After attacks on city on we can literally see production output going down.
There is an argument that in Germany some of the attacks on cities were counter-productive and a more intense focus on certain industrial areas would have been more beneficial. But those were also better guarded.
Even so, economic historian Adam Tooze book shows pretty well that air attacks did have large economic attacks.
If you don't have a good military target, then don't bomb them.
Yes killing however many thousands of people will drive down production. It doesn't end the war and it only makes the post war stage more difficult.
> Yes killing however many thousands of people will drive down production. It doesn't end the war and it only makes the post war stage more difficult.
If your enemies have more weapons to kill you then more of your people will die. This is a simple reality modern war.
Suicide bombers and suicide submarines were being mass produced and a single one of them could literally kill 1000s of sailors when they hit a ship.
Reducing the number of such weapons existing by a large fraction is of clear military value.
Had an invasion taken place finally (as it would have to without nukes) then the destruction of that production would have been even more essential.
I don't agree with the concept of killing a hundred civilians to save one soldier. While I can justify the civilian cost of destroying a factory building submarines, firebombing is a different story.
And while lowering production may drop them from having ten kamikaze pilots to eight, ending the war drops it from ten to near zero.
Finally it's ridiculous to claim the only two options were to nuke civilian population centers or invade. Peace talks are one obvious third option that is always completely ignored.
I guess history disagrees with you.
They could bomb military targets, not civilian populations. Yes, Tokyo contained some military facilities, that doesn't justify firebombing the entire city.
The entire doctrine of "bomb the civilians into war weariness" has not been found to be successful, and even in 1944 there were already examples showing that. It more often causes the bombed to rally together against a common enemy, like London in the Blitz or what still effects North Korea today.
Your example of one child in a synthetic fuel facility is ridiculous. I understand that some civilian workers of factories will unfortunately be victims, and that bombs will miss their targets. That's not comparable to wide scale firebombing or nuking the population.