Teribus - You did not read my earlier posts in this thread with much care. I already myself pointed out the Luftwaffe's terror bombings in Spain, on Warsaw, and on Rotterdam. I did forget to mention Narvik. I was not implying that the Nazis were such nice guys that they didn't want to bomb civilians. :-) I was implying that the British and Americans did similar things, and that all the involved powers were equally ruthless in the end when it came to bombing civilian areas. Therefore, all committed war crimes, in my opinion, but only the losers faced trial afterward for it. That's what always happens. People are inclined to see evil in everyone but themselves, and winners are inclined to believe that they saved the World from an indescribable evil...them losing! :-)

It was not my suggestion that Hitler delayed bombing British civilian centres out of humanitarian concerns...:-)...or out of good military judgement either. No indeed. He seems to have had the notion that the British could be persuaded to negotiate peace, and eventually even ally themselves with Germany against the Soviets. Accordingly, he was initially inclined to "hold the hounds back" from certain actions which might cause the gravest offence...such as bombing London, for example, in hopes of securing a negotiated end to the conflict. He eventually changed his mind about that.

While the British were not capable of a massive strategic bombing effort early in the war, they were certainly capable of significant night bombing of German metropolitan areas and they carried it out as best they could with their Whitleys, Wellingtons, Lancasters, and Halifaxes, starting in May 1940.

I am not taking sides in any of this, Teribus, I am merely judging all participants by the same moral compass, period.

If you want to decide who bombed civilian populations first, you have to go farther back...before Spain or World War II, to the colonial era between the wars. The British did it in the Middle East to Arabs and the Italians did it in Africa to Ethiopians, and so on, and so on. Basically, everybody that had the means to do it did it...somewhere. The Germans got involved later, when they had the means to do it, and the excuse to.

I will always oppose the antiseptic and unrealistic notion that all the evil in a major war was perpetrated by one side only (the losing side), because I detest that sort of bland, self-congratulatory hypocrisy. It's a bunch of "Rah! Rah! Aren't we wonderful?" BS, as contemptible as the "Aren't we wonderful!" BS spewed by the Nazis when they were riding roughshod over Europe. They too believed they were saving the World and introducing a new and glorious era in human society. Had they won, people would still be hearing that BS...and believing it too!

A war is a gigantic miscalculation which ordinary people pay the price for. The whole thing is a crime, perpetrated by people who claim to be saving civilization.