Milo Mindbender,
Not sure what your point is but I do basically agree with most of your salient facts. Though is has to be pointed out that it is partly disingenuous to describe the civilian population of a city as "the workforce" and therefore legitimate targets. Those 'civilians' certainly included the workforce, but they also consisted of millions upon millions of children, old age pensioners, the sick, the ill and the infirm and those many folk engaged on non warlike activities. The German economy was extremely late and lax in its mobilisation to a total war economy and was still turning out consumer goods in 1944.
Your industrial area point is also valid but I would suggest more so in that very emotional city that we all like to use as a justifier, Coventry. (my home town)
Coventry was unique as an industrial city in that its progression from silk weaving, through watch manufacture to cycle manufacture, motor cycle manufacture and on to automotive, aircraft and general metal bashing produced an entirely unique industrial environmant. As so much of the very early manufacturing in Coventry was in skilled workers houses and extended watch makers premises, the development of later manufacturing led to the actual Medieval heart of Coventry being extremely industrialised.
Thus, when it was raided in November 1940 the Luftwafe WAS aiming for individual industrial targets and used its elite target marking and pathfinder force to lead the raid.
The Coventry blitz was no indiscriminate raid, it was a precision raid, or as near as you could get to precision with 1940 technology.
Undoubtedly there were similar towns and cities in Germany but there were also huge totally industrial area: Essen, Krupps, Wuppertal to name just a few.
But where you really lose it is in the use of the ridiculous phrase
"Muddled thinking by bleeding heart modern liberals"
WHAT does that mean?
There was wide spread opposition to the mass bombing as early as 1943. It was raised in the House of Commons and it was raised in the House of Lords. It was raised by the Church of England and it was raised by certain Bomber Command crews.
You can be proud of what those young crews went through, you can be proud of their sacrifice and their heroic and stoic endurance. I find it inconceivable that anyone can be proud of what they actually did.
IT WAS the way to hit back in the early 1940's and there was a place for it in the Allies strategy.
By late 1944 it was ineffective, not needed, counter productive and plain WRONG.
Two wrongs do not a right make.