No offense, but I think you need to work on your timeline there. When we invaded Normandy, the Red Army had already pushed the Nazis back inside Poland. As I pointed out elsewhere, it appears the Normandy invasion was not about defeating Germany — their defeat was inevitable even if we never invaded — but about keeping the Red Army from continuing west into France and Spain and placing the whole of the continent behind the Iron Curtain.

In other words, the war in Europe was effectively decided by early 1944, if not sooner — indeed, Churchill said that the moment he heard of Pearl Harbor, he knew the Allies would win.

What I’m getting at is that when we began the firebombing campaign, the war in Europe was pretty much over and Japan no longer posed a threat. The firebombing — and the atomic bombs — were all completely unnecessary if we’d only left an opportunity for the Japanese High Command to surrender without guaranteeing themselves an appointment at the gallows.