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704 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

quickly break after an onslaught of aerial bombing when put into actual practice in World
War II two decades later did not play out the way he saw it. In fact the populations in Ger-
many and Japan who took the brunt of intensive and extended Allied bombing campaigns did
not break under bombing. The peoples of these two nations proved to be much more resilient
and adaptive to bombing attacks from the air. In the case of Germany in addition to the stra-
tegic bombing campaign it took ultimately a major land invasion of the continent of Europe
ending up with British and American armies advancing into the heart of Germany to bring
about unconditional surrender. In Japan a combination of fire bombing raids against Japanese
cities, American naval encirclement of the Japanese islands, the threat of a major American
land invasion of Japan, and the droppings of two atomic bombs to force Japan to surren-
der unconditionally. The strategic bombing campaigns against German and Japanese cities
certainly had an important effect in bring about unconditional surrender. But if Douhet’s
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conception would have worked in practice, both of these countries should have given up in a
matter of months with no land armies needed. And if Douhet’s notion of aerial warfare was to
make war more merciful, when considering the total number of civilians killed during World
War II and its duration, the Allied bombing campaigns had the opposite effect.
The War had brought about many fundamental changes to the international state system
and to the use of military force. World War II shattered and already tenuous set of Euro-
pean colonial empires. Much of the conflict in the world in the era after World War II cen-
tered around the working out of these former empires and the states that had existed within
them.
18
The advent of nuclear weapons questioned the efficacy of states who owned them fighting
major wars in all of their totality along the lines of World War II. Although a super-power
confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union using nuclear weapons was a
possibility, conflict in the post war world would fall short of nuclear wars between the super-
powers. The age of limited wars, as it became called, coupled with the breakup of many
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European empires created the conditions for states emerging out of crumpled empires to try
to determine who would hold power in them as well as completely severing ties from their
former imperial masters.
People’s wars of revolution and nationalism—also called wars of national liberation-
-emerged out of this mix. There are many examples. For instance, a communist inspired
rebellion in China led by the revolutionary leader Mao Tse Tung overthrew the nationalist
government of Chiang Kai Shek in 1949. Being denied by France their complete indepen-
20
dence from colonial rule, Vietnamese communists known as Vietminh became a powerful

17 For American Air Power in World War II see Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation
of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American
Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Crane, Bombs, Cities and Civi-
lians.
18 For good overviews of the break-up empires after World War II see: Eric Hobswawm, The Age of Extremes:
A History of the World 1914-1991 (New York: Vintage, 1994); and David Reynolds, One World Divisible: A
Global History Since 1945 (London: W.W. Norton, 2000)
19 See Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missle Age, (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1959).
20 Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Works, volumes 1-5, (1926-36, 1937-38, 1939-41, 1941-45, 1945-49,New York:
International Publishers, 1954, 56, 62); On Mao see Shy, “Revolutionary War;” 838-845;