In your response you should do the following: ● Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning. ● Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt. ● Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least six documents. ● Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in the documents) relevant to an argument about the prompt. ● For at least three documents, explain how or why the document's point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience is relevant to an argument. ● Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument that addresses the prompt. Historical Background: Strategic bombing during World War II is a term which refers to all aerial bombardment of a strategic nature between 1939 and 1945 involving any nations engaged in World War II. This includes the bombing of military forces, railways, harbors, cities (civilian areas), and industrial areas. 1. Using the following documents analyze and evaluate the motives and outcomes of various strategic bombing campaigns seen in the 1930’s and 40’s. Source: Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command, comment to Churchill's comparison of the Dresden raid to an "act of terror,". The phrase "worth the bones of one British grenadier" was an echo of a famous sentence used by Otto von Bismarck I ... assume that the view under consideration is something like this: no doubt in the past we were justified in attacking German cities. But to do so was always repugnant and now that the Germans are beaten anyway we can properly abstain from proceeding with these attacks. This is a doctrine to which I could never subscribe. Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things. Source: The Air Offensive Against Japan, Daniel L. Haulman. AIR FORCE HISTORY AND MUSEUMS PROGRAM, 1999 Anxious to demonstrate the effectiveness of the B-29, General LeMay decided to supplement precision, high-altitude, daylight bombing with low-altitude, night incendiary bombing of Japanese cities. In the single deadliest air raid of World War II, 330 American B-29s rain incendiary bombs on Tokyo, touching off a firestorm that kills upwards of 100,000 people, burns a quarter of the city to the ground, and leaves a million homeless. Source: “Fog of War”, documentary film on the life of Robert McNamara, Former Defense Secretary in the 1960’s who worked in the Office of Statistical Control during WWII where he analyzed the U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness, especially the B-29 forces commanded by Major General Curtis LeMay. Regarding the plans to incinerate Japanese cities, he states general LeMay came to the conclusion that "if we'd lost, we'd be prosecuted as war criminals; and I think he was right. LeMay, and I, were acting like war criminals."