I recently remembered I bought a CuriosityStream subscription alongside my membership of Nebula. Given how the house is finally quiet enough to let me think, I decided I'd follow a recommendation by a YouTuber and watch Bombing War: From Guernica to Hiroshima, which detailed the broad strokes of strategic bombing during the interwar period and Second World War.
Production quality was extremely high. It apparently won awards for how well it was made, featuring striking visuals and a kind of storytelling that borders on historical drama. Admirably, the producers decided against low-budget reenactments you might see on old History Channel specials, instead opting to enhance hours of period footage with vivid colors and stereo audio. ^^
Admittedly though, the biggest draw for me was how the series explored and critiqued strategic bombing, particularly the Allied doctrine of bombing civilians to try and hasten the end of the war. The Germans rightly get most of the heat early-on for their bombing of civilians in Guernica and London, but they mostly focus on British and later American efforts in Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Two parts presented really stuck with me. One was that Dresden, despite having little strategic value (according to this documentary), was acting as the focal point for all German refugees fleeing the Soviet advance from the east; the other was that the generals of the Manhattan Project, realizing the extreme suffering of people who survived atomic weapons, (allegedly) classified everything related to these survivors top secret and invented the myth that using atomic weapons saved a million American lives. If that's true, the trick worked. I believed in it myself, not long ago.
I've... got a migraine right now, so I can't recall who it was, but I think one of the generals in charge of the Project said it best: "If we'd lost [the war], they would've tried us as war criminals."
https://curiositystream.com/series/302/bombing-war-from-guernica-to-hiroshima
