Like other belligerents in World War II, the United States planned to annihilate the enemy, civilians as well as soldiers. Especially in the Pacific theater but in Europe as well, Americans drew on the experience of their own horrible Civil War. Victory would be accomplished through the utter destruction of evil, often going beyond moral boundaries and evoking moral qualms. Americans would defend the soldiers fighting a supposedly “good war,” as commentators later called it, against murderous ideologies. But in decades of reflection afterward, the American way defied notions of goodness. Surely, there were no panaceas, noted author Paul Fussell, to win a war but through killing.1 The war was a necessary fight against genocide and aggression. Yet tens of millions needlessly perished, and the United States shared responsibility for this outcome.