Comment by goku12

What are you implying? That the civilians of Germany too were involved in the Holocaust under Nazism? Sure, they hated the 'other' groups. But the Nazis had to suspend the earlier Aktion T4 after it attracted a severe revolt from the public. Learning from that experience, the Nazis took enormous efforts to keep the Holocaust out of public sight. If the German civilians had known well about it, would the allied armies have been so surprised and shocked when they discovered the concentration camps?

Don't get me wrong. The Nazis were evil to the core. What they did to the victims is unforgivable. But grouping the civilians with them is a convenient and nefarious justification for their massacre. How many of the thousands of kids among them were Nazis according to you?

Now talking about targeting the German civilians, check out the massive allied firebombings of largely undefended Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and Dresden. The attacks claimed the lives of 34K and 25K civilians respectively in a dreadful sequence of events. Horrific accounts and photos of the incidents exist to this day. The incidents were so controversial that even Churchill challenged it in the Parliament. See if you can stomach those accounts.

War is inherently immoral. You just don't fight one if you can. But if that's not an option, then both sides may end up committing horrible war atrocities. All you can hope for is the least bad outcome. And once it's over, you should be introspecting about what went wrong and how to avoid that in the future. For that, an honest acceptance of the barbarity of such atrocities is needed. If you glorify them instead, you aren't all that better than your enemies and you're just setting up the stage for a repeat of that horrible past. So yes, all civilians should be protected.