Imagine how many civilians were on the Death Star. Do you really think the maintenance personnel were Stormtroopers? Or the accountants who had to figure out how many credits the private contractors needed to receive? The rebels killed more innocent people than the empire did. Sure, the empire blew up a planet, but the untold amount of damage that the rebels caused to people who were just doing what they could to make a living.
Look what happened after Palpatine was removed. Slavery became more rampant, the rich began controlling more planets, and there was no government to fill the void that was left. The empire held everything together, they got rid of those hypocrites on Coruscant, and brought about a cohesive government that focused on bringing together all planets and putting an end to the trade wars. To sum up: the empire did nothing wrong.
It’s hard to tell how many people lived on the Death Star, but according to Wikipedia, the first one had a diameter of 160 km, while the second was 200 km. Unlike a planet, of course, people did not live on the surface, but on the inside, although presumably a lot of the interior was also dedicated to electrical systems like power generators, life support systems, and the infamous trash compactor. Also, the population would have likely been limited by the amount of food available, which either would have been constantly required to be flown in, or grown on-board (say, in hydroponic farms, which would also take up a lot of space).
Meanwhile, Alderaan was a whole planet, which unlike, say, Tatooine, is depicted as being very earth-like, with plenty of water and huge continents rich in flora and vegetation, so it could have potentially supported a very large population (say, a billion people or more), especially since the society there was also technologically advanced.
I did ask AI about this and I got estimates of around 1.7-2M people living on the Death Star, and about 2-3B for Alderaan. So destroying Alderaan was very likely the bigger war crime.
Imagine how many civilians were on the Death Star. Do you really think the maintenance personnel were Stormtroopers? Or the accountants who had to figure out how many credits the private contractors needed to receive? The rebels killed more innocent people than the empire did. Sure, the empire blew up a planet, but the untold amount of damage that the rebels caused to people who were just doing what they could to make a living.
Look what happened after Palpatine was removed. Slavery became more rampant, the rich began controlling more planets, and there was no government to fill the void that was left. The empire held everything together, they got rid of those hypocrites on Coruscant, and brought about a cohesive government that focused on bringing together all planets and putting an end to the trade wars. To sum up: the empire did nothing wrong.
It’s hard to tell how many people lived on the Death Star, but according to Wikipedia, the first one had a diameter of 160 km, while the second was 200 km. Unlike a planet, of course, people did not live on the surface, but on the inside, although presumably a lot of the interior was also dedicated to electrical systems like power generators, life support systems, and the infamous trash compactor. Also, the population would have likely been limited by the amount of food available, which either would have been constantly required to be flown in, or grown on-board (say, in hydroponic farms, which would also take up a lot of space).
Meanwhile, Alderaan was a whole planet, which unlike, say, Tatooine, is depicted as being very earth-like, with plenty of water and huge continents rich in flora and vegetation, so it could have potentially supported a very large population (say, a billion people or more), especially since the society there was also technologically advanced.
I did ask AI about this and I got estimates of around 1.7-2M people living on the Death Star, and about 2-3B for Alderaan. So destroying Alderaan was very likely the bigger war crime.