Was the saturation bombing of German cities by Allied forces in 1940 during World War 2 justified?

Question

Im doing a history paper aguing for or against, any and all help is aprecciated (eg. a website, modern world correlation ect.)

Answer 1

you bet your life it was,i personally think that they didn't bomb them enough.

Answer 2

All is fair in Love and war.

Was it justified, yes. Were innocent people killed yes and no.
When ones work contributes to the war effort one can not be considered innocent.
The German people should have reflected upon this when they bombed Warsaw, Rotterdam, and countless other smaller cities. When they bombed coluums of refugeess to clear roads and channeling refugess into hampering allied troop movements.
During the American Civil war total war was debated and even practiced. Sherman burning his way to the coast destroyed a huge amount of civilian property. The crops, factories, farms, that feed the Army of the South were burned denying the confederacy the ability to supply its army and shortening the war. The great Buffalo hunts of the West were made to deny the Indians their food source.
Bombing Germany displaced people from there homes, made them refugees, the Germany government now had to feed and shelter them which used up more assets and reduced the amount of assets going directly to the war effort.
When reviewing the History of WW1 it was the rationing, and starvation of the German/Austrian-Hungraian population that brought the Central Powers to the Armistice and not victory on the battlefeild.
I live in Germany and you can safely say that the horrible bombing of German cities during WW2 took the fight out of the German population.
Was it horrific, yes. Did innocent people get killed, yes, Many German childern who new nothing about what was happening perished. But everyday until the very end the trains rolled out full of humanity that were headed towards the camps.

Answer 3

This all depends on your viewpoint. Several cities and towns all throughout Europe were bombed like this through the war. The main point of all these bombings was to crush the German army's will to fight by showing them that they had no chance to defeat a force like the Allies.

Now, you have to ask yourself, was it worth the price of civilian lives among the military dead of the German forces? Was it worth it to ruin so much art and architecture centuries old? There is no way a bomb was accurate enough to cause 0% casualties of civilians.

General Eisenhower knew that while it was fairly effective, it just couldn't keep going on. That is why he essentially backed Churchill into a corner to become Supreme Commander, so that his plan of invasion would become the way the war would be won or lost. As he said to Churchill: "Mr. Prime Minister, you were a soldier as well. You know as well as I that this war will be won not in the air, or on the sea, but by men, on the ground." This might not be the exact quote, but it is the gist of the actual quote.

So, I believe, yes, they were justified to a point, and they were stopped before it got any worse.

Answer 4

Nope. It was not. My family suffered horribly during the bombing. My grandmother lived in Dresden when it was bombed and suffered injuries then that she still has today. She can't walk right because muscles and tendons were cut in her legs. People tend to only look at the Allied side of the argument. People are people no matter if they are German or Jewish or American. Most of the cities bombed (although some had military purpose) had no military purpose and were only bombed to destroy the German civilian morale.

Answer 5

We (the allies) simply wanted Germany to remember for a hundred years the consequences of waging war against us (the allies). Most of the German cities bombed had no strategic influence, this strengthens this point. The bombing probably wasn't necessary to win the war, but what better way to stop the German peoples blinded views of Germanys position in the world, and romantic militarism.

Answer 6

It wasn't 1940 . It was 42 to 45.
It wasn't justifiable by normal standards of civilisation because of the suffering caused to innocent civilians but it was the only way the British and Americans could attack Germany until 1945. It involved the death of thousands of civilians and allied airmen. It can be argued that all that effort could have been better spent elsewhere.

Answer 7

Are you kidding me? They shoulda bombed the crap out of them, or Berlin should have stayed divided.