ww2 Canadian Bomber Command involvement?

Question

Was the canadian involvement in Bomber Command morally responsible for the deaths of innocent civillians or was it responsible for civillian genocide(holloucast)?
Your opinnion will be regarded. Thanks

Answer 1

~Holocaust is such an overused word. It is never used in the right places. Talk of the Nazi Jewish holocaust has caused the world to forget about the 7 to 10 million non-Jews who died in the camps, for instance. Or the millions that died in the death camps or in ditches and the woods. The word clearly doesn't fit in the context of this question.

As for genocide, unless the Canadian Bomber Command had bombs that could sniff out and kill only those of a specific national, racial, political, cultural or ethnic group, while sparing anyone around them, I guess that doesn't fit either. Is there some reason you have chosen to load your question with such inflammatory language?

Now, did CBC kill thousands of innocent women, children and non-combatant civilians? Of course. That is the nature of war, especially with the low tech munitions of the 40's in night raids. Even when the target was hit, the workers in those factories were not soldiers - and many of them were slave laborers from the camps. Fact of life: there will be war. Fact of war: there will be collateral damage (civilian casualties). Where does morality come into play in war. Once you accept the concept of war as moral and just, the winner will draw the lines from there. For instance, the firebombing of Dresden is not called a war crime. The RAF led that charge, with full cooperation and participation from CBC and the US.

At least the RAF and CBC weren't involved in the Tokyo firebombings. Curtis Le May himself said he would probably have been tried for war crimes over that one if the Allies had lost the war. Dresden was no different. At least Nagasaki and Hiroshima fall into a more gray area, but in-discriminant killing of civilians is generally thought of as a bad thing in civilized society.

Answer 2

Under the laws of war, a war crime involves undue suffering of civilians, with no coresponding military value. Since area bombing in WW2 did slow the German economy (even though June 1944 was a high water mark for German armaments production), it could be argued that the bombing was justified. Morally, it's hard to decide. It's obvious that area bombing targets innocent people, but innocent people have been victims since warfare began. Maybe the best answer is that war is immoral.