ABSTRACT
In the West, liberation meant the restoration of the rights of political democracy to the people of Europe. In the most immediate, tangible, and gratifying sense, it meant that people could once again live their lives as they wanted to live them, protected by law in their persons and possessions, and free to think, speak, and act, publicly or privately, in whatever ways most pleased them. In the democracies, people could be conscientious objectors without facing the certainty of a firing squad. They also knew, by the practice of their armies, if not by the strict letter of the law, that various degrees of combat avoidance were tolerated by their military establishments. The truth about the Allied air war against Nazi Germany is that, apart from its marginal impacts, it was a mode of warfare which minimized the politically explosive human costs for the Western democracies.
