A Modest Proposal for The Empire

Bradford DeLong jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu
Wed Dec 26 07:47:05 PST 2001



>It was the U.S., however, and not Nazi Germany, which over Hamburg
>and Dresden... established the standard strategic principle of
>modern warfare: terror bombing of the enemy's civilian population....
>
>Pah! The hypocrisy of a Brad stinks to heaven.
>
>Carrol

You know, anyone who has given any thought *at* *all* to the moral dilemmas of World War II would be considerably more cautious about condemning the Allied World War II strategic bombing campaign.

Up until June 1944, every Nazi artillery piece inside the Reich pointing skyward to try to defend German cities against Allied terror-bombing was one artillery piece fewer on the Russian front. The abandonment of strategic bombing in 1942-1944 would have meant a lot more German civilians alive, a lot more Russian soldiers dead, and--possibly--a different outcome to the struggle on the Eastern Front: it was a very near-run thing. It's not clear to me that Galbraith was wrong in condemning the strategic bombing campaign as a waste that killed German civilians by the hundreds of thousands without harming Nazi war production. But it's not clear to me that Galbraith was right either: half of Nazi artillery pieces in the Reich pointing skyward does count for something.

Brad DeLong



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