Originally posted by: Feldenak
Originally posted by: jhayx7
Originally posted by: adairusmc
Sounds like victory to me.
Put your family in the same situation and see if you say the same thing. Killing your enemy is one thing, inflicting this much death and suffering on innocent people is another.
It's the concept of total war...remove the enemy's will and ability to fight. Civilian industries, workers, etc... they all have to go.
Hiroshima was nothing compared to what the Allies did with some of their firebombing campaigns.
Since this is an internet arguement, I'll use wikipedia as a souce since it's convenient:
The campaign against Dresden:
A Dresden police report written shortly after the attacks stated that the old town and the inner eastern suburbs had been engulfed in a single fire which had destroyed almost 12,000 dwellings including residential barracks. The report also said that the raid had destroyed "24 banks; 26 insurance buildings; 31 stores and retail houses; 647 shops; 64 warehouses; 2 market halls; 31 large hotels; 26 public houses; 63 administrative buildings; 3 theatres; 18 cinemas; 11 churches; 6 chapels; 5 cultural-historical buildings; 19 hospitals including auxiliary, overflow hospitals, and private clinics; 39 schools; 5 consulates; 1 zoological garden; 1 waterworks, 1 railway facility; 19 postal facilities; 4 tram facilities; 19 ships and barges. The report also mentioned that the Wehrmacht's main command post in the Tauschenberg Palace, 19 military hospitals and a number of less significant military facilities were destroyed. Almost 200 factories were damaged, 136 seriously (including several of the Zeiss Ikon optical/precision engineering works), 28 with medium to serious damage, and 35 with light damage.