Tim Douglass wrote in message . ..
On 12 Feb 2004 03:29:23 GMT, (David Hall) wrote:

Dresden, I dunno. I'm not as familiar with the rationale there, but it
almost
certainly was felt to be necessary at the time.

Dresden was an acknowledged terror attack, carried out with the same
rationale and justification as the attacks on the WTC. In retrospect
all the terror tactics of WWI and WWII backfired. Perhaps that is
something that today's crop of terrorists need to realize - that
terror tactics have historically done more damage to the perpetrators
than to the victims. The German air attacks on London, intended to
instill terror in the people and bring about capitulation, instead
hardened the resolve of a nation that was on the brink of seeking a
compromise. In many ways you can say that Germany's defeat in WWII was
a direct result of their terror attacks. Terrorism as a means of
breaking the will of a group of people has failed virtually every time
it has been used.

Tim Douglass

Seemed to work on Japan.

I suppose that's true in a way, but I see a terror attack as an
attempt to cow the people through attacks that are focused entirely on
civilians to create an atmosphere of fear and doubt. The atomic bomb
attacks were not really intended to undermine the morale of the
civilian population but to demonstrate to the Japanese military that
we had the means to totally destroy them. It may not be a real
distinction, but it is sort of a contrast between attacking from
weakness and attacking from strength. Terrorism is normally used when
you are attacking from a weak position.

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com

First let me say that I basically agree with Truman's decision to drop
the bombs on Japan. That said, those bombs and especially such bombing
campaigns as Dresden and the firebombing of numerous Japanese cities
were specifically designed to terrorize the civilian populations into
no longer supporting their governments and war efforts. They were a
larger scale and more intense version of Sherman's march to the sea.
They clearly were not destruction of war production nor even partially
attempts to destroy armed forces - they were terror campaigns. What
should not be lost in the analysis was that no matter how horrible the
non-nuclear attacks were (and they were exteremely horrible) they had
little impact on shortening the war in either Europe or Japan. The
germans were simply not going to capitulate until the armies battled
it out and forced the death of Hitler. No amount of mass destruction
of their cities or deaths of civilians seemed to matter. I don't know,
but I do not doubt that Dresdan and other massive destruction of
non-military or industrial sites had little impact on the time it took
to get Germany to surrender or in the total number of allied
casualties. In Japan it seems quite clear that even though we were
firebombing cities right and left that Japan was prepared to fight to
the bitter end. The massive destruction of their civilian
infrastructure and civilian deaths did not seem to be ending the war.
The atomic bombings, however, were so horrible because it was so quick
and total that the strategy finally did actually accomplish its
intended goal.