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Please attend to your facts: -The fire bombing of Dresden was executed jointly by the United States and United Kingdom, with the UK flying more sorties. This o

Please attend to your facts: -The fire bombing of Dresden was executed jointly by the United States and United Kingdom, with the UK flying more sorties. This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK. -The United States of America did not fire bomb Kyoto. Nobody did.

DanBC 8y ago
> This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK. The wider point is interesting though. We started the war with the attitude that killing civilians would be a war crime, and then as the war went on that principle was eroded more and more until fire-bombing several civilian populations across Germany was allowed. There's a reason "Bombber Harris" was also known as Butcher Harris. Even Churchill disliked the area bombing tactics.
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  Indeed. Attitudes toward civilian casualties in warfare, at least in the West, are less tolerant today--- but the West hasn't been in an existentially-challenging shooting war since 1945.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    100K+ civillians were killed in Iraq2 and the press stayed mostly silent about it while the government tried to fudge the numbers and avoid accounting them altogether. Nobody cares if it's not the anointed ones dying.
  - skinnymuch 8y ago
    Aren’t there great number of civilian deaths in the Middle East like Iraq, Yemen? I wouldn’t be surprised that my ignorance is leaving out some wars in Africa this century that the west has some complicity to as well.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  It's probable that Harris would not have been given as much rope had the Luftwaffe not changed tactic. Switching away from mainly strategic and airfield targets to the blitz, and attacks such as Coventry. Had they kept plugging away at airfields, they even might have won the Battle of Britain.
vivekd 8y ago
US did not firebomb Kyoto specifically but they did firebomb many of Japan's wood and paper urban areas including Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Here is the video of McNamara, the man who helped plan the attacks, reflecting on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RceLAhPOS9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RceLAhPOS9Q

DanBC 8y ago

> This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK. The wider point is interesting though. We started the war with the attitude that killing civilians would be a war crime, and then as the war went on that principle was eroded more and more until fire-bombing several civilian populations across Germany was allowed. There's a reason "Bombber Harris" was also known as Butcher Harris. Even Churchill disliked the area bombing tactics.

i_am_proteus 8y ago
Indeed. Attitudes toward civilian casualties in warfare, at least in the West, are less tolerant today--- but the West hasn't been in an existentially-challenging shooting war since 1945.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  100K+ civillians were killed in Iraq2 and the press stayed mostly silent about it while the government tried to fudge the numbers and avoid accounting them altogether. Nobody cares if it's not the anointed ones dying.
- skinnymuch 8y ago
  Aren’t there great number of civilian deaths in the Middle East like Iraq, Yemen? I wouldn’t be surprised that my ignorance is leaving out some wars in Africa this century that the west has some complicity to as well.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
It's probable that Harris would not have been given as much rope had the Luftwaffe not changed tactic. Switching away from mainly strategic and airfield targets to the blitz, and attacks such as Coventry. Had they kept plugging away at airfields, they even might have won the Battle of Britain.

vivekd 8y ago

US did not firebomb Kyoto specifically but they did firebomb many of Japan's wood and paper urban areas including Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Here is the video of McNamara, the man who helped plan the attacks, reflecting on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RceLAhPOS9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RceLAhPOS9Q