The Bomber War: Civilians in the Crosshairs

By 1945, the concept of civilians being safe from war was dead. Strategic bombing had turned cities into battlegrounds. The British bombed Germany at night. The Americans bombed during the day. The goal was to destroy German industry and break civilian morale. Hamburg, in 1943, became a firestorm. The bombing created a tornado of fire that sucked the oxygen out of the air. People died in their shelters, not from explosions, but from suffocation. Forty thousand people died in a single night. Dresden, near the end of the war, became the symbol of the controversy. The city had little military value. But the bombs fell anyway. The firestorm destroyed the medieval center and killed around 25,000 people. The Allies believed bombing would shorten the war and save lives. But looking back, it's hard to justify. The German bombing of London and Coventry, the Japanese bombing of Chinese cities. Everyone did it. The bomber war showed us something terrible about modern warfare. When you can kill from the sky, no one is safe anymore.