Editor’s note: This is the 64th in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. Historians have judged World War II to be the most destructive war in human history. Seventy-five million persons died, two-thirds of them civilians. One of the causes of so many civilian deaths was the aerial bombing of urban and industrial centers, another was the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews and innumerable others whom Hitler, in his diabolical delusions, judged unworthy of existenc … (read more)