Killing Civilians

Who was it, among your friends, who sent you the Gerry Frederics paper?  I'm curious.

The friend who sent you the Gerry Frederics paper is an imbecile, of course.  With that fact firmly in mind, I still feel that you allow your emotions excessive latitude, when viewing WW2--and it causes you to make a muddled point, when you cheer on the Allied carpet bombing that killed 500,000 or so German civilians.  Let me explain:

When we imagine the average German, during the Nazi era, we can reasonably hold some responsible:  They failed to see, and take action to stop, what we any sentient, mentally competent adult must know:  When people in authority start advocating brutality against minorities and racist violence, the educated citizen has a moral obligation to intervene--and to take risks, if need be.

It would appear unreasonable, I think, to hold all German citizens responsible for Hitlerism.  Some bear more responsibility than others; the portion of people in any society willing to buck mass opinion is rarely large.  I'd hoped we might agree that holding any German under age 10 responsible--at all--would be ludicrous.  I'd hoped we could agree that when children are killed during war, that that's bad--even when they're attached to the morally filthy team. 

Among the 500,000 or so civilians we killed, a significant number bore no responsibility for Hitlerism. 

The carpet bombing, which you have acknowledged was an intentional policy of large-scale terrorism, either sped the defeat of Nazism or it didn't.  We can have a sane discussion as to whether our terrorism had significant effect in degrading the Germans' ability to fight on.  A. C. Grayling, who appears lucid, argues that area bombing did not materially benefit the Allies' military objectives or hasten the Germans' acceptance of unconditional surrender. 

If Grayling is wrong, and the death of all of those German civilians did in fact speed the arrival of VE Day, then I suppose we'd have to accept that you gotta do what you gotta do, given the extremity of evil we were combating.  Were we the ones assigned with the task of mowing down thousands of children, I hope afterwards you wouldn't call me a sissy if I said, 'Gee, that was regrettable.'