EV, thank you for your kind words. PPRuNe is a wonderful means for we aviators to exchange views. Those views will often be different but it is in those exchanges that we can all learn something new. I know I do.
Churchill spoke of truth of course, "
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies". I don't know if Harris truly wanted his superiors to state that UK policy was to kill civilians or if he was merely taunting them to come off the fence. Harris's policy was to kill civilians, destroy their homes, and flatten their cities in order to disrupt Germany's War Economy. No doubt it would have been disrupted far more if ball bearing factories, oil refineries, critical railway infrastructure, etc, had been attacked until destroyed but unless they were conveniently in the middle of a city the chances are that by night the surrounding countryside would have taken most of the pounding, as well as the bomber stream itself. These targets were heavily protected and the resulting loss rate would have become unsustainable given the need for repetitive attacks. So why did Harris go on trying to destroy Berlin instead of spreading the effort around other cities more? I don't know, but suspect he became a victim of his own rhetoric.
It wasn't just Luftwaffe artillery that was denied to the Eastern Front, but day and night fighters, and millions of men. Wiki quotes Speer of production of 35% fewer tanks, 31% fewer aircraft, and 42% fewer lorries than planned. These are massive deficiencies to the front line. Production may have risen, but clearly not by enough due to the bombing. Could it have been done better? Of course! But war is the art of the possible. In the early forties that meant finding and attacking cities by night aided more and more by improving technology, and by developing long range fighter escorts for day the bombers. The latter meant air superiority by day was lost by the Luftwaffe in 1944. The two campaigns, day and night, were complementary but different which led to the often different targets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Reich
I think that the modern revulsion of a civilian population being targeted is just that, given the accuracy and reliability of smart munitions. My mother, wary of remaining in Clacton given the enemy habit of jettisoning their bombs there before coasting out, moved herself and her extremely young son to Bournemouth instead. The enemy duly followed her for its tip and run raids along the south coast! Survival was a matter of luck rather than national policy. We were lucky, others weren't. The old certainties of deaths being restricted to the battlefield began to be tested in WWI, seen to be obsolete in WWII, and would have been entirely overturned if the Cold War had become WWIII. We should all count our blessings and work hard to avoid war by acquiring those big sticks. It is they that will protect us from war and not words, whether soft or strident.