Page 270 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

772 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

seversky
Russian born air power propagandist, Alexander de Seversky advocated strategic bomb-
ing of Axis countries through his book Victory through Air Power (1942), from which Walt
Disney produced an animation movie (1943) which had more success than the book! As
Mitchell, Seversky largely borrowed his ideas from others, notably from the British general
Hugh Trenchard. Following the latter, Seversky considers that direct attacks against civil
populations would be counter-productive because of the natural resilience of the people, and
in this the Second World war proved him right. instead, he advocates indirect attacks which
would consists of destroying the means of subsistance of the population, as well as the indus-
trial infrastructure of the enemy state in concentrating on its “key nodes”, which announces
the doctrine of the Air Corps Tactical School. Finally, Seversky points out the vulnerability
of modern states in front of strategic bombing.

the air corps tacticaL schooL.
Created in 1921, the Air Corps Tactical School was a very important center for the elabo-
ration of air power doctrine, until 1941. Fairly early it concentrated on the economic analysis
of a potential enemy state in order to determine its weak points, its bottlenecks. This analysis
gave rise to the theory of the “industrial web”. This theory reduced the State to a network
of interdependent production centers connected through a certain number of “key nodes”
which could easily be destroyed from the air. The ACTS believed as well that the bomber
campaign should be directed both toward the “war making capacity” of the enemy and its
“will to fight”. While attacks on industry was preferred (in particular electricity production),
it did not rule out attacks on populations as a last resort measure in the case where attacks on
the industrial system happened to be ineffective.

the pLan awpd-1 of september 1941

In August 1941, President Roosevelt asked the Army Staff to give him airplane produc-
tion requirements for the future war against Axis power which seemed then unavoidable.
The Air Staff prepared a plan of attack of the German industrial and military infrastructure
(transportation, petroleum industry, electricity production). In principle, the civilians here
were only targeted indirectly through their means of subsistance (oil and electricity mainly).
Nevertheless, the plan contemplates direct attacks again the populations centers when the
German morale would be deemed sufficiently undermined by the indirect bombing attacks
and military defeats on the ground.

B) Strategic bombing in practice

In the practice of strategic bombing in relation to civilian population, we can make a
distinction as to the to means of attack of civilians, in classifying these attacks into two ca-
tegories : direct or indirect. in directs attacks, the population, and its dwelling, are targeted
directly by undiscriminated bombing, with generaly some very important casualties. In indi-
rect attacks, it is rather the means of existence of the ennemy population which are targeted.
The idea here is not to kill civilians but to make their life unbearable.