In his book “Among the Dead Cities”, A.C. Grayling looks at the Allied policy of aerial bombardment of Axis population centers, including the aims of the policy, how it was carried out, and its results. He concludes that it wasn’t justified even in the conventional-weapons era; it was not militarily effective, particularly compared to other possible policies/targets, and it was a violation of even the bare minimum standards that the Allies later considered sufficiently self-evident to use as the basis for war crimes trials. The justification you mention (“to destroy the ability of the enemy states to continue to make war… because the factories have been destroyed or because there are no longer people to work in the factories”) is something of a post-hoc search for a rationalization. If the Allies had wanted to attack factories, they could have concentrated on attacking factories. Instead they attacked population centers in order to kill and terrorize the people living there. This did not have the hoped-for negative effect on war-fighting morale (for the same reason 9/11 didn’t discourage the U.S. from meddling in the Middle East), and can probably better be explained as a policy motivated by malice and vengeance than by coldly thought-through strategic planning. https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=18May11
I didn’t want to go into arguments about whether WWII strategic bombing was effective because it’s a point historians have argued amount a fair bit and I wanted to focus on the nuclear targeting question. I do think it’s an interesting / important question. I believe the original justification, at least for Britain and the United States, was to destroy the industrial capacity of the nation. The Norden bombsight was hoped to enable more targeting bombing. Then air defenses proved too powerful for day bombing, so the British and American air forces switched to night bombing, in which accurate bombing was impossible. My recollection was that the justification at the time was still partially (especially for the Americans?) was still the “destroy industrial capacity” even though this was clearly more of a terror / demoralizing strategy in practice.
I think separately from the justification is the question is of whether it actually succeeded in helping to win the war, either by
A) Eroding the capacity to make war, especially industrial capacity
B) Eroding morale / inducing surrender
It would not surprise me if the claims of those championing strategic bombing were false or overstated. It may be that, especially in Germany, strategic bombing mostly killed civilian and accomplished no military objective. It seems far less clear in Japan, especially given Japan did surrender after most of their major cities were destroyed. I would be surprised if the bombing of Japan, both conventional and nuclear, had no impact on their decision to surrender. (I am not making any normative claim about whether any power should have engaged in aerial bombardment, conventional or nuclear).
Being known to be vengeful may be the correct game-theoretic response in the absence of formal precommitment strategies.
I don’t claim that Allied strategists were acting on game-theoretic considerations but that acting on a desire for vengeance means that one implements the response which one would have committed to if formal precommitment had been an option.
In his book “Among the Dead Cities”, A.C. Grayling looks at the Allied policy of aerial bombardment of Axis population centers, including the aims of the policy, how it was carried out, and its results. He concludes that it wasn’t justified even in the conventional-weapons era; it was not militarily effective, particularly compared to other possible policies/targets, and it was a violation of even the bare minimum standards that the Allies later considered sufficiently self-evident to use as the basis for war crimes trials. The justification you mention (“to destroy the ability of the enemy states to continue to make war… because the factories have been destroyed or because there are no longer people to work in the factories”) is something of a post-hoc search for a rationalization. If the Allies had wanted to attack factories, they could have concentrated on attacking factories. Instead they attacked population centers in order to kill and terrorize the people living there. This did not have the hoped-for negative effect on war-fighting morale (for the same reason 9/11 didn’t discourage the U.S. from meddling in the Middle East), and can probably better be explained as a policy motivated by malice and vengeance than by coldly thought-through strategic planning. https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=18May11
I didn’t want to go into arguments about whether WWII strategic bombing was effective because it’s a point historians have argued amount a fair bit and I wanted to focus on the nuclear targeting question. I do think it’s an interesting / important question. I believe the original justification, at least for Britain and the United States, was to destroy the industrial capacity of the nation. The Norden bombsight was hoped to enable more targeting bombing. Then air defenses proved too powerful for day bombing, so the British and American air forces switched to night bombing, in which accurate bombing was impossible. My recollection was that the justification at the time was still partially (especially for the Americans?) was still the “destroy industrial capacity” even though this was clearly more of a terror / demoralizing strategy in practice.
I think separately from the justification is the question is of whether it actually succeeded in helping to win the war, either by
A) Eroding the capacity to make war, especially industrial capacity
B) Eroding morale / inducing surrender
It would not surprise me if the claims of those championing strategic bombing were false or overstated. It may be that, especially in Germany, strategic bombing mostly killed civilian and accomplished no military objective. It seems far less clear in Japan, especially given Japan did surrender after most of their major cities were destroyed. I would be surprised if the bombing of Japan, both conventional and nuclear, had no impact on their decision to surrender. (I am not making any normative claim about whether any power should have engaged in aerial bombardment, conventional or nuclear).
Being known to be vengeful may be the correct game-theoretic response in the absence of formal precommitment strategies.
I don’t claim that Allied strategists were acting on game-theoretic considerations but that acting on a desire for vengeance means that one implements the response which one would have committed to if formal precommitment had been an option.