A HISTORY OF THE CONTINUED SUCCESS OF AERIAL BOMBING

Hamburg 1943

A century ago, in 1921, Italian General Giulio Douhet published “The Command of the Air” (“Il dominio dell'aria”). In the book he argued that the “morale effects” of aerial bombing could break a people's will by destroying a country's "vital centers". Douhet identified the five basic target types as: industry, transport infrastructure, communications, government and "the will of the people".

The last category was particularly important to Douhet, who believed in the principle of total war. The Douhet model rests on the belief that the infliction of high costs from aerial bombing can shatter civilian morale by unraveling the social basis of resistance; that exposing a civilian population to the terror of destruction would break civilian morale into submission; that war would become so terrible that the common people would rise against their government, overthrow it with revolution, then sue for peace.

Air forces have used Douhet’s book as the justification for their existence ever since.

And of course, they continue to exist as they have because Douhet was proven so right whenever the theory was applied in practice.

This is why the British people forced Winston Churchill to surrender in September 1940 to stop the terrible bombing of London by the German Luftwaffe.

It’s also why Josef Goebbels told Adolf Hitler in August 1943 that he had to surrender after the Royal Air Force destroyed Hamburg, except that Hitler delayed doing so until Berlin was wiped out six months later in the RAF bombing campaign to destroy the Nazi capital.

And who can forget the Japanese surrendering abjectly after their capitol, Tokyo, was razed in the firebombing of March 9-10, 1945, followed by the firebombing and near total destruction of 58 cities including all industrial centers by June 1945?

Everyone remembers how the bombing campaign in Korea between 1950-53 that saw every structure in North Korea, along with the destruction by bombing of the irrigation system that produced the nation’s food, was responsible for the unconditional surrender of North Korea.

And when Richard Nixon capped the successful bombing campaign against North Vietnam with the destruction of Hanoi in the Christmas Bombing of 1972, he demonstrated how right he was to pursue a policy of Peace with Honor and accepted Ho Chi Minh’s surrender the next month.

What’s that you say? These things never happened? Is that what you say?

Of course they did!

I mean each of those bombing campaigns mentioned above did in fact happen.

But you’re right that none of them led to the results that are claimed in those statements.

As a matter of fact, the bombing of London in 1940 solidified British support for Churchill’s program of war without compromise.

Josef Goebbels did write a private letter to Hitler after he went and saw the results of the world’s first firestorm, which resulted in the death of 40% of the population of Hamburg over six nights in August 1943, in which he said that if the Allies managed to do that to five more German cities he believed the regime would fall. However, even after the six month Battle of Berlin, and the Battle of Germany in the spring of 1944, the Nazis were more secure in government and popular support than they had been before Hamburg.

The Japanese not only didn’t surrender after 60% of the urban area of the country was destroyed in fire raids, they didn’t surrender because the ultimate bombs were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The North Koreans not only didn’t surrender after a bombing campaign that saw more bombs dropped on their country over three years than were dropped on all of Germany over six years of World War II, they continue to threaten to fight the war there 70 years later.

Not only did the North Vietnamese not surrender as a result of Operation Rolling Thunder, in which even more bombs were dropped on that country between 1965-73 than were dropped on North Korea, the United States was the country that withdrew from the war.

To be fair, there are bombing campaigns that worked.

After the commanders of the RAF Bomber Command and USAAF 8th Air Force were dragged kicking and screaming and fighting every millilmeter of the way and engaged in bombing the Ploesti oil fields in the summer of 1944, following that up with a concentrated bombing campaign against the synthetic oil industry in Germany, 90 days later the Luftwaffe stopped coming up to contest the bombing missions because there was no gas for the fighters. And 45 days after that, the Wehmacht came to a creeping halt in the Battle of the Bulge when the panzers ran out of gas.

The bombing campaign between November 6, 1944 and April 5, 1945, against the Brenner Pass railway in northern Italy in which every rail station and marshaling yard and bridge was destroyed, resulted in the German Tenth and Fourteenth armies having their supplies reduced 85% and when the Allied spring offensive began on April 15, the German armies in northern Italy surrendered unconditionally 10 days later.

The air strikes flown by the Israeli air force that destroyed 90% of the air forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan on the first day of the Six Day War resulted in the Israeli victory and those countries never recovering militarily from the blow.

Notice that those three campaigns had nothing to do with bombing civilian populations in cities.

In fact, in the 100 years that air forces have been trying the demonstrate success of the Douhet model, no civil population has ever cracked morale-wise as a result of bombing. Not. Once.

In the movie, “The Bridges At Toko-ri,” Admiral Tarrant tells Harry Brubaker that the reason he and the others in his squadron must attack the bridges at Toko-ri is that because “one day, the North Korean negotiators at Panmunjom will be meeting with our side, and a messenger will come and tell them ‘They have even bombed the bridges at Toko-ri,’ and on that day, when they hear that news, they’ll give up.”

Unfortunately for the Admiral, that never happened.

Yesterday, the Israelis informed the UN that the 1.3 million Gazans who live in the northern part of the Gaza Strip had 24 hours (the deadline ends this afternoon) to evacuate themselves to the southern end of the Gaza Strip, through the wreckage created by a bombing campaign heavier than the one that leveled Hamburg.

Gaza City 2023

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