"The holocaust probably caused a lot of terror among its victims, but what was the political goal of this act?"
Probably!? Yeah, being taken from your home with all your possessions, herded into a cattle car often for days, being stripped naked, having your head shaved, being worked to death, beaten, raped and murdered might tend to cause a little terror.
The political goal? To wipe out an entire religion/people.
You're missing the point. The holocaust was an end in itself, it had no element of terrorising people as a means to persuade them of anything.
Terrorism is rhetorical; it's applied violence with the intent of influencing its audience.
Consider the famous example of US Army personnel taking two Viet Cong prisoners for a helicopter ride while interrogating them. The prisoners aren't cooperative, so one is tossed out the door. This little act of terror convinces the other prisoner to talk.
But, it strikes me that many sit, vastly separated from the time and horrors of World War II, in nicely-lit rooms with cups of coffee next to their Macs and pontificate about the immoral actions of the Allies as though the war was a chess game conducted in a sanitary pharmaceutical clean room with perfect information about the enemies' thoughts and intentions and with plenty of time to carefully consider and ponder each move - and always from the strictest of ethical perspectives (as opposed to what will win a life-and-death struggle).
I agree with this to some extent, although since we're talking about bombing and terrorism in WWII, we shouldn't forget that Winston Churchill and Arthur "Bomber" (or "Butcher" in other circles) Harris deliberately targetted the German workers and hoped to demoralize the German war effort. They even used the word "terror" while discussing their motives.
