On 13 Feb 2004 06:39:40 -0800, (David Hall)
wrote:

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.

Well stated. My original point was exactly as you state - that
(setting aside the atomic bombs) no terror campaign had any impact on
shortening the war. I think that is generally true in regard to
terrorism as a military tactic, it has an almost 100% failure rate.

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com