Undestand where Britain was at the time of the Hamburg raids and you will undrstand that targetting the will of the German people by killing thousands of civilians and questioning their superiority complex was not only right but was completely necessary. Knowing they were not safe and allies had the ability to delete entire German cities was a key to winning the war. The only limitation back then of course was the effectiveness and accuracy of a strategic bombing campaign.
He can apologise all he wants. It's all about winning, which we did. And stopped millions more being liquidated and being sent up a chimney. I've never quite understood why Dresden has been viewed as a special case, we did far worse to other German cities and populaces. Let's also not forget the Russians had 2 major population centres flattened by German air power, but lacked the ability to retaliate using strategic bombing, not having a significant bomber force. Stalin was pretty fed up at the relative sacrifice of Russian vs allied forces and wanted to see the fight get taken to the Germans. We turned wurzburg to dust, despite it being a pretty city with far less in the way of military industry other then the uni that developed the German equivalent to RADAR
By flattening Dresden, we placated Stalin meaning we didn't have defend the political situation by engaging in a ground war with huge potential losses for our land based forces
Last edited by VinRouge; 14th Feb 2015 at 15:54.