this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Tsar Bomb: you guys have precision?
Thoughts on Dresden?
What happens when American and British Bomber Command agree on a target.
The Soviets wanted a core logistics hub to the Eastern Front taken down. The Americans wanted to damage Nazi war industry. The Brits wanted to hammer in the message that nowhere in Germany was safe.
All three got their wish.
Also to force the surviving population to flee, clogging up vital transport routes and using scant resources.
Explanation: Bombing in WW2 was... anything except precise. "Right city" was often considered "good enough for government work" - which is part of the reason strategic bombing campaigns were so thorough.
The other reason being terror bombing, which was subsequently discredited by postwar analysis as an ineffective policy, despite several post-WW2 attempts to revive it.
honestly, size of european countries is very small. we got states with larger area (and population) in india. Although more likely reason for this is probably "opposition" cities near swiss borders, which lie like within 10 km radius were likely bombed instead of like interiors.
Didn’t they also specifically target population centers, after having suffered the Blitz?
Yep. It was a point of contention between American Bomber Command and British Bomber Command in Europe. The Americans doubted the viability of terror bombing as a contribution to the war effort.
'Funny' enough, we (Americans) engaged in a campaign of terror bombing in Japan. You could argue that the brass was different in each theatre and thus came to different conclusions, but it's hard not to read animosity over being attacked - or racism - into the difference.
Okay, this is my "conventional wisdom" understanding, which I expect and welcome corrections to --
Some of this is hindsight, we know there was a much higher level of "fight to the death" in WW2 Japan than there was in Germany at the same time. US military knew it based on their hand to hand experiences in the Pacific. Japanese POWs were fewer, I'm sure the "captured guy hiding a grenade" stories moved quickly (though I'm not sure how common that actually was). We found out later about the kamikaze pilots. That may have played a role in the "we have to bomb the population." Of course, racism also had something to do with it, both in US and Japanese actions throughout the war.
e: None of the above is meant to justify bombing civilians.
There was also an element of frustration involved - initial efforts at traditional strategic bombing had resulted in few noticeable effects because the Japanese war machine was more dependent on labor than on machinery, and could easily be reconstituted at new locations. And Japanese cities were immensely flammable - it didn't take long for a new, uglier conclusion to be reached.
Postwar analysis of the terror bombings of Japan were not dissimilar to the conclusions reached by the analysis in Europe, though - in both cases, it was a waste of resources that murdered civilians for no substantial gain.
Israel: bomb all the orphanages!
