They're almost all gone now, but from what I heard first hand from the vast majority of people who actually lived through those grim days, there wasn't exactly a lot of sympathy for the later German position and outcries that occured when we were finally in a position to retaliate in kind, that somehow the Allied bombing effort was some kind of war crime.
You only have to look on this to understand...
...and that was just the city centre and didn't show all the other areas of utter devastation around the dock areas.
Harris had his faults, and was very much of his time and by modern sensibilities was brutal, but his reap the whirlwind was probably spot on as an expression of the widespread feeling for the era.
Shocking scenes.
I never knew my Grandads, they both died early, one from cancer in 1958 and the other of a heart attack in 61, both served North Africa and I would have loved to have heard their tales of what it was like, especially with families back home. I never thought to ask my Nans what it was like in Liverpool, I know my Mums Mum and a couple of my Aunties just missed getting killed when the house got hit wthin a minute or so of them leaving it and my Grandad just escaped in a bombing as I said above, but I know she was terrified of thunder and hid in cupboards, never understood until someone on here mentioned the bombing, she obviously flashed back to the war. From comments my Mum made, I do think the attitude from her Mum was the Germans got what they deserved.
My sister in laws fella was friends with a Lancaster pilot, he passed away recently. He had the pleasure of dropping bombs on Hitlers Eagles nest, I'll have to ask later if it was ever discussed on how the pilots felt about the missions over Germany, it is almost certain that he was involved in the raids on Cologne and Dresden. I can fully understood Harris's position, given what was going on at the time, Germany had devastated British cities, morale was low, so giving them a taste of their own medicine was probably the right thing to do.