Ah, ya miss a few days working and you can never catch up!
Anyway, let's talk about "terror bombing".
The guy that gets the credit for first suggesting it as an "airpower doctrine" was an Italian, General Giulio Douhet. Douhet argued that the heart of an enemy's resistance was its population. I don't want to write a book about it but here's Douhet's theory in brief clips from a few websites. Clipping is faster than rewriting.
AS USUAL, I'll provide the site...I'm not going to say "I heard it from a friend"
"Douhet understood that the technological advances in weaponry made during World War I were not fully utilized by Allied commanders. Douhet thus spent the decade after the war constructing a theory that would facilitate the strategic use of what he conceived to be the biggest technological breakthrough of all, the airplane. As such scholars as Raymond Flugel have pointed out, Douhet's theories were crucial at a pivotal pre-World War II Army Air Force institution, the Air Corps Tactical School. Over time, these theories became institutionalized to the point that they were rarely questioned. Their influence was subsequently evident in strategic Air Force operations...
What did Douhet propose to do with this offensive power? Quite clearly, his most pressing goal was twofold. On the one hand, he argued that air power should be directed toward the utter obliteration of the enemy's industrial base. Typically, Douhet minced no words when he argued that a strike force "should always operate in mass" to "crush the material ... resistance of the enemy."9 Second, Douhet was convinced that the effect of this was to, without doubt, demoralize the enemy population. He thus wrote:
In terms of military results, it is much more important to destroy a railroad station, a bakery, a war plant, or to machine-gun a supply column, moving trains, or any other behind-the-lines objective, than to strafe or bomb a trench. The results are immeasurably greater in breaking morale ... in spreading terror and panic..."
FROM:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1986/sep-oct/eula.html For a better understanding of the other arguments, check out this site:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/presentation/faber.html Here's a quick review chart I clipped from there.
Fig. 1 - Representative Targeting Strategies Prior to 1945
Pre-War Theorist(s)/ Target Set(s) Salvaneschi /Major munitions factories
Slessor/ Troops, supplies, production
Douhet/ Population (cities)
Harris/ Population (cities)
Mitchell / Vital centers
Wilberg, Weber,& the Ger. Gen. Staff/ Enemy field army
Trenchard/(in 1920s) War materiel,transportation,communications
During War Theorist(s)/ Target Set(s)Committee of Operations Analysts (COA)/ Munitions plants
Air Corps Tactical School/ Key economic
nodes (industrial web)
Economic Objectives Unit (EOU)/ Oil/transportation
You can get more detail by researching these names with a search engine also. However, until you understand that PRIOR TO WW2 airpower had never really been used STRATEGICALLY, you are simply viewing what happened through your own 1990's prejudices.
In other words, no one really KNEW how to use strategic airpower. The equipment had never been available before and everything was simply THEORY. Like noses, there's always plenty of theories. Remember,the Boeing B-17 prototype, perhaps the first "heavy strategic bomber", first flew on July 28, 1935 and was first used in combat by the RAF in 1941. It was untried.
Further, consider the "Geneva Convention" argument. I highly suggest a review of
this site before you make statements about the "rights of civilians in WW2".
http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria15_3.html#fire You'll quickly learn a lot of information on how civilians became targets in WW2 (as well as who started targeting civilians first). Here's just a bit of that info, with emphasis added:
"
Civilian Bombing and the Laws of WarAttempts to control warfare from the air occurred as early as 1899. European powers agreed at The Hague (a Dutch city) to prohibit dropping explosives "from balloons or by other new methods of a similar nature." The Hague Convention of 1907 went further by banning bombardments "by whatever means" on "undefended" towns.
World War I saw the first civilian casualties from air bombing. In 1915, the first-reported victim was an English child killed by a bomb dropped from a German zeppelin (an airship more rigid and larger than a blimp). Throughout the war, zeppelin and airplane attacks on English and German cities killed almost 2,000 civilians.
After World War I, European and American military strategists debated what would happen if civilians became the main targets of air-bombing attacks. An influential Italian military writer, General Giulio Douhet, actually argued for the sustained bombing of civilians. He predicted that they would become quickly demoralized by such bombing and would force their leaders to surrender.
Despite the theories of Douhet, most at this time felt that bombing civilians was uncivilized and should be prohibited.
In 1923, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States agreed to a set of rules for air warfare. One article prohibited bombing from the air "for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population . . . or of injuring noncombatants. . . ." The participating governments, however, never ratified these rules, so they were not legally binding. At the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932, most of the world's powers agreed that air attacks on civilians violated the laws of war. But the conference broke up before approving a final agreement.In the years leading up to World War II, Japan became the first power to attack civilians from the air. In 1932, Japanese warplanes bombed a worker district in Shanghai, China, an incident that produced worldwide outrage. The outrage did not stop Japan from bombing civilian areas of other Chinese cities."
In short, my friends, there were NO LAWS IN EFFECT to protect civilians from bombing. NONE. It may offend our 1990's morality now, but despite offending the morality of
just a few countries prior to WW2 it was not prohibited.
Now, the total lack of legal protection coupled with a totally new weapon of war and an abundance of theories on how to use this weapon resulted in the bombing of civilians.
Was Douhet a monster? No. If you read his work closely, you'll find that he wanted to prevent war or end it quickly without the slaughter that attended the trench warfare of WWI. Like those who said the introduction of the machine gun in WWI had made war too terrible to ever contemplate again, Douhet made a similar case for bombing.
Did all the Air Forces of the world test his theory? Absolutely. Did it work? No, not for any side.
Should they have given up on it sooner? Probably; that would undoubtedly have saved a lot of civilian lives.
Those of you who were actually IN the military in some country know how unlikely an event that would have been.
Once military doctrine is set, as it was in this case BEFORE the war, doctrine is unlikely to change during the conflict. Yes, there's discussion. Those who say "it isn't working" are countered by those who say "we haven't hit them hard enough/long enough...just a little more will do the trick." What usually results is a continuation of the "old" doctrine and an addition of "new" doctrine to try.
Once the war was over, the various bombing surveys pretty much discounted and disproved Douhet's theories.
So civilians were no longer targets, right?
Absolutely wrong! The entire basis of the Cold War standoff was "Mutual Assured Destruction", the "MAD Doctrine". The US assured the Russians that we would totally destroy their country and almost their entire population if they ever launched a nuke at us...and the Russians made the same promise to the US.
CIVILIANS were the targets in the Cold War. When you launch a 50 megaton warhead at New York or Moscow to destroy a "war materials factory" you aren't going after the factory and everyone knows it.
Civilians during the Cold War were going to be held gruesomely and fatally responsible for the actions of their governments.
So, how far have we, the enlightened and caring, progressed from Douhet?
