Moral Questions
You guys burnt the
place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in
the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
combined.”—Kurt Vonnegut. Jr.
The nightly fire raids on Hamburg,
Dresden and Tokyo
were effective in achieving victory at war, but were they morally justified? In the years since the war, the answer to
this question has been a resounding ‘No.’ Indeed, the incendiary bombing
campaigns on the cities of Hamburg,
Dresden, and Tokyo
disregarded the most basic standards of morality with their indiscriminate
killing of innocent men, women and children.
Prior to the war, the American
State Department even declared that “civilian bombings are in violation of the most elementary principles of those standards
of human conduct which have been developed as an essential part of modern
civilization." (Knell 1) After the war,
British Prime Minister expressed some feelings of regret remarking “It seems to
me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply
for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be
reviewed… The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of
Allied bombing.” (Siebert 3) Yet any
British or American remorse for these raids (which has been limited among the
British and almost absent from the Americans) is always attached to a
disclaimer that war is regrettably, yet inevitably brutal, and what was done
was necessary for the victory of the Allies.
But
is this a valid claim? Is it impractical to require governments to act morally
when fighting wars? Again the answer is
and must always be no. To understand why
such barbaric targeting of civilians is never justified under any
circumstances, it is necessary to understand what exactly a fire raid entails. 
Consider the use of precision saturation (incendiary)
bombing in Dresden. At 10:09 AM, the first bombs were dropped unleashing a massive
firestorm. Gigantic masses of air were
then sucked in by the expanding inferno creating something similar to a
tornado. People caught in this wind were
mercilessly tossed into the flame, while those seeking protection underground suffocated
as the fire gasped for more oxygen. The
least fortunate were those who died from a blast of white heat which has
temperatures so high it literally melts human skin. And as if this were not enough, less than
three hours later, twice as many bombers would return to incinerate those
fortunate enough to survive the first attack.
Death in Dresden
Burnt, lifeless bodies littered the streets after the
fire bombings in Dresden
Historian
W.G. Sebald described the horrific scene of terrified
Germans running from their air-raid shelters as they became under attack. “Those who fled from their shelters sank,
with grotesque contortions, in the thick bubbles thrown up by the melting
asphalt…horribly disfigured corpses lay everywhere. Bluish little phosphorous flames still
flickered around them; others had been roasted brown or purple and reduced to a
third of their size. Others had been so
badly charred and reduced to ashes by the heat, that the remains of families
consisting of several people could be carried away in a single laundry basket.”
(Sebald 1)
To
be sure, no set of circumstances could ever permit or justify the fire raids
ordered by British and US officials during WWII. The savage, brutal and indiscriminate killing
of peaceful citizens is completely antithetical to the principles ascribed to
by each society, and to even greater notions of general human decency. Perhaps Author Richard Knell best summed up
the tragic and immoral fire raids of Hamburg,
Dresden and Tokyo
when he wrote “One can say that the losses and destruction were unnecessary and
do not represent a leaf of honor in the analysis of mankind. They cannot be excused. The best one can do so many years after the wars
is to analyze and assess them, dispatch them to history, and hope and pray that
they will never happen again.” (Knell 3)
The Aftermath of Dresden;
City officials gather
the dead for disposal
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