During an interview long after the war’s end, “Bomber” Harris was asked whether the fire bombing of Dresden was moral. He responded, “Name me one act of war which is “moral”. Is sticking a bayonet in an another man’s belly moral?” He makes the point, as did Gen. Sherman, that war is an anomie, a vacuum in which normal ethical standards do not exist, and no act of war can be justified as moral unless it shortens the war.
But his example was wrong. In the bayonet situation it’s kill or be killed, you stick him or he sticks you. These women and children trying to keep their houses from burning down weren’t about to kill anybody. And ethics ALWAYS exist. That’s the point of ethics. And you ran right into the problem, there’s no evidence that it shortened the war, or more importantly that a less vicious civilian targeting version of the bombing would have prolonged it. There’s a reason Churchill changed their bombing tactics after Dresden. It was not a justifiable tactic, at least as he saw. I agree with him.