[kiryandil]

I have no patience with those of your ilk who want to second guess what a generation of war time leaders and soldiers did to rid the world of an evil unlike anything humanity ever faced.

They got rid of that murderous sneak-genocidal sociopath Uncle Joe Stalin during WWII? I had no idea...

[jmacusa]

Cheeky. I should have clarified and said “Western war leaders’’.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Bringing up Joe Stalin brings up an important consideration for not reducing Germany to a depopulated wilderness: at least Western Germany was still needed to build up into a bulwark against the rapid advance of the Soviets through Central Europe. Historian Ronald Schaffer observes that American military critics of the Anglo-American terror bombing of Cenral European and Balkan cities objected on 'practical and military grounds: it diverted resources from more crucial military objectives; it helped the Russians at America's expense'.

There was open military and political opposition to strictly terror-bombing (killing civilians and devastating civilian areas indiscriminately). There were also objections from Christians and (like the Bishop of Chichester) and ordinary British people who could not and would not stomach it morally. Britain's Jennifer Coope has done some good writing on this, as yet unpublished on the Internet as far as I know.

Coope also alludes to the way the Americans had to play Nazi and Soviet power off against each other.

They were similar: the Nazis called themselves National Socialists but were actually internationalists; the Soviets called themselves International Socialists but were actually nationalists. They were impatient, if not contemptuous, of morality. They openly admired each other's terror tactics.

Too many here do, too.