Page 422 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

422 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Death out of the air – air war and its civilian victims
in Germany, 1939 – 1945

REINER POMMERIN

In 1921 the Italian Major General Guilio Douhet published the book “The Command of
the Air”. Given that any future war would be “total”, and war between nations not between ar-
mies, Douhet believed that terror and annihilation tactics against the civilian population would
play a decisive role. Even if the military did not entirely share this „air war only“ view,
1
Douhet‘s opinions still had great influence on strategic conceptions for Europe‘s air forces.
„It is easy to see why air power assumed such dimensions, in strategic theory as well as
in popular conceptions of war, during the inter-war period. The threat of annihilation from
the air had an almost mystical power. Aviation techniques and destructive power clearly
changed so quickly that the utopian image of an air force soon became operational reality. It
was taken for granted that the morale of the civilian population would be weakened by the
naked reality of death from the skies, even though there was little concrete proof of this. As
a top-ranking American officer put it, attacks from the air could ‚force the enemy to submit
to the opponent‘s will‘. this statement was based on the uncritical assumption that a crisis
on home territory could force the military to capitulate, that in the age of mass politics a war
would be initiated by the people, and ended by them.“ 2
In the United States of America General William Mitchell saw air warfare as an important
factor in a future war: „The influence of air power on the ability of one nation to impress its
will on an other in an armed conflict will be decisive“. Mitchell proposed strategic bomb-
3
ing of enemy territory and believed that attacking the enemy‘s vital centres was the quickest
way to break the will to resist. But his ideas found little support. Significantly, Mitchell was
court marshalled as a result of his suggestions and forced out of the army in 1926. But his
ideas were not completely lost and were later taken up by a few of his fellow officers. But
still large sections of the American population had a moral aversion to the thought of break-
ing the enemy‘s will to resist by aerial bombardment.
The operational principles eventually developed by the Air Corps Tactical School from
1938 onwards made full provision for bombing essential enemy targets. Precision bombing,
which meant dropping bombs on specifically selected and defined economic and industrial
targets, was intended to cripple the enemy war effort. There was no intention of breaking
enemy morale by attacks on the civilian population. General Henry H. Arnold, in charge of
the Army Air Force until the end of the war, wrote in 1941 that the most economical way
of bringing a big city to its knees was to destroy the power stations supplying electric light,

1 See Guilio Douhet, Luftherrschaft. Berlin 1935.
2 Richard J. Overy, Luftmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg: historische Themen und Theorien, in: Luftkriegführung
im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Ein internationaler Vergleich. (Vorträge zur Militärgeschichte, Bd. 12) Im Auftrag des
Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes ed. by Horst Boog. Herford/Bonn 1993, 23f.
3 William Mitchell, Winged Defense. The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power-Economic and
Military. New York/London 1925, 214.