Comment Re:Dresden, etc. (Score 3, Insightful) 556
Actually, the RAF had a very rough time of it in 1940 after Germany overran France. They were just barely able to defend their nation and came very close to capitulation. The RAF became stronger only after Hitler turned his attentions to Russia and when the US entered the war. The US was responsible for the destruction of the Luftwaffe and the British never would have made it without America's industrial ability.
The entire Allied strategy in Western Europe before the landings in Normandy was to destroy Germany's ability to make war. This included destroying any and all factories, oil fields, railroads, and military targets. In doing this, the Allies achieved another goal: complete air superiority over the occupied nations by reducing the Luftwaffe to a token force.
The Americans version of this strategy involved daylight precision bombing on actual military targets at hight cost through the use of the highly secret Norton bombsight. The American goal, at least was not to kill civilians but to destroy the German war machine. They did not have the same level of hatred for the Germans that the English did. Maybe if Germany had been able to bomb American cities, the US would have seen things differently then and now but the continental United States escaped all damage from both enemies in the war.
The British thought daylight bombings were too costly in lives and material and stuck to night bombings throughout the war. This and the fact that they did not have the Norton bombsight did not led itself to bombing accuracy since all of Europe was under a strict blackout policy. As a payback to Hitler's official policy of bombing civilian targets like the city of London, the British went out of their way to terror bombing German cities with high explosives and incendiary bombs. This is a terrible policy which did not work on the Germans, just as it did not on the British who re-employed it. The civilians of Germany did not give up just as those of Britain did not. The UK has escaped the criticism it deserves for what they condoned during the war and the US has gotten far more criticism it deserves for it's part in the bombing of the most evil nation in modern history.
As I mention above, by the time most of these bombing raids were occuring against Germany, the war was lost for them anyway, making the raids purely gratuitous.
The war may have been lost for them but that doesn't mean the leaders of Germany believed it. The Germans did not surrender until May 8th, 1945 and I think you'll find none of those raids took place after that date. The Germans should have surrendered much earlier but Adolf Hitler would not allow it. The only reason Nazi Germany gave up when it did was because Hitler had committed suicide some days earlier and was no longer there to keep up the fight against the Allies who had clearly won months before. Right up to his last day, he was throwing lives away and he was the one completely responsible for all of those deaths.
Even though Germany is a united country now, its borders were shrunk significantly by the Russians - where Poland is today used to be a major German state, and historically, Poland was farther to the east. The allies let all this happen, because they wanted to turn Germany into a minor agricultural state.
Much of Prussia was taken away from Germany after WWI, the result of European rivalries and hatred, not because America had anything to do with it (remember, the US did not want anything to do with the Treaty of Versailles). That more of it was taken after WWII is regretable but that was a result of Russia being unreasonable and wanting more of a buffer between themselves and Western Europe.
Germany is where it is today because of America. They would be that minor agricultural state you mentioned if America had not helped it become a world power again.
The attack on Dresden has been justified by others and I won't defend it myself though I will say the 6 million+ people murdered by the Nazi regime and those who lived in occupied Europe at the time would most likely have had very little problem it.
