Page 426 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

426 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

passive air defence is useless against planned attacks by an air force against a large town or
industrial area. The speed with which the terrorisation of an enemy capital or industrial area
will lead to the collapse of morale will increase in proportion to the weakness of the people‘s
patriotism, the degree of materialism amongst the urban masses and the extent to which they
are divided by social and party-political forces“. 18
The German „Conduct of Air War“ published in 1936 therefore required that air raids
should be directed not only against enemy forces, but also against the „very root of the enemy
people‘s will to resist“. Priority was given, however, to attacks on the enemy‘s fighting forces
and the idea of attacking towns in order to terrorise the population was basically rejected. So-
called retaliatory attacks of this sort would only be useful to deter the opponent from this brutal
type of air war. During the Spanish Civil War the „Legion Condor“, as it was called in the
19
Luftwaffe‘s assessment of its deployment, had gained „very valuable experience of the effects
of bombing, both on morale and in concrete terms“. The attack on the town of Guernica,
20
where various lines of transportation crossed, was supposed to block off just the suburb of
Renteria, a bridge and a few streets, to prevent the Basque retreat. But in fact the deployment
of the „Legion Condor“ and Italian fighter planes led to the destruction of the whole town,
whose name has, ever since, been synonymous with terror attacks by aircraft on civilians. 21
The attacks by German dive bombers on Warsaw showed that it was technically very dif-
ficult to avoid involving Polish civilians in the air war, and that in any case the Germans had
little intention of doing so. The lead-up to the bombing of Warsaw makes it obvious anyway
that any attempt to justify it was mere pretence. On 10 September the Luftwaffe General
Staff issued the following orders: „The attack is to be regarded as retaliation for the crimes
committed against German soldiers. The aim is to achieve widespread destruction in heavily
populated areas of the city with the first attack.“ A few days later Fliegerführer Wolfram
22
von Richthofen urgently requested permission „to use the last opportunity for a major fire
and terror attack.... If granted, […] I will do everything in his power to wipe out Warsaw
completely, especially since in future only a frontier customs office“. Von Richthofen was
23
not, however, given permission to destroy the city of Warsaw completely.
Luftwaffe reports on the war against Poland stated: „Since its success in Warsaw, its [the
fire bomb B 1 Fe] outstanding effectiveness against city residential blocks is no longer in
doubt ... Dropped in large quantities, to start as many fires as possible ... Overlaid with waves
of high-explosive and fragmentation bombs ... to keep the population in shelters, so that the

18 Klaus A. Maier/Bernd Stegemann, Einsatzvorstellungen und Lagebeurteilungen der Luftwaffe und der Ma-
rine bei Kriegsbeginn, in: Klaus A. Maier/Horst Rohde/Bernd Stegemann/Hans Umbreit, Die Errichtung der
Hegemonie auf dem europäischen Kontinent (Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Bd. 2) Ed. by
the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Stuttgart 1979, 44.
19 Ibid, 45f.
20 Ibid., 53.
21 See Klaus A. Maier, Guernica, 26.4.1937. Die deutsche Intervention und der” Fall Guernica”. Freiburg 1975
(Einzelschriften zur militärischen Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Bd. 17), 55f.
22 Olaf Groehler, Der strategische Luftkrieg und seine Auswirkungen auf die deutsche Zivilbevölkerung, in:
Boog (Ed.), Luftkriegführung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 332.
23 ibid., 333.