Sadly literally the same defense used by the perpetrators of the Haditha massacre in Iraq; one of the guys who participated (and ordered?) going door to door and killing families (yes, including gunning down children) said in his defense that he was doing it to protect his men (and his punishment? A reduction in rank and a paycut).

Also, when a country has to say, or allude to, that bombing a school was justified in self defense, it's time to take a timeout and get some serious therapy; if you're Germany and Nazism is your history, it's time to take a timeout forever and stay out of world affairs; in fact the rest of us need to just basically stick a giant dome over the country and hope when we get back to it in 1,000 years we don't end up with an even worse batch of Nazis.