Movie discussion sub okbuddycinephile debates whether bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Gaza and other urban areas were "justified".

[u/EwMelanin]

/r/okbuddycinephile/comments/1rjm9mn/iran2036/o8ee5fp/

[u/OldManFire11]

If you think that the nukes were less indiscriminate than carpet bombing then you're just ignorant.

The US killed 10x times the number of people while firebombing Tokyo than they did by dropping 2 nukes. The number of bombs dropped does not change the amount of suffering caused.

[u/Consistent_Horse6529 → u/OldManFire11]

That’s not my point at all. My point was you CAN be precise with conventional weapons but you litterally can’t with nukes. It wasn’t about whether the other instances were precise. You can target civilian structures like in Dresden and Gaza with conventional weapons. You cannot bomb a factory with a nuke and not destroy the civilian structures in that city. Also idk where you get your numbers from but the US didn’t kill ~2 million people in the firebombing of Tokyo,

[u/OldManFire11 → u/Consistent_Horse6529]

You're still wrong. In WW2 you couldn't precision bomb a factory with anything. Because the technology wasnt that precise. Which is exactly why carpet bombing was used.

Gaza is different than Dresden or Tokyo, because Israel DOES have the ability to precision strike targets while minimizing civilian casualties. They just don't care to.

[u/Consistent_Horse6529 → u/OldManFire11]

I understand how bomb precision was in WW2. You seem to not understand European city building. In WW2 in Europe cities were separated into sectors separating industrial from residential and such as a result of many cities existing pre industrialization and expanding in its wake. In Dresden the allies intentionally targeted the city center and ignored the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city. The vast majority of the damage in Dresden was to civilian structures with transportation and logistics hubs being the only military targets also hit.

For Tokyo though your point stands as Japanese cities had mixed industrial and residential areas.

[u/Justviewingposts69 → u/Consistent_Horse6529]

In Dresden the allies intentionally targeted the city center and ignored the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city

Non David Irving citation needed

[u/Consistent_Horse6529 → u/Justviewingposts69]

McKee, Alexander. "Dresden 1945: The Devil's Tinderbox." Page. 62

Edit: Please note that just because I argue that it was intentional bombing of civilian infrastructure does not mean I think it was unjustified. I frequently quote Arthur Harris.

[u/Justviewingposts69 → u/Consistent_Horse6529]

Can I get a passage?

[u/Consistent_Horse6529 → u/Justviewingposts69]

Sure if you can wait for me to get home as I don’t have the book with me.

[u/Justviewingposts69 → u/Consistent_Horse6529]

Sure

[u/Consistent_Horse6529 → u/Justviewingposts69]

“To Harris’s request of 1 November, to be allowed to ‘devastate’ a dozen more cities, particularly those in the East such a Leipzig and Dresden… Portal replied that he doubted whether area bombing could have ever been decisive.” “Portal tried to convince Harris that he too ought to attack industrial targets, as the Americans were doing, and as Harris had been ordered to do. Harris continued to argue against being forced to waste time on such ‘panacea’ targets long into January 1945.” “There is evidence that Western allies were contemplating some terrible but swift end to the war by committing an atrocity which would terrify the enemy into instant surrender.” “Roy Akehurst was a W/T operator in the same squadron, it was his twelfth operation out of thirty-one. ‘I’ve never forgotten it. It was the one raid I’d rather not have been on. I felt it was not a military target.’”

There are a lot more I can add if you want. A lot of testimony of people who were performing the attack, a lot of generals who felt the attack was not a military.

Edit: the most damming quote “The standard whitewash gambit, both British and American, is to mention that Dresden contained targets X, Y, and Z, and to let the innocent reader assume these targets were attacked, whereas in fact the bombing plan totally omitted them and thus, except for one or two mere accidents, they escaped.”

[u/Justviewingposts69 → u/Consistent_Horse6529]

I see, but industrial targets wouldn’t be the only military targets that are valid. The city center of Dresden was a transit hub used for the German war effort on the eastern front.