up the bombing raids, Bomber Command changed its targets to German cities. This was supposed to break German morale and win the war.

In fact, "area bombing" probably did no such thing, any more than German bombing of British cities broke English morale.

Did the bombers win the war?...The answer...is no. The German armies were fatally defeated by the Russians in July 1943 and at that point the bomber onslaught had barely begun and had caused no decisive damage.

What the bombing did do was kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and destroy hundreds of German cities--many, like Dresden, of cultural but not military importance. The bombing campaign was controversial even during the war. Its critics ranged from pacifists to military thinkers like Liddell Hart. This doesn't, of course, prove that the Nazis were really "good" and the Allies really "bad"--or even that, morally, there was nothing to choose between them. But it shows that, in modern war, nobody's hands are clean. Often both sides choose tactics which are morally questionable and may even--as carpet bombing of cities does--violate international law. That is the nature of modern war.

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