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'For America, the war was a crusade against something, not for something. The typical American reaction to the war was to eradicate the threat which originally produced the war, to annihilate the enemy. 1/
Once war began, America tended to justify its actions in universal terms and pursue its goals with idealistic zeal. There was no limitation in the American way of fighting World War II. If America were to fight at all, it must fight all out. 2/
American ideas on bombing were consistent with American ideas on war. In the final analysis, rational justifications for bombing were unnecessary, because once war began, Americans ignored ethical distinctions between weapons. 3/
The press, the government, and the church constantly reminded Americans that they were engaged in a total war for national survival; they must either destroy or be destroyed. Under the stresses of war, Americans became so obsessed with this rhetoric that what was horrible 4/
and lamentable in Coventry, Rotterdam, or Warsaw, was neither horrible nor lamentable in Berlin, Dresden, or Tokyo. George E. Hopkins, ‘Bombing and the American Conscience during World War II.’ ‘The Historian’ (1966). 5/5 #WW2 #airpowerhistory
