Any other assessment amounts to historical revision.
Your assessment builds on the (unprovable and undisprovable) assumption that an invasion would have otherwise happened. But we can’t know what would have happened if different decisions were made. l Wikipedia says that at the time the top brass was split on this decision, and not just for moral reasons.
Also I’d like to mention that whether something is a war crime or not, is, at the end of the day, just a legal question. Back then it wasn’t, but by today’s treaties killing any civillian under any circumstance is indeed a war crime.
Your assessment builds on the (unprovable and undisprovable) assumption that an invasion would have otherwise happened. But we can’t know what would have happened if different decisions were made. l Wikipedia says that at the time the top brass was split on this decision, and not just for moral reasons.
Also I’d like to mention that whether something is a war crime or not, is, at the end of the day, just a legal question. Back then it wasn’t, but by today’s treaties killing any civillian under any circumstance is indeed a war crime.