Reading the above, making use of combatant accounts, I was shocked to find this:
A few years later, the RAF and the USAF were to target German civilians in places like Hamburg and Dresden with many more deaths.
Is war less brutal today, as Steven Pinker suggests, only 60 years later?
There are at least two current wars where I dare not suggest comparison with the above but you can.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
My father served as a soldier during most of the Second World War. He was in a number of battles and skirmishes and saw the bodies of Italian and German soldiers, helped take wounded ones to medical stations and escorted and guarded prisoners. He saw that they were humans like the rest of us.
By contrast, my mother experienced the Blitz and had friends who were killed in the war.
After the war my father bore no ill-will against Germans and Italians, but my mother, like most of the civilian population retained a hatred for Germans and Italians (except for the cafe and chip shop owners – ‘they were different’. They were different from the propaganda image portrayed by the media because she saw them as people.
Like almost all ex-soldiers I have known, my father never spoke of combat. He spoke of cameraderie and places he had seen, but of fighting, not a word.
I knew ex navy and airforce personnel, and, unlike soldiers, many were hostile to Germans and Italians. But, they fought wars at a distance and against ships and planes, which had people in them, but who could not be seen clearly.
There are documented accounts of soldiers committing atrocities against civilians, so perceiving their common humanity did not prevent them from killing people. Yet, over the course of history many soldiers have fired to miss, because they perceived a common humanity.
We are complex creatures.
Alasdair Macdonald
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Any war where civilians are targeted is unacceptable . The numbers of deaths are immaterial if they are deliberately killed – then the numbers only indicate the degree of brutality .
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Please enough of this. It cannot be any surprise (not to me at any rate) that of the many atrocities of wars especially modern warfare, the vast majority were inflicted on civilians. Whilst of course we should never forget the horrendous death toll of ALL wars please let us not continue this incessant wallowing that our cousins in the south still perpetuate with that rhetoric which has been so damaging to relations with Europe. Are we still commemorating deaths during the Boar wars, the Napolean wars, Korean campaigns and all the others?
Thankfully I was born just after WW2 but many of my family were killed or seriously injured fighting for King & Co and their horror stories still haunt me but for pity sake how long are we going to suffer this? As recent events have cruelly shown we have learned nothing from history. Time to move on.
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what!!!? A wee bit o/t but are we meant to put up with England 1966 for the rest of our lives, but not compare, in my humble opinion, academically, the history and nature of warfare and how nothing seems to change in modern times, no lessons learned……but let’s all bury our heads in the sand and eradicate ALL history……we wouldn’t want to offend our neighbours in England now would we…..the great propaganda machine of Whitehall…..must be adhered to…….Orwells 1984 springs to mind!!!
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Should have added should we ignore Remembrance Day?
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WW2 26million Russians died. 5million Germans. 1/2 British, 1/2French. 2million Japan.
3/4 of the German army died. Russian defeated the Germans. Save the West.
US spend $760Billion on the military. The highest in the world. 1/3 of all the world spend. 360million pop
Russia spends $65Billion 150Million pop
Saudia Arabia $69Billion. Pop 33Million. (11 million migrants).
UK spends $50Billion.
China spends $228Billion 1.4Billion pop.
Enough to eradicate world poverty.
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WW2. 26million Russians died. 5million Germans died. 1/2million British. 1/2million French. 2million Japanese. The Russians defeated the Germans saving the West.
US spends $760Billion on the military. 360million pop. 1/3 of world spend.
Saudi Arabia spends $69Billion. 33Million pop (11million migrants).
Russia spends $65Billion. 150Million pop.
UK spends $50Billion.
China spends $228Billion. 1.4Billion pop.
Enough to eradicate poverty.
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Posted twice
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Hmmm… while I dare not say which conflict….I wonder if today we are not seeing direct deliberate targeting of civilians whereas we were in 1941?
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Even your own population can be sacrificed, eg the Hannibal Directive, then you blame it on someone else…
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The Russians killed 9million Polish civilians during WW2.
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