soc.history.war.world-war-ii

thornley@visi.com (David Thornley) wrote:

>>Certainly Churchill's observation of the hardening of British resolve
>>during the bombing of London by Germany was a clue that the whole
>>concept of strategic bombing needing rethinking.
>>
>It was a clue, but in fact nobody was able to form definite conclusions
>from it.
>
>Consider Bomber Command, and the belief that Germany could be defeated
>by dehousing the civilians. In other words, by something very similar
>to what caused the hardening of British resolve.

The Douhet terror-bombing theory was
never confirmed in practice. Even in
China, where the target country had
minimal powers of resistance, bombing
did not break up society.

OTOH the bombing campaign against Germany
was an order of magnitude more destructive
than that against Britain, and while it did
not _break_ national morale, it certainly
hurt; anger over the attacks provided a boost,
but IMHO was not the long-term sustainer of
German civilian morale - that was fear of
Soviet invasion. Also, the bombing caused
disruption of civilian life that damaged the
war effort.

>>>Their actions
>>>were in a fluid context, usually at a
>>>distance, where results were not rigorously
>>>known. Overclaiming was the natural result.
>>
>This was the case for every new weapons system I am aware of.
>The proponents always claimed they would be more effective than
>they turned out to be in practice.

The difference with airpower is that the
advocates claimed it _was_ more effective
than it actually was. Not would be, _was_.

With tanks, artillery, submarines, machine
guns, repeating rifles, or gas, the effect
of the weapon was usually known with fair
accuracy afterward. The nature of air warfare,
on the other hand, makes accurate knowledge
of effects extremely difficult.
--
| People say "There's a Stradivarius for sale for a |
| million," and you say "Oh, really? What's wrong |
| with it?" - Yitzhak Perlman |