The Pros And Cons Of Justified Mass Bombing

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Mass bombing carried out by the Allied forces, caused massive destruction and loss of life in enemy territory. Mass bombing was carried out by Britain in Germany and by America in Japan. The mass bombings of Japan and Germany cannot be justified; because the Allies would be liable for committing crimes against humanity; were the law to apply retrospectively, objectives pertaining to economic aims and enemy morale were not achieved, supreme emergency was temporary as opposed to permanent, although, the German threat faced by Allies justified mass bombing, however, the Theory of War, under the principle Jus in Bello, repudiated this justification.
Were, the provisions of the 1977 first protocol to the Geneva Convention 1949, applied as a retrospective …show more content…

However, the result of this was mass destruction, loss of life and though this was extremely destructive, it did not impact German morale greatly; rather the civilians went about their daily lives and continued working. The German morale and economy was very different than what the Allies had imagined. An argument is that perhaps this was so because the intensity of bombing in Europe couldn’t be compared to Japan. Furthermore, that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan was “the last straw” and hurt the Japanese morale badly (205). Tokyo bombings had a terrible aftermath and USA was successful in demoralizing the Japanese. This caused the Japanese to surrender in the end, without putting up a fight. It was argued further, that mass bombing was to target military and industrially important areas, however this wasn’t so. Though Dresden possessed a railway system that Allies intended to destroy, Dresden was a cultural city in Germany, where refugees were living; the Allies targeted the city to help the USSR army, which was moving towards Dresden. The mass bombing of Dresden, caused fire storms which killed a huge population of the city brutally. Similarly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not militarily important, however to showcase their power and to demoralize the Japanese, the atomic bomb was dropped (194 Levine). Thus, we can say that the bombing of cities which were not important militarily or strategically was carried out, to reduce the morale of the enemy civilians, which worked in Japan, however it failed in Germany. Hence this justification, for mass bombing becomes invalidated because the aim of mass bombing was not

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