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ades to prevent the Luftwaffe from giving tactical support to German ground units. The 1942
operational handbook for Soviet bombers envisaged attacks by long-range aircraft on the
enemy hinterland. The aim was the destruction of military-economic power, and the demor-
alisation of the troops and population. However, the Soviet bombers were neither suitably
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equipped nor capable of carrying out such a strategic bombing offensive against Germany, as
the isolated attacks on Stettin, Königsberg and Berlin were later to demonstrate.
Another thing that should perhaps be pointed out here is that as far as international law is
concerned, there was never any general prohibition on air warfare, even though various at-
tempts were made in this direction. The Hague Declaration of 1899, before the development
of bomber planes, included a ban on dropping explosives from aircraft. But by the Hague
Conference of 1907 this had already proved to be unsustainable. By then many countries had
discovered aircraft as at least a potential weapon for war. At the Washington Conference of
1921/22 there were renewed attempts to reach an agreement, but again in vein. in the end the
Hague Lawyers‘ Commission of 1932 concluded that bombardment from an aeroplane with
the intention of terrorising a civilian population should be banned. The problem is that this
suggestion was never followed up by any agreement in international law. Apart from Japan
and the USA, none of the great powers was interested in such a ban at the time. So it was
that when Hitler unleashed the Second World War on 1 September 1939 no internationally
recognised settlements existed for restricting war in the air.
This loophole in international law was what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had in
mind when, on the same day, he sent a note to the warring countries. He urged them to make
a public declaration that they would not bombard any civilian population or unfortified town
from the air. On that morning Hitler had already made a statement in the Reichstag on this
subject. So he informed Roosevelt: „For my part I have already made it clear in my speech
to the Reichstag today that the German Luftwaffe has been given orders to restrict hostilities
to military targets.“ We now that this was a lie, because the Second World War did not start
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at Danzig as we have learned in school. At 4:40 of September 1, 1939 a German Stuka Wing
bombed the small Polish town Wielun. This first area bombardment of the Second World War
destroyed 70 Percent of the town and killed 1.200 of its inhabitants. Wielun was not at all a
tactical or strategic target; the Stuka Wing was just testing its new engines. On the follow-
ing day both France and Britain complied with Roosevelt‘s request, though given Britain‘s
approach to air war strategy, this can hardly have been meant seriously. None the less, this
Anglo-French declaration was not unwelcome to Bomber Command, which was initially not
keen to get involved and in any case had very few bombers and trained crews available.
How did the Luftwaffe feel about strategic bombing? It is clear that the main thrust of
German aircraft armament and deployment was in the tactical sphere, that terror attacks were
more the exception than the rule, and that the Luftwaffe did not carry out strategic bomb-
ing on any grand scale. In 1933 the Reich Aviation Ministry presented a memo to Hermann
Göring entitled „The German Air Force“. It underlined the prevailing attitude among air war
theorists, namely that the aim of air war should, amongst other things, be to break the en-
emy‘s will to resist and to continue hostilities: „It is clear that even the most well-organised

16 See Raymond L. Garthoff, Die Sowjetarmee - Wesen und Lehre. Köln 1955, 392-395.
17 Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik, Series D, Vol. VII, Baden-Baden 1956, 423.