Terror bombing
I was chatting to a lad from Kassel yesterday and he mentioned that his home town wasn't really the prettiest of places, full of grim 50's architecture, mainly because the Allies had pretty much razed it to the ground in the autumn of 1944. Apparently there is only one - one! - building over fifty years old in the city centre. So the question arose in my head just now as to why armies bomb cities at all, what with the high probability of civilian casualties etc. A quick Google search brought up this chilling article. In short: that's exactly why they do it. Aren't humans great?