[DoodleDawg]

They were as precise as you could be in the early 40's. We know that often looks like laying swathes of useless destruction today, but that was NOT a war crime: they were as precise as they COULD be. More than that, being physically impossible, would not have been morally obligatory

You should look into it a bit more. The firebombing of Dresden was done by both the RAF and US bombers in February 1945. Over a three day period both forces bombarded the city as a whole, targeting civilians and not just military or industrial targets. And the firebombing of Japanese cities, not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were both indiscriminate and designed to kill as many civilians as possible. But that is war, and war is hard. So where were they any worse than Sherman was?

[rockrr]

It's just easier to condemn Sherman by applying standards which were not in effect against alleged misdeeds that may or may not have occurred on his watch.

150 years after the fact...

[Mrs. Don-o]

I agree that the USAF policy of daytime military site-targeted bombing, which expresses the traditional American ethic of war, was not upheld for the duration of the conflict. By the end of the war the USAF and the RAF were both doing carpet-bombing.

Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Sherman's scorched-earth policy: although different in scope and in total impact, they had an intention in common: to target civilians areas deliberately, in order to shock the enemy into surrender. In this aspect --- the targeting of civilian areas as a means to an end --- these were not acts of legitimate warfare, soldier-against-miltary-targets, or soldier against soldier, but rather, war crimes.