Originally Posted by
Fortissimo
On the other hand, one of the Bomber Command veterans who had been a 21-yr old Lancaster captain is on record talking of his experience of having his home bombed while he was on ARP duty (too young to volunteer at 17). Word reached him as he started his 8 hour shift, which he completed. When he got home, "My house was just a pile of rubble. The kind lady who lived next door was plastered to the wall like some hideous gelatinous graffiti and my bruised, battered and shocked parents were in a shelter. … I salvaged a pair of Scout shorts and a school prize, and these became my sole possessions. At that moment I swore to become a bomber pilot and make the buggers pay." Which he did!..
An understandable reaction, if not a humane or logical one; the kindly neighbours and elderly parents who he in turn 'plastered to the wall' or incinerated in the streets were very unlikely to have had any part in determining Luftwaffe strategy or target selection. I was only pointing out that the opposite reaction was the more common one amongst people who actually experienced that sort of bombing.
Nobody can (or should try to) downplay the bravery and patriotism of the aircrew who volunteered to carry the fight to Germany and the risks that they took to do so. However, the mere demonstration of those qualities says nothing about the morality of the act; those taking the same risks for Hitler could be described in equal terms. It has accurately been said that the most immoral thing that the allies could have done was to have lost the war. There are no easy answers (which is why I don't offer any), but it is legitimate, even in hindsight, to ask whether there should be any moral constraints on how you fight a war in such circumstances and even to ask what personal responsibility was borne by the leaders.