Bombing civilian targets by the Luftwaffe?

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Marius

It is very important to show where such an German attack was intended against a purely civilian target (no ground fighting in the city or nearby, frontline far away and so on... (see for example Dresden 1945)). I am sure you can well differ such a target from a road filled with troops or railway station.

My point was that almost every attack, whatever the true intention, can be justified on "military grounds" - as was done with Dresden (rail links supplying the Eastern Front). I would be quite surprised if many German operational orders were written explicitly in terms of attacking civilians.

Such objectives can be found in the policy documents for the RAF bombing campaign but I think you would find that the individual targets were always desribed as military/economic ones.

As for attempted genocide, the Einsatzgruppen routinely described those they murdered as partisans.