Vonnegut was physically in Greater Dresden when the city was firebombed. (He doesn't have the qualification that the members of the Keyboard Warrior Class do, (of course), but he was physically present on the ground during the bombing.)
Anybody here who suggests for even a moment that the Allies went overboard in targeting a population center is labeled outright. So we have to refer to someone who has some more street cred. Vonnegut was an American, he had fought the Germans in combat, he was Jewish, and yet, he managed to see humanity in the innocent victims that "Christians" themselves can't seem to find.
The ultimate moral authority here is Natural Law; murder is intrinsically evil. "Yeah but they started it" might work for those still in the bar at closing time, but it doesn't stand up to reason; the idea that the Germans (or Japanese) were barbaric so we had to burn them to death doesn't make any objective sense at all.
“Vonnegut was physically in Greater Dresden when the city was firebombed...he managed to see humanity in the innocent victims...The ultimate moral authority here is Natural Law; murder is intrinsically evil...the idea that the Germans (or Japanese) were barbaric so we had to burn them to death doesn’t make any objective sense at all.” [Captain Walker, post 185]
I will risk the ire of forum members by admitting that I deem Kurt Vonnegut Jr to have been a talented author. I cannot remember many pages of his that I’ve read which did not evoke new insights, or at least novel ways of looking at the situation.
None of which can excuse the fact that he was a squishy Leftist who blamed the United States for the miserable state of the world. Renders his judgment suspect, on this or that governmental action or public policy.
Little of which has any bearing on what he said concerning Allied air attacks on Dresden in February 1945. Was it unpleasant? Yes. Horrifying? Yes. Messy? Chaotic? Yes and yes. And whatever unpleasant adjectives you care to add.
But we cannot take the personal experiences of junior Allied prisoners who had the bad luck to be present during the strikes as valid critiques of the Allied air strategy.