Terror bombing
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Terror bombing is a strategy of deliberately bombing civilian targets and strafing civilians in order to break the morale of the enemy and make the civilian population of the enemy panic.
| Contents |
Legal framework
The targeting for destruction of certain specific targets is a war crime and has been defined as such since Hague Convention of 1907 Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907 (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm):Article 27 (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm#art27)
- In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes.
- It is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand.
It is possible that just as there is a separate Hague treaty covering naval bombardment that aerial bombardment was not specifically covered by any of the treaty which proceeded World War II. If the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV) do cover aerial bombardment then the following articles explain what was still permissible at the end of World War II:
- 25 The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.
- 26 The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities.
- 27 In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes.
It was a bombardment of defended towns because countries had air defences. It was an aerial assault so no warning need be given and All necessary steps as far as possible were taken. There were a number of legal arguments against this view, but unlike Karl Dönitz, who was tried and found guily of of waging "unrestricted submarine warfare" for which no one in the US Pacific submarine campaign was ever tried, (which is often cited as a case of Victors justice), as no Axis personnel were tried at the post-war Nuremberg Trials for participating in the decisions on, or execution of, "assault by aerial bombardment on defended enemy territory", there is no legal precedent available to indicate that these actions constituted a war crime.
This section is a stub. You can help by adding to it (http://www.biocrawler.com/w/index.php?title=Terror_bombing&action=edit).- It needs informaion on Post World War II treaties
Legal framework:External links
- U.S. Air Force: List of documents nd web links relating to the law of armed conflict in air and space operations (http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/loac/loac.htm)
- International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363 The Law of Air Warfare (1998) (http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList200/42F64C9A4212EA07C1256B66005C0BF1)
World War I
The first ever aerial bombardment of civilians was on January 19, 1915, in which two German Zeppelins dropped 24 fifty-kilogram high-explosive bombs and ineffective three-kilogram incendiaries on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Kings Lynn, and the surrounding villages. In all, four people were killed, sixteen injured, and monetary damage was estimated at £7,740, although the public and media reaction were out of proportion to the death toll.
There were a further nineteen raids in 1915, in which 37 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 181 people and injuring 455. Raids continued in 1916. London was accidentally bombed in May, and, in July, the Kaiser allowed directed raids against urban centres. There were 23 airship raids in 1916 in which 125 tons of ordnance were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691. Gradually British air defences improved. In 1917 and 1918 there were only eleven Zeppelin raids against England, and the final raid occurred on August 5, 1918, which resulted in the death of KK Peter Strasser, commander of the German Naval Airship Department. By the end of the war, 51 raids had been undertaken, in which 5,806 bombs were dropped, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. The Zeplin raids were complemented by the Gothaer bomber, which was the fist heavier than air bomber to be used for strategic bombing. It has been argued that the raids were effective far beyond material damage in diverting and hampering wartime production, and diverting twelve squadrons and over 10,000 men to air defences. The calculations which were performed on the number of dead to the weight of bombs dropped would have a profound effect on the attitudes of the British authorities and population in the interwar years, because as bombers became larger it was fully expected that deaths from aerial bombardment would approach those anticipated in the Cold War from the use of nuclear weapons. The fear of aerial attack on such a scale was one of the fundamental driving forces of British appeasement in the 1930s.
Inter war years
- This section is a stub. You can help by adding to it (http://www.biocrawler.com/w/index.php?title=Terror_bombing&action=edit).
- Theoretical developments in the use of Aerial Warfare
- Area bombing Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell
- Blitzkrieg
- Use of aerial bombardment as part of British colonial policy, Sir Hugh Trenchard. In Iraq, around 1924, the techniques of 'Air Control', as it was called, were developed, which included target marking and locating, as well as formation flying, by the Trenchardian school which included Bomber Harris, Charles Portal and Sid Bufton.
- Use of aerial bombardment as part of French colonial policy
- Use of aerial bombardment by Italians in Ethiopia during the Italo-Ethiopian War
- Use of aerial bombardment by Japan in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Spanish Civil War
In the 1930s, the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica both conducted aerial attacks during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing of Guernica was the foremost example, leading to the seminal painting of "Guernica" by the artist Picasso showing all the horror and terror of such attacks.
World War II
During the September Campaign, terror bombing became official policy of the German air forces. The first city in Poland to be severely damaged by the German tactics was Wielun. Many other Polish cities suffered the same fate including Frampol, Wielun, and the capital Warsaw. The tactics were later used against Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1940. The Luftwaffe carried out intensive bombing of cities in Britain, including London and Coventry, in a bombing campaign known in Britain as "the Blitz", from September, 1940, through May, 1941.
In World War II, the British RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF XXI Bomber Command both engaged in the aerial bombing of cities. Although they did not specifically target civilians, they did target civilian housing and other civilian infastructure which was known to cause a large loss of life among civilians. The primary objective of these attacks was to damage economic infrastructure to seriously weaken the enemy's ability to fight the war, in line with the doctrines of Total war. Senior Allied commanders and politicians also hoped, in the early years of the war, that the morale of the Axis populations and governments could be so undermined by these tactics, that they would sue for peace. However the resilience of Londoners under the Blitz and the failures of Operation Gomorrah (the bombing of Hamburg) and the Battle of Berlin to break the morale of the Germans, showed that this was unrealistic to all but the most ardent advocates of area bombardment like Arthur (Bomber) Harris. However, the Germans themselves harboured similar unrealistic hopes for there V1 and V2 rockets. The numbers that were sent over the English Channel to the UK were absolutely targetted at a civilian population, could not be aimed with any accuracy, and could not have made any difference to the military outcome, and so must also be put into the category of 'terror weapon'. In the Pacific Theater, Japan specifically terror bombed Chinese civilian targets, inflicting massive civilian casualties in the Bombing of Chongqing and various other bombings.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not conducted to terrorise the civilian Japanese, although this was an inevitable outcome of the use of such a terrible weapon, but to persuade the Japanese government that further resistance was futile. The use of such weapons was still not enough to persuade the Japanese Government to surrender unconditionally, and in the end it was the Allies who compromised to save further allied loss of life.
Aerial Bombardments Since World War II
Recent treaty obligations make the deliberate targeting of noncombatants a war crime. Because of modern smart bombs, modern air forces no longer need to bomb whole areas containing large civilian populations. This was demonstrated in the use of smart munitions before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could speak of Shock and Awe bombings that he hoped would lead to an Iraqi surrender without the destruction of large areas of Baghdad.
The Refutation
On the other hand, there is a point of view that says that whereas the bombing of innocent civilians such as in the Blitzkrieg constitutes a terror attack, the position against the aggressor, when the aggressor has committed all its nations' human and natural resources against peace, is different. If a party of intruders breaks into your house and threatens you, you are surely able to take whatever actions you seem fit to protect your life and property. Similarly, the Axis powers, having started the aggression, and then having committed acts of terror first, and committed there entire nations to the deliverance of war, cannot complain, some say, when those they attack use the same tactics back to survive.
Some will counter that using the same tactics back merely descends to there level, but this is only true if one assumes that the same moral and ethical standards apply in war as in peace. War is not the opposite of peace, it is the lack of peace and therefore implicitly also lacking the same standards. War is not civilised, it is the absence of civil code, and therefore cannot be held to book by those same codes. To impose 'rules' on war, is to impose a false civilisation on war. War is the animal fight for survival, and therefore whatever warring parties do in war surely holds no bounds or surprises, and one can expect the victor of such a confrontation to write the rules of civilisation again, including biassed ones against the previous enemy.
The wars of the past were more aggressive and brutal than modern wars, but only in the mode and scale, otherwise the nature of war is no different than two thousand years ago. Just because civilisation itself achieves higher levels in peace, upon the breakdown of peace all society can be expected to do is revert to its basic instincts. Thus the notion of 'War Crimes' and 'Terror Raids' is invalid. There isn't 'civilised' war, or 'gentlemens war', there is only 'war', and all the horrors that that brings. Bomber Harris said 'All that matters is that you win, you bloody well win'. His response to the reaction against the bombing of Dresden was 'We have been accused of murder. What would we have been accused of if we'd stood by and done nothing against Hitler and his bloody gang?' My own father, whilst expressing sorrow towards the civilians who died, also said that at the time, its was 'them or us - they did to us first, we just did it back bigger and better'
(Written by the son of a Lancaster Pilot who survived the Second World War)
