Editor,
This is not an opinion piece, these are facts strictly from the pages of documented history.
People today have little or no knowledge of war, so they lack the terrible memory of what winning a war entails.
Winning a war requires the killing of civilians. Killing enemy soldiers or airmen never won a war.
It was always necessary to kill civilians to take away the will to fight from the rulers and military of a country.
German air raids killed over 40,000 civilians in Britain in 1940-41, but the strategy failed because (a) -The RAF was able to slow the attack, and (b) because Hitler initiated his invasion of Russia at the wrong time of year.
What Germany did in Europe during WWII was kill 13 MILLION civilians, including 6 million Jews.
Russian Gulags killed at least 3.6 million civilians.
Later, when the Allies were turning the tide in Europe and the Pacific, the leaders of the Axis had no intention of surrendering.
Allied bombing killed 10,000 Dutch civilians and over 50,000 French civilians in 1943-44 as part of the overall effort to drive German troops out. The Allies killed 400,000-500,000 German civilians, including the fire bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin.
Japan, although losing the war in 1945, would not surrender, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not on Japanese troops, but on Japanese civilians, and then Japan surrendered. (The Japanese troops would have died to the last man.)
As a side note in Europe, when the Red Army reached Germany, the Russian troops committed the identical horrendous atrocities on Germans as Hamas did to Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. German women were committing suicide rather than face what the Red Army troops were going to do.
Further back, in WWI, there are estimates of 12 to 13 MILLION civilian deaths attributable to the war, due to starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.
The USA forgot how to win wars 50 years ago…Vietnam was first in their succession of losses.
Footnote:
During the U.S. Civil War, the final battle was the Siege of Vicksburg, May 18-July 4, 1863. I encourage those interested, to read the accounts of this to see what inhumanity during war really means.
Mike Robertson, Meaford
