Didn’t anybody learn anything from WWII?
attacks on civilians don’t demoralize them, they just make them angrier
Hitler thought he could break the British spirit by bombing their cities ... it just made them more determined
the Allies thought they could break the Germans will ... they bombed around the clock, the US in the daytime and the British at night ... they even had 1000-bomber raids, complete with incendiary firestorms ... the Germans just kept on fighting and going to work (industrial production even went UP as the war went on!)
and now Russia is repeating the same old mistakes ... go ahead and waste limited military resources on non-military targets that have no bearing on the outcome
You’ve got a point there.
He seems to think he’ll demoralize the Ukrainians.
As you say, he may be ensuring they get furious instead.
There’s one big difference between WWII and now. These people aren’t fighting Russia, we are. What happens when America invariably pulls the plug on Ukraine? America always abandons its proxy fighters, always.
“attacks on civilians don’t demoralize them, they just make them angrier”
The terror bombings have no aim to win the war. They are for Russian domestics consumption.
His people know that the Russian armies are in constant retreat and that their “invulnerable” bridge went down. Putin has to get some Russian success on the news.
Flinging a small number of missiles into random spots of Ukrainian cities is the only way that Putin can conjure up a win to keep his people from revolt.
Yeah, tell that to the firebombed civilians of Nuremberg, or Tokyo, or heck, Nagasaki....big ol' fire there.
Laying everything to waste eventually “works” if you have the resources to do it. But, that’s a big “if”.
In the case of WW2, Hitler diverted the Luftwaffe from taking out the RAF airbases (and keeping them out), to bombing Brit cities. He didn’t have the planes to do both, and in fact didn’t even have the ability to rubble all the Brit cities (partially because the RAF could now attrit German bombers effectively).
Eventually the Allied effort did wear down the Germans, but it was a long and ugly and massive process. Hitler, however, had set the bar for excess: My take is that for the most part, the Allies did what was necessary.
In THIS case, the Ukies have set no such bar. They (apparently) hit a bridge that is a clear and critical military logistics asset, and did it in a way and at a time of minimal civilian presence. Russia responded by showering Ukie cities wantonly at rush hour. They even managed to hit the (fortunately empty for them) German Consulate in Kyiv.
If that last was a one off, even the Germans might let it pass with only a squawk. But as it is, they immediately sent missile defense systems.
Russia has compounded its error because it is convincing Ukraine’s allies to send more military equipment. Given time, those resources can become effectively unlimited. (Another parallel with Britain and WW2.) As time went on, Germany had no such allies... Russia “could”, with China, but I see no sign China is willing to effectively arm up Russia.
Actually the bombing raids on Japan in WW2 broke their spirit and won the war in the Pacific - so there’s that.
“Germans just kept on fighting and going to work (industrial production even went UP as the war went on!)”
As the war went on there was more and more Jewish slave labor working for industries like IG Farben, producing war materiel. Makes me wonder whatever happened to all the thousands of Ukranian citizens the Russians shipped east from their “new” 4 territories in “former” Ukraine. Have they been deposited in cities and towns and told to get themselves jobs, or are they now in concentration camps and working for some Russian war industry as Ukranian slaves? Either way they would be working for the Russian enemy with who knows what degree of willingness and “freedom?” Time for an international inquest—UN or the International Court?