Area Bombing

But at that point it was unable to carry out an area-bombing offensive as well. ❋ Unknown (2006)

Area bombing in Europe was overwhelmingly an RAF endeavor (in Europe, unlike in Japan, the United States concentrated on the “precision bombing” of economic targets, though Americans did conduct area bombing, including the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden the mornings after the British had created the notorious firestorms), but Britain lacked the ability to launch an intense area-bombing campaign when it was fighting alone and facing annihilation — that is, when the most desperate and ruthless measures were most justifiable. ❋ Unknown (2006)

Andrew Hamilton: I’m tempted to point out (assuming that the choice is between methods of conducting warfare that if the alternative to “targeted killings” is “untargeted killings,” then a lot more people will die (as in the area-bombing campaigns of WWII, incl. ❋ Unknown (2009)

I’m tempted to point out (assuming that the choice is between methods of conducting warfare that if the alternative to “targeted killings” is “untargeted killings,” then a lot more people will die (as in the area-bombing campaigns of WWII, incl. ❋ Unknown (2009)

And what’s new in it — a rigid philosophical and legalistic approach to the complexities of history and, most egregious, a fanciful, irresponsible, and fallacious effort to link the area-bombing campaign to the notional, so-called Morgenthau Plan for postwar Germany — isn’t good. ❋ Unknown (2006)

He fully acknowledges that the Allies’ war crimes — by modern standards, the area-bombing attacks were almost certainly war crimes — pale in comparison to the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi regime (though his response to those who would defend area bombing by invoking Nazi crimes is, essentially, that two wrongs don’t make a right). ❋ Unknown (2006)

He does so here by examining perhaps the most fraught and controversial episode in his country’s modern history: the Allies’ so-called area-bombing campaign — the indiscriminate assaults on enemy cities — during the Second World War. ❋ Unknown (2006)

Further undermining Mr. Jaruk’s “simple necessity” argument is the fact that at this point, when the RAF began its intense area-bombing efforts, the U.S. ❋ Unknown (2006)

This meant that during the strategic bombing offensive that began in September 1944 (from late winter 1944 until the fall, Allied bombing efforts concentrated almost exclusively on tactical support of the Normandy invasion), the skies above the Reich were essentially free of the German fighter menace that Mr. Jaruk maintains impelled Bomber Command’s area-bombing strategy in the first place. ❋ Unknown (2006)