I didn’t want to go into arguments about whether WWII strategic bombing was effective because it’s a point historians have argued amount a fair bit and I wanted to focus on the nuclear targeting question. I do think it’s an interesting / important question. I believe the original justification, at least for Britain and the United States, was to destroy the industrial capacity of the nation. The Norden bombsight was hoped to enable more targeting bombing. Then air defenses proved too powerful for day bombing, so the British and American air forces switched to night bombing, in which accurate bombing was impossible. My recollection was that the justification at the time was still partially (especially for the Americans?) was still the “destroy industrial capacity” even though this was clearly more of a terror / demoralizing strategy in practice.
I think separately from the justification is the question is of whether it actually succeeded in helping to win the war, either by
A) Eroding the capacity to make war, especially industrial capacity
B) Eroding morale / inducing surrender
It would not surprise me if the claims of those championing strategic bombing were false or overstated. It may be that, especially in Germany, strategic bombing mostly killed civilian and accomplished no military objective. It seems far less clear in Japan, especially given Japan did surrender after most of their major cities were destroyed. I would be surprised if the bombing of Japan, both conventional and nuclear, had no impact on their decision to surrender. (I am not making any normative claim about whether any power should have engaged in aerial bombardment, conventional or nuclear).
I didn’t want to go into arguments about whether WWII strategic bombing was effective because it’s a point historians have argued amount a fair bit and I wanted to focus on the nuclear targeting question. I do think it’s an interesting / important question. I believe the original justification, at least for Britain and the United States, was to destroy the industrial capacity of the nation. The Norden bombsight was hoped to enable more targeting bombing. Then air defenses proved too powerful for day bombing, so the British and American air forces switched to night bombing, in which accurate bombing was impossible. My recollection was that the justification at the time was still partially (especially for the Americans?) was still the “destroy industrial capacity” even though this was clearly more of a terror / demoralizing strategy in practice.
I think separately from the justification is the question is of whether it actually succeeded in helping to win the war, either by
A) Eroding the capacity to make war, especially industrial capacity
B) Eroding morale / inducing surrender
It would not surprise me if the claims of those championing strategic bombing were false or overstated. It may be that, especially in Germany, strategic bombing mostly killed civilian and accomplished no military objective. It seems far less clear in Japan, especially given Japan did surrender after most of their major cities were destroyed. I would be surprised if the bombing of Japan, both conventional and nuclear, had no impact on their decision to surrender. (I am not making any normative claim about whether any power should have engaged in aerial bombardment, conventional or nuclear).