Before (yes, BEFORE) Dresden, the Germans bombed civilians to terrorize them and destroy their will to resist ---- in Guernica, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, London, Warsaw, Beograd, Bilboa, Wielun, Coventry, Portsmouth, Stalingrad, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, Belfast, Gosport, Sheffield, Cardiff, Manchester, Ipswitch, Nottingham, Southampton, Swansea, and Plymouth. The Germans themselves invented the bombing of innocent civilians -----their first (and history's first) was London in 1915, bombed from a German dirigible, killing 7 and wounding 35. But why did the Allies do this to Dresden? It was surely an atrocity for its timing and ferocity. To paraphrase Nietzsche, “When you fight monsters, you become one yourself”. The level of hatred the Germans created for themselves in WW2 was so intense, it destroyed reason. The bible fortold it for them: “He who sows the wind, shall reap the whirlwind”. That was Dresden.