(Jul 14, 2026 12:35 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: Quote:That's 30-40 times what Japan suffered.
Not by Japan. Again, how many American civilians were killed by the Japanese? You're trying to justify the deliberate warcrime of targeting Japanese civilians by the American military remember. "Because Hitler did it first?" lol
A rough estimate is fine.
I never disputed your figures for American civilian deaths. Why would someone have to suffer themselves before they could justify taking action on another's behalf? Is it moral to just say, "hey, you do whatever atrocities you want in your own backyard"? That's what led Europe to essentially allow Hitler to gain his initial expansion into Austria.
You keep using the term "war crime" as an anachronism, which did not apply the same at the time. It was under the conditions of "total war" and in the spirit of a valid attack on duel-use targets. It would have failed our modern standard of proportionality, but that was not the standard of the time. Japanese civilians were not the primary target. Shipyards and armaments factories were the primary targets. There was never any whataboutism justification relative to anything Hitler did. Why would there be, against Japan? That wouldn't make any sense at all.
The United States, along with its British allies, killed hundreds of thousands of German civilians during World War II, primarily through the joint strategic bombing campaign.
The vast majority of these deaths occurred during large-scale air raids on heavily populated urban and industrial centers, such as the bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin. While U.S. Army Air Forces officially targeted military and industrial infrastructure, they often used area bombing tactics that caused massive civilian casualties and citywide destruction. Estimates vary, but Allied bombing campaigns are widely credited with causing between 300,000 and 600,000 German civilian deaths.
- gemini
So even with conventional bombs, the Allied forces also killed many German civilians... and with the same dual-use justification under the circumstances of "total war," where the Axis powers were intentionally targeting civilians for maximal carnage, not dual(military/civilian)-use targets.
Germany and Japan did not only attack dual-use targets. Both Axis powers explicitly sought to maximize civilian casualties and leverage mass terror as a core component of their military strategies.
While they frequently hit infrastructure like ports, factories, and railways, their doctrine prioritized crushing the enemy’s will to fight by deliberately slaughtering noncombatants.
- gemini
Jul 14, 2026 12:31 AM
(This post was last modified: Jul 14, 2026 12:32 AM by Syne.)
