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Terror bombing is an emotive term used to describe aerial attacks made by a belligerent to demoralise an enemy.[nb 1][1][2] Use of the term to describe aerial attacks implies that the attacks are criminal attacks that fall outside the law of war,[3] or if within the laws of war are nevertheless a moral crime.[4] According to John Algeo in Fifty years among the new words its first recorded usage in a United States publication was in a Readers Digest article in June 1941, a finding confirmed by the Oxford English Dictionary.[5][6]
The aerial attacks described as terror bombing are often long range strategic bombing raids, although attacks against tactical targets which result in the deaths of civilians may also be described as such, or if the attacks involve fighters strafing they may be labeled "terror attacks."[7]
Chinese cities
Japanese terror bombing was independently conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service. Bombing efforts mostly targeted large Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Wuhan and Chonging. Three thousand tons of bombs were launched on the last one between 1939 and 1942. [8] According to photograph Carl Mydans, the spring 1941 bombings on Chongqing were «the most destructive shelling ever made on a city.» [9]
The bombing of Nanjing and Canton, which began on 22 and 23 September 1937, called forth widespread protests [10] culminating in a resolution by the Far Eastern Advisory Committee of the League of Nations. Lord Cranborne, the British Under-Secretary of State For Foreign Affairs, expressed his indignation in his own declaration.
Words cannot express the feelings of profound horror with which the news of these raids had been received by the whole civilized world. They are often directed against places far from the actual area of hostilities. The military objective, where it exists, seems to take a completely second place. The main object seems to be to inspire terror by the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians...
— Lord Cranborne [11]
The Japanese also dropped biological weapons as part of their aerial bombardment campaign. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague.[12] A film showing this operation was seen by the imperial princes Tsuneyoshi Takeda and Takahito Mikasa during a screening made by mastermind Shiro Ishii. [13]
The Blitz
The Blitz on British cities in WW2 is often cited as prime example of terror bombing,[14][15][16] as its primary purpose was to demoralize the British people into surrendering,[17] exemplified by the 29 December raid on London in 1940, when the main target of which was St Paul's Cathedral,[18][19] the night was specifically chosen so that the Thames would be at its lowest and thus provide the least amount of water to the firefighting operation,[19][20] the resulting firestorm destroyed an area of London greater than that destroyed in the great fire of London as such it has since been dubbed the Second Great Fire of London.[21] The use of unmanned Terror weapons by Germany such as the V1 and V2 and the Baedeker Blitz had a similar aim in the later stages of the war.[22] However, Sir Basil Collier, author of 'The Defence of the United Kingdom', the HMSO's official history[dubious – discuss]wrote:
Although the plan adopted by the Luftwaffe early September had mentioned attacks on the population of large cities, detailed records of the raids made during the autumn and the winter of 1940-41 does not suggest that indiscriminate bombing of the civilians was intended. The points of aim selected were largely factories and docks. Other objectives specifically allotted to bomber-crews included the City of London and the governmental quarter rounds Whitehall.
Dresden
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The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945, twelve weeks before the surrender of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 39 square kilometres (15 sq mi) of the city centre.[24] Estimates of civilian casualties vary greatly, but recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000.[25]
The German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, and other high ranking officials of the Third Reich,[26] frequently described attacks made on Germany by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) during their strategic bombing campaigns as terror attacks.[nb 2][nb 3] The Allied governments usually described their attacks on cities with other euphemisms such as area bombing (RAF) or precision bombing (USAAF), and for most of World War II the Allied news media did the same. However, at a SHAEF press conference on 16 February 1945, two days after the Bombing of Dresden, British Air Commodore Colin McKay Grierson, replied to a question by one of the journalists that the primary target of the bombing had been on communications to prevent the Germans moving military supplies, and to stop movement in all directions if possible. He then added in an offhand remark that the raid also helped destroying what is left of German morale. Howard Cowan, an Associated Press war correspondent, subsequently filed a story about the Dresden raid. The military press censor at SHAEF made a mistake and allowed the Cowan cable to go out starting with "Allied air bosses have have made the long awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of great German population centres as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler's doom." There were follow-up newspaper editorials on the issue and a long time opponent of strategic bombing, Richard Stokes MP, asked questions in the House of Commons on 6 March.[27]
The controversy stirred up by the Cowan news report, reached the highest levels of the British Government when on 28 March 1945 the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, sent a memo by telegram to General Ismay for the British Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff, in which he started with the sentence "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. ..."[28][29] Under pressure from the Chiefs of Staff and in response to the views expressed by Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, and the head of Bomber Command Arthur "Bomber" Harris among others, Churchill withdrew his memo and issued a new one. [29] This was completed on 1 April, 1945 and started instead with the usual British euphemism for attacks on cities: "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so called 'area-bombing' of German cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests. ..."[30]
Notes
- Footnotes
- ^ For terrorist attacks that involve bombings see the articles terrorism and List of terrorist incidents
- ^ Hessel (2006), p. 107 Goebbels used several terms including
terrorangriffe (terror raids) or Terrorhandlungen (terrorist activities) ... Terrorflieger (terror flyers or terrorist airman). Needless to say, no one in Germany used such terminology in connection with German bombing raids against cities in England
- ^ Fritz (2004), p. 44
... Western Allies ... were "air pirates." "They are murderers!" screamed the headlines of an article emanating from Berlin on February 22. Not only dd the writer denounce the allied "terror bombing," he also stressed the "special joy" that the "Anglo-American air gangsters" took in murder of innocent German civilians ...
- Citations
- ^ Nehemia Geva & Cigdem Sirin (Department of Political Science Texas A&M University), and Keren Sharvit (Psychology Department Tel Aviv University). The Impact and Thematic Relevance of Negative Emotions on Foreign Policy Preferences Concerning Terror, p. 17 "(a) thematic relevance of the emotive trigger (terror bombing)"
- ^ Overy (2005), p. 119
- ^ Myrdal (1977), p. 252
- ^ Axinn (2008), p. 73
- ^ Algeo, p. 111 "TERROR BOMBING. Bombing designed to hasten the end of a war by terrorising the enemy population—1941 Read. Dig. June p. 58/2 ..."
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary terror,n, "terror-bombing, intensive and indiscriminate bombing designed to frighten a country into surrender; terror raid, a bombing raid of this nature".
- ^ Brower (1998), p. 108 (mentions that Historian Ronald Shaffer described Operation Clarion, an operation that involved both bombing and strafing, as a terror attack).
- ^ Don Moser, China-Burma-India, Time-Life, 1978, p.8
- ^ Don Moser, China-Burma-India, Time-Life, 1978, p.8
- ^ The Illustrated London News, Marching to War 1933-1939, Doubleday, 1989, p.135
- ^ The Illustrated London News, Marching to War 1933-1939, Doubleday, 1989, p.135
- ^ Japan triggered bubonic plague outbreak, doctor claims, [1], Scaruffi, Piero (1999), A time-line of World War II, retrieved 2008-05-02
- ^ Daniel Barenblatt, A Plague upon Humanity, 2004, p.32.
- ^ Stansky, Peter (2007). The first day of the blitz. Yale University Press. p. 137. ISBN 9780300125566.
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(help) - ^ Miller, Donald (2001). The Story of World War II. Simon & Schuster. p. 41. ISBN 978-0743211987.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Whitaker, Muriel (2001). Great Canadian War Stories. The University of Alberta Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0888643834.
{{cite book}}
:|access-date=
requires|url=
(help) - ^ Fitzgibbon, Constantine (1958). The winter of the bombs. W.W.Norton. p. 94. OCLC 619290.
- ^ "Blitz: The Diary of an air raid". Channel 4. Retrieved 24 July 2009.
- ^ a b Gaskin, Margaret (2006). Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940. Harcourt. pp. 82&c. ISBN 0151014043.
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:|access-date=
requires|url=
(help) - ^ Smith, Malcolm (2001). Britain and 1940:History, Myth and Popular Memory. Routledge. p. 78. ISBN 041524076X.
{{cite book}}
:|access-date=
requires|url=
(help) - ^ "The 29th of December 1940 AD, Worst night of The Blitz". information-britain.co.uk. Retrieved 24 July 2009.
- ^ "Growing Up in London 1939-45". BBC Online. Retrieved 24 July 2009.
- ^ Collier, 1957. p. 261
- ^
- Aerial views of the damage, Der Spiegel, retrieved 10 January, 2008.
- Angell (1953) The number of bombers and tonnage bombs in the lead are taken from a USAF document written in 1953 and classified secret until 1978. Also see Taylor (2005), front flap, which gives the figures 1,100 heavy bombers and 4,500 tons.
- Burleigh, Michael. "Mission accomplished", The Guardian, 7 February 2004.
- Addison (2006), Chapter "City under Attack" by Sonke Neitzel, p. 74.
- Bomber Command Arthur Harris's report, "Extract from the official account of Bomber Command by Arthur Harris, 1945", National Archives, Catalogue ref: AIR 16/487, which says that 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) were destroyed.
- ^ The consensus among historians is that the number killed was between slightly under 25,000 to a few thousand over 35,000.See
- Evans, Richard J. David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial: Electronic Edition, [(i) Introduction.
- Addison (2006), p. 75.
- Taylor, Bloomsbury 2005, p. 508.
- All three historians, Addison, Evans and Taylor, refer to:
- Bergander, Götz (1977). Dresden im Luftkrieg: Vorgeschichte-Zerstörung-Folgen. Munich: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, who estimated a few thousand over 35,000.
- Reichert, Friedrich. "Verbrannt bis zur Unkenntlichkeit," in Dresden City Museum (ed.). Verbrannt bis zur Unkenntlichkeit. Die Zerstörung Dresdens 1945. Altenburg, 1994, pp. 40-62, p. 58. Richard Evans regards Reichert's figures as definitive. [2]. For comparison, the 9-10 March, 1945 Tokyo raid by the USAAF, the most destructive firebombing raid in WWII, 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed, and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the firestorm. [3]
- ^ Kochavi p. 172
- ^ Taylor (2005) pp. 413,414
- ^ Siebert, Detlef. "British Bombing Strategy in World War Two", 1 August, 2001, BBC, retrieved 8 January, 2008.
- ^ a b Taylor, (2005), p. 430. Cite error: The named reference "Taylor-430" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ Taylor (2005), p. 434.
References
- Algo, John (1993). Fifty years among the new words: a dictionary of neologisms, 1941-1991, American Dialect Society, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521449715, 9780521449717
- Axinn, Sidney (2008). A Moral Military,Temple University Press, ISBN 1592139582, 9781592139583
- The Blitz: London's Longest Night(2005) PBS television.
- Gaskin, Margaret (2006). Blitz: the The Story of December 29, 1940, Harcourt, ISBN 0151014043, 9780151014040
- Brower, Charles F. (1998). World War II in Europe: the final year, Roosevelt Study Center,, Palgrave Macmillan,ISBN 0312211333, 9780312211332
- Hessel, Peter (2006). The Mystery of Frankenberg's Canadian Airman, James Lorimer & Company, ISBN 1550288849, 9781550288841
- Kochavi, Arieh J. (2005). Confronting captivity: Britain and the United States and their POWs in Nazi Germany, UNC Press, ISBN 0807829404, 9780807829400
- Myrdal, Alva (1977). The game of disarmament Manchester University Press ND, ISBN 0719006937, 9780719006937.
- Overy, R. J. (2005). The air war, 1939-1945, Brassey's, ISBN 1574887165, 9781574887167.
- Fritz, G. Stephen (2004). Endkampf: soldiers, civilians, and the death of the Third Reich, University Press of Kentucky, ISBN 0813123259, 9780813123257
- Taylor, Frederick (2005). Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945. London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 0-7475-7084-1.