Civilians as a military target

In modern history, World war II was considered as the bloodiest war because of military targeting civilians, in which killed 50,000,000 civilians during the war, mostly from air raids, the Nazi Racial policy, starvation in Russia, and the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that effect the death toll.

One of the air raids was during the bombing of Dresden in the Operation Thunderclap in which the allies aimed to destroy the 'wills' Germany to fight. They dropped over half a million bombs which killed at least 35,000 people. Civilians were deliberately targeted by the bombing raids conducted by the British against German targets, this being British government policy during the conflict. American bombers tried to be more 'accurate' and only attack targets of some military value - industries, military targets - but still caused many civilian deaths.

In Russia (with highest number of deaths) there were millions of civilians who died. Some were targets of Nazi racial policy (Jews) and political motivation (communist party members). German military actions also killed many civilians such as the 1942 air raid on Stalingrad that killed about 60,000. Many civilians died of starvation to a large extent due to the Russian government policy of Scorched earth of destroying all food supplies they could during retreats. The Nazi racial policy or the Holocaust 'murdered' millions of Jews through out Europe. By forcing them out of their homes and imprisoned in the concentration camps and the camps were equipped with gas chamber which thousands at a time were killed with poisonous gas.

Another strategy of targeting civilians was the development of atomic bombs in the Manhattan project. Harry Truman ordered the military to use the atomic bombs against Japan. On 6 August, 1945, America dropped a bomb on the industrial city of Japan, Hiroshima and 4 days later on Nagasaki. It killed more than 200,000 people which were mainly civilians. Some of the people had long term effects from the radiation of the bomb and later died because of cancer.