"If I didn't know any better,you're argument runs something like this:
1. Germany and Japan were the epitome of evil (you'll get no argument this from me)
2. It was our responsibility to win, so that evil would not prosper
3. We won,even if the means by which we did so were not always exactly kosher
4. In the light of victory, therefore, the methods used do not really matter."
Nope, not even close.
"it did not require the mass slaughter of unarmed civilians behind the lines to achieve victory"
Wrongola. The alternative was hundreds of thousands of unnecessary casualties on our side, and possibly even allowing victory to escape our grasp.
Before you start arguing that those men should have been sent to their deaths, shoulder a musket and fall in with them.
"Before you start arguing that those men should have been sent to their deaths, shoulder a musket and fall in with them."
I have. In fact, I'm the fourth generation of Wombat's to have worn my country's uniform. In fact, I'm certain that the explosives I hung on the wings of A-6's, A-7's and F-14's were used to kill people, some of them (by no means all) innocent and unconnected in any way to the armed forces of their country, and many uninvolved in direct combat.
In that regard, I not only have the right, but the responsibility, to question how and by what means my country achievs military victory. Even moreso, because I have the blood of other people on my hands, regardless of whether I actually dropped a bomb or pulled a trigger. I'm just as responsible for their deaths as the pilots I armed.
The sanctity of civilians in war has been the subject of international accords, Geneva conventions, political and religious treatises, for near on 2,000 years. That such accords or premises are routinely violated (and grossly violated in the Second World War) has nothing to do with "hundreds of thousands of casualties" on our side; the defense of Japan was ultimately a naval problem and with the Japanese fleet on the bottom, Japan was a sitting duck; all that was required was time to allow nature take it's course. The defense of Germany was one of avoiding a war on multiple fronts which could not be won; Hitler took care of that all on his own. Hitler lost the war (realistically) at Dunkirk, not Stalingrad.
The Allies were unwilling to invest the time, especially with the Soviet Union bearing the brunt of the war and bleeding Germany white, and English and American public opinion clamoring for an immediate end to hostilities as quickly as possible. Even if that meant bombing women and children.
Strategic bombing was a mistake that, in retrospect, has been justified as having saved lives, worn down the Luftwaffe, or slowed down our enemy's ability to wage war. It did nothing of the sort. "We saved lives with strategic bombing" is a post-war justification for doing the unthinkable, and doing it with a weapon that promised much and delivered little. In fact, the most effective use of strategic bombers in the war was the Transportation Plan that effectively isolated Normandy from the rest of France. That involved bombing trains, rails, bridges, road nets and canals. Not factories full of civilians, nor apartment blocks full of the same.
One only has to look at the increased war production figures for Germany from 1942-45 to see how wrong the theories of strategic bombing were. Germany wa sproducing more weapons than ever before in those years, what it was missing was the trained men to utilize them. One only has to look at the corresponding declining numbers for Japan, as it's merchant fleet was sent to the bottom and it's reserves of raw materials, trained pilots and sailors also were attritted, to see the same thing.