An unavoidable choice

George has returned to the question of whether the bombing of cities constitutes a war crime, but in a way which puzzles me. It's not that he argues to the contrary; yet something, he says, is still niggling at him. What? George mentions two points: first, that for him the term 'war crime' signifies an enormity; second - a question - if we say that Churchill was implicated in a war crime (like the bombing of Dresden), does that make him as bad as Hitler? On the first point, that there are many acts defined as war crimes doesn't put them all on a level. For example, Article 6 (b) of the Nuremberg Charter lists plunder of public or private property as a war crime. I don't wish to make light of this, but it is surely not as grave as the deliberate mass killing of civilians. Second, if you think, as I do (along with many other people), that the war to defeat Hitler was a just war, and if you think a victory for Nazism would have been a catastrophe of incalculable proportions, and if you know the scale of Hitler's crimes, you will have no temptation to equate Churchill with Hitler.

The fact is that, if we dispense with the category of war crimes, it then follows that anything goes in war, including the wanton massacre of innocents. It's one thing or the other.