Unlike the RAF, which had never embraced a serious counterforce strategy, the American planners—like the German Air Force in 1940—assumed that enemy airpower would be an essential intermediate target, whose destruction would make the obliteration of the primary objectives possible.173 Morale was not considered a useful target and was not included on the list. Again unlike the RAF, the American planners did not argue about the legality of bombing urban targets or hitting civilians.174 The German economic web, with its vital centers, was treated as an abstraction; the metaphor of the “social
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