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What's the moral lesson: if we have a WW3, don't target civilians? What if our enemies are doing exactly that without compunction? What if civilians and military infrastructure are colocated? What if those civilians simply want us all to die and will work to any ends for that result (e.g. they may have been effectively brainwashed as the allies were indeed preparing for with Japan)?

It's not that the answers are morally good, but rather if you're already in a world war then the ethical part (diplomacy) has already failed and it's just going to be the degree of horrific things, not their absence, that we have to plan for.



Targeting civilians is a war crime. No excuse for that.

Targeting civilians in places like Tokyo or Dresden didn't even help the war cause much. The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis without mass bombings of German cities.

Yes war is the supreme crime and what we should avoid in the first place. Still there are different ways you can conduct war.

A nuclear exchange would necessarily target civilians and be unlike anything before in history. It's a nightmare scenario that has to be opposed at all cost.


> Targeting civilians is a war crime. No excuse for that.

What does "civilian" mean when it comes to Imperial Japan?

* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/there-are-no-...

The official Japanese plan to defend against a US landing was to have children attack the invading US soldiers:

* https://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=141048

* https://apjjf.org/mark-ealey/1689/article

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_K...


Unfortunately in total war situations the line between civilian and not is blurred and not just blurred by the aggressor (as a sibling comment has pointed out). That doesn't really justify anything though, I agree, and something like a nuclear war targeting civilians is just terminal for civilisation.


>The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis without mass bombings of German cities.

You're reading from a curiously misinformed understanding of history. The USSR defeated the Nazis by killing millions of them while also burning, bombarding and destroying their cities and anything else in its way en masse during a ferociously bloody campaign of revenge mixed with genuine military imperatives. Soviet soldiers also committed what are probably some of the biggest mass rape epidemics in modern history against their German enemy's women once they entered their territory. This in particular was immaterial to Soviet victory and not an official Soviet policy, but I mention it to underscore that there was absolutely no shortage of war crime-worthy targeting of civilians in many ways, and on a colossal scale by the Soviets too.

Read about the invasion and ethnic cleansing of East Prussia if you like. At least couple hundred thousand German civilians died as a result of that alone. None of this at all compares to what the Nazis did during their eastern conquests of course, but while a war crime is a war crime, degrees exist. Thus, it's not surprising if allied moral and military conduct was on a very long leash given such extremely savage enemies as Germany and Imperial Japan.


> The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis without mass bombings of German cities.

In our shared reality(?) the Soviet Union defeated the Nazi's in parallel with the mass bombing of industrial areas, factories, ports, dams, and general war making infrastructure, much of which was within German cities.

The Soviet Union defeated an increasingly under supplied resource starved German military.




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