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Torben comments on Morality and International Humanitarian Law - Less Wrong
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The Allies won World War 2 largely by killing about 2 to 4 million civilians in Germany and Japan. Therefore, it isn't clear that the benefits of not killing civilians far outweigh the costs.
This will become more important as technology decreases the difficulty of building WMDs. Eventually, even a small nation like North Korea will be able to make nuclear missiles. By that time, the cost of allowing them to do as they please (and encouraging other nations to also do as they please) may be greater, in expected lives lost, than the cost of brutally killing a million North Korean civilians.
I would go on, but there's no point in going to the next shock level.
I doubt very much that is correct.
Germany's & Japan's populations suffered as little moral damage as the UK's did during the Blitz.
Germany's war-time production in general only suffered and faltered in late 1944.
Whether Germany had lost 0, 2, or 10 million civilians in May 45, massive Allied armies occupied the country and capital. As I see it, Germany primarily lost due to its lack of oil and battlefield defeats in the East.
Japan had lost the war economically far earlier than August 45. The scale of civilian casualties during the nuclear bombings had only a psychological effect on the Japanese government, although obviously a major one.