Page 445 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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ActA
up defensive positions. The Allies had learned in Sicily that a ruined town or destroyed
structure will provide better protection for the enemy than one that is intact. It follows,
argued Clark and others, that even if military necessity justified the destruction of the Ab-
bey, the rubble that remained would only enhance the enemy’s defenses.
Freyburg and those who supported bombing the Abbey---especially the airmen who
believed that airpower would deliver victory---insisted that the Germans were in the
monastery, and were using it for military purposes. American General Ira C. Eaker,
commander of the allied air forces in the Mediterranean, and General Jacob Dever, the
Deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander, flew over the monastery at 1500 feet in a
small observation airplane. They insisted when they returned that they had seen “Ger-
mans in the courtyard and also their antennas” along with a machine-gun emplacement
4
less than 50 meters away.
While Clark (and others) continued to protest that the bombing of the monastery
was unnecessary and unreasonable, Freyburg convinced Alexander that the attack go
forward. The result: on February 15, 1944, attacking in waves over several hours,
American B-17s, B-25s, and B-26s dropped 600 tons of high explosives on the Abbey.
Between these aerial attacks, ground-based artillery unleashed round after round on the
target. Monks and civilian refugees---probably about 300 total---were killed in the raid.
Not a single German lost his life---because the Germans were not using the Abbey for
any purpose.
5
As General Clark had predicted, the Germans quickly moved into the rubble of the
monastery and set up mortar and machine gun positions. Although the soldiers of the
4th Indian Division did manage to fight their way to within 200 meters of the monastery,
they could never capture it. Freyberg’s tactical incompetence was never rewarded; the
Allies were able to occupy the Abbey only after the Germans withdrew of their own ac-
6
cord three months later.
Who was correct? Could the monastery---despite its obvious cultural and religious
value---be bombed because “military necessity” required it? This question can only be
answered if one examines what is meant by the principle of military necessity in warfare.

What is “military necessity?”
It might come as some surprise that “military necessity”---one of the bedrock princi-
ples of war, since “no more force or greater violence should be used to carry out a mili-
7
tary operation than is necessary” ---is not defined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 or
in Additional Protocol I of 1977. So what is it? According to the United States, “military
necessity,” as understood in modern war, is the principle that “justifies those measures
not forbidden by international law and which are indispensable for securing the com-

4 Id., at 433.
5 Gary D. Solis, The Law of Armed Conflict (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010), at 261 (“The Nazis had
promised the Vatican that they would not use the Abbey, and they did not.”)
6 Wallace, note 1, at 145; Atkinson, note 3, at 437.
7 Frederic de Mulinen, Handbook of the Law of War for Armed Forces (Geneva: International Committee of
the Red Cross, 1987), para. 352.