22,000Lb Grand Slam

[Seaspriter]

While no side is ever completely faultless in a war, the conduct of the Axis powers during the Second World War was especially reprehensible

Darren, while I do agree with you in the larger sense, I suspect those residents of places that suffered extensive bombing like Dresden in Germany or Tokyo in Japan would not understand.

However, to make your point more emphatic, the horror inflicted on Warsaw by both the German and Russian Armies is chilling. At the Warsaw Rising Museum is a computer generated video shot from the nose of a B-17 trying to drop supplies for the Polish resistance. The city that housed 1.1 million people is GONE -- flattened, bombed out, decimated. What the Germans didn't destroy, the Russians did. Ugly. And the Russians wouldn't let the B-17s flying in supplies to Poland land in "friendly" Russian territory to refuel. So the B-17s had to carry fuel sufficient for a round trip from Brindizi, thus lessening the amount of replenishment supplies for starving Poles. This was how the Russians said thank you in return for the Allies replenishment of guns, aircraft, trucks, etc. to fend off Hitler. Pretty ugly.

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[Sentryduty]

Darren, while I do agree with you in the larger sense, I suspect those residents of places that suffered extensive bombing like Dresden in Germany or Tokyo in Japan would not understand.

I should clarify just a little, when that statement is standing on it's own merit, it does suggest that I may believe that the Allied powers were blameless in their actions, where civilian populations were concerned, which is not my intent or belief. I must insist that the statement be held in context with the entire paragraph where I have offered it as an introduction to observing that civilians and "war support" might be heavily influenced by first hand experience by those "at home".

Even my generalizations such as Allied and Axis powers is slippery slope, but it seemed the best way of describing the belligerents without resorting to good guys vs bad guys circa 1939-1945.

I may not have articulated my thoughts quite as accurately as I hoped in my original post and left things a bit ambiguous, I apologize for that bit.

You second point does hold very true, the scope of the war outside the London Blitz was something previously unseen in the history of warfare.