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I do not hold that the firebombing of German cities was an acceptable trade but that there is a point for most people where they will pay the cost.
Extremists count the blood of the enemy as meaningless and see no sin in spilling it and will do any amount of harm without qualm for instance see the words of an extremist after the death of a terrorist
> Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, in paying homage to Goldstein, told mourners that even 1 million Arabs “are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” And angry voices in the congregation shouted, “We are all Goldsteins!” and “Arabs out of Israel!”
Whereas Perrin's doesn't speak for most Israelis the actions of his entire government and society suggest either agreement or willingness to look the other way whilst someone else pays the price in sin and indeed the attitude far from being historically abhorrent it is fairly normal for all societies to account the blood of the enemy civilian or not fairly cheap or valueless.
Looking at the modern genocide in Gaza and our half assed responses to it makes one wonder if the world has really made any progress whatsoever or if our morality is confined almost exclusively to historical analysis and hand wringing that has virtually no impact on current or future actions.
It IS deliberately provocative for a reason.
Voting for war should have consequences.
Or is also immoral to attack disarmed combatants who pose no threat. Civilians aren’t even combatants.
Don't get me wrong. The Nazis were evil to the core. What they did to the victims is unforgivable. But grouping the civilians with them is a convenient and nefarious justification for their massacre. How many of the thousands of kids among them were Nazis according to you?
Now talking about targeting the German civilians, check out the massive allied firebombings of largely undefended Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and Dresden. The attacks claimed the lives of 34K and 25K civilians respectively in a dreadful sequence of events. Horrific accounts and photos of the incidents exist to this day. The incidents were so controversial that even Churchill challenged it in the Parliament. See if you can stomach those accounts.
War is inherently immoral. You just don't fight one if you can. But if that's not an option, then both sides may end up committing horrible war atrocities. All you can hope for is the least bad outcome. And once it's over, you should be introspecting about what went wrong and how to avoid that in the future. For that, an honest acceptance of the barbarity of such atrocities is needed. If you glorify them instead, you aren't all that better than your enemies and you're just setting up the stage for a repeat of that horrible past. So yes, all civilians should be protected.
> War is inherently immoral.
That’s not true. War as such is undesirable, but fighting one is not categorically immoral. Just war principles determine when it is morally acceptable or even a duty to wage war. Is it immoral to repel an invading army if you have a reasonable chance of success using licit means? No. Indeed, it might be immoral not to do so.
Do you know one war where either side hasn't resorted to immoral activities? Everywhere from WWI allied power to modern day wars, the western nations have resorted to spine chilling crimes that nobody in the west wants to talk about. Just because the other side commits even bigger crimes doesn't mean that it absolves you of all sin. Even in the modern day wars like in Afghanistan, the allied forces have resorted to killing of unarmed civilians including children. I'm not even going to start with the other crimes.
The western nations have this delusion that they fight some sort of righteous war where they can do no wrong. But go to those countries and ask why they're so hostile towards the west. This is why whenever I talk about Nazism in its historical context, people in here become uncomfortable and downvote even recorded historical facts. They don't want to admit that they were not always the righteous side. I gave the examples of Hamburg and Dresden. And like I said, even Churchill was critical of it. If you say it was moral, then I see the same attitude on both sides of the war. Such activities may have been inevitable during the war. But denying its immorality now is just misguided moral chauvinism.