ISLAMABAD -- Before World War I, casualties of armed conflicts were largely limited to battlefields and the soldiers upon them. Combat doctrine and equipment favored flat plateaus, fields or deserts removed from civilian populations. Unless the action took place in a populated area, civilians seldom tasted the bitterness of war.
News then traveled barely faster than the armies themselves, delivering polished, mostly censored summaries of heroics from "the front" and easy-to-swallow capsule summaries of the number of solders killed in action. Thus, the true destruction and misery wrought by the advance, retreat or occupation by an army could be handily concealed from the eyes of the world.
World War II was a watershed in which the number of civilian casualties almost equaled that of combatants. Technological advances extended the boundaries of the battlefield. Nations learned to take their fight deep into their enemy's territory to disrupt war industries and factories.