A History of Bombing

This is a great book, but very hard to take. I found could only be swallowed in small doses. But I promise you, no matter how much you think you know about the military history of the 20th century, you will be faced with a lot of new, and very disturbing material. Probably should be required reading in the US and UK.As one reviewer pointed out, it is a bit like bull fighting from behind the barricades, but that really only applies to the first couple years of WWII. Admittedly Churchill was faced with an almost hopeless situation in 1939-41, and probably gets a pass on his decisions in that window, but that is a very small portion of the material covered in this book.Those interested in the question of how Britain and Germany initiated bombing of one another's cities, should read RV Jones great book The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-1945 (titled The Most Secret War in UK), which gives a somewhat different take on how that decision took place. In his telling Hitler made a terrible mistake in shifting from tactical bombing of British airfields, which was taking a serious toll on the RAF, to bombing London and other cities. If he had kept pounding the fighter bases, he might have won the Battle of Britain.

Sven Lindqvist's "A History of Bombing" is a commentary on the social, historical, political and military developments that led to the rise of aerial bombing in the 20th century. Lindqvist's pastiche of historical sources, literature, and his own autobiographical story is a terrific alternate vision of the 20th century and the powers that dominated it, with bombing the main power they used.The first thing you need to know about "A History of Bombing" is about the way it is written: it is a unique format of different threads that weave and connect through the 186 page frame. The book itself is divided into 386 short sections, entangled and jumbled throughout. After you read Section 1, it directs you to Section 166. So you flip there, read that section, then continue down the line. The reason is to show all the twisted strands of logic: political and military, social and literary, that led to the acceptance and development of brutal aerial bombing as the status quo. You could also just read it back to front, which is what I did the second time because I missed several sections.The book describes - and this I didn't know much about - how after World War I the European powers bombed colony after colony to continue to assert their dominance across the globe. For example, in 1919 a British government administrator by the name of Winston Churchill was delighted to crush a rebellion in Somaliland, estimated to take a year by the army, in a week's time at the cost of only 77,000 pounds. Later, Churchill is concerned when the Air Force summarizes a raid in modern day Iraq in which they are happy that many of native families: "...jumped into a lake, thus making a good target for the machine guns." This is at the beginning of the long tradition of European using brutal aerial bombing missions to target "uncivilized" savages that happen to reside in the colonies they are desperate to keep.From there Lindqvist continues through the 20th century, describing the theories that preceded World War II and the actions before and immediately thereafter. Here he expands his theory that aerial bombing is an extension of racist ideologies - that the horrors of bombing are normalized by making the victims subhuman: whether the uncivilized savages throughout Indochina and Africa, the Nazis bombing the subhuman Slavs of Soviet Union, Japan bombing China or the United States firebombing Japan. He continues to describes the inadequacy of bombing campaigns in the second half of the 20th century - the misery of Korea, the loss by France and England of Kenya/Vietnam/Algeria/Malaysia/et al despite very successful bombing campaigns, and the quagmire of Vietnam. Lindqvist touches on what Alistair Horne best describe in "A Savage War of Peace," that each of those bombing campaigns in British and French colonies did more to create terrorist and to counteract positive political than to "win the war." The wars had become protracted guerrilla campaigns, with military successes and political and social losses. The First World can keep bombing, and continue losing. In the background Lindqvist tracks the growth of nuclear arms to the point of Mutually Assured Destruction, and all the insanity of military planning at the heigh of the Cold War. Lindqvist ends on a warning note, that the First World lifestyle is not sustainable and the genocides of the 21st century lie in the disparities of wealth that now exist.Some important things to mention. First off, Lindqvist is much harsher on Western powers than Eastern powers. I assume because of lack of archival information, he does not touch on bombing campaigns of the Soviet Union and Red China, and only briefly mentions the Japanese blitz bombing of Shanghai in 1933. That doesn't lend itself to a fair balanced account of the 20th century. Did the Soviet and China not use aerial bombing to put down rebellions in their own territory?Secondly, and this is important to American readers, Lindqvist is critical of American and British military planners to the point of calling them war criminals. Specifically, he blames them for the adoption of area bombing of residential centers rather than the precision bombing of industrial targets. This led to the catastrophic destruction and decimation of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and many others. Sure, it is clear now that precision bombing of Germany's industries would have led to their surrender sooner; specifically ball bearing factories and lubricant plants that were the nuts and bolts of the Wehrmacht's Panzers. But hindsight is always 20-20; these planners didn't ask for this war, and clearly they thought what they were doing was best.That's where my belief differs slightly from Lindqvist. If you start a fight with a stranger in a bar, can you blame him if he pulls a knife and stabs you? Obviously that wouldn't hold up in a court of law, but the idea is that once you open Pandora's Box, you can't freak out when some monsters come out. Yes, it was clear to some that area bombing civilians would not hasten the end of the war. But it's war! Things are stressful, bad decisions are made, terrible strategies are pursued. Let's not group the military planners of countries that were not the aggressors with the Tojos and Mussolinis and Hitlers of the world, that actively pursued death and destruction for material and political gain. I don't agree with the Western Power's use of bombing throughout the Third World, but who is more at fault for Tokyo being firebombed? The Americans that dropped the bombs, or the Japanese that started the war.The other thing to mention is Lindqvist's dissection of end of the world literature. This did not do much for me, and did not interest me. I also didn't think it added much strength to any of his arguments - was much more interested in things that actually happened rather than some crazy literature from the 1920's.My caveats aside, "A History of Bombing" is a unique treatise that breaks down the development and rise of aerial bombing from 1911 to today. Now it has become the staple of our military, possible in "Call Of Duty" and shown on CNN via cruise missile gonzo footage. Read it to learn more about the wars of the 20th Century, including the stuff that didn't make your high school history book. Lindqvist is a smart man and does a great job showing how the 20th century became a bombing century and how "global violence is the hard core of our existence."

I think the format that required the reader to skip pages to continue a story was obnoxious, but other than that, a good read.

A History of Bombing by Sven LindqvistThis book explores the history of bombing with a focus on those who were bombed, and the attitudes of those who did the bombing. It is not a technical history, but rather a moral history, along the lines of Jonathan Glover's book Humanity, although their emphases and styles are very different.He draws from many sources to put together a view which is very unique, combining military history, literary history, and political history (especially of European colonies) with analyses of the development of international law regulating warfare and of politicians and officer's views of war. He also adds in autobiographical elements of his fear of attacks as a child during WWII. He follows the development of technologies of bombing, and the techniques of bombing that came along with them (localized to strategic to area bombing, with nuclear bombing of civilians being the culmination of this). He looks at many futuristic novels to see what people's attitudes were toward war and the massive annilhilation possible through bombing, and finds much racism, and also many predicitions of how destructive bombing would become. He looks at many military theoreticians and shapers of international law, both before and since the advent of planes and bombing, to see what has formed our views of what is acceptable in warfare, and how these laws have been bent and broken.One of Lindqvist's main points is the element of racism in bombing, and how bombing was initially acceptable only when conducted against those who were not civlized, or less than human. Europeans became used to the idea of bombing in the colonies, and this paved the way for the massive bombing which first took place in "civilized lands" in WWII.He does not shy away from criticizing those groups who are supposed to be the vanguard of civilization, such as the British and Americans. He discusses colonial interventions, and how bombing was integrated into the general program to civilize the "savages" of Africa and Asia. He points out how little value was given to the life of one of the colonized as opposed to one of the colonizers. Only with this inequality could bombing could be used as a police action (i.e., to put down rebellions) which was cheaper, in terms of money and lives--but only in terms of lives of the colonizers. This inequality also comes up when looking at international law. The laws concerning warfare, such as the Geneva conventions, were shaped during the period when Europeans held colonies. Even though these laws were put in universal terms, in practice they were only thought to apply to fighting between "civilized" countries, and not to what goes on in the colonies. Again, this inequality comes up with regard to national sovereignty, and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.A large part of the book focuses on WWII, and he criticizes many of the choices of the Allied powers, such as area bombing and firebombing in Germany, firebombing and nuclear bombing in Japan. Some people may therefore find this book one-sided, but remember that this is the side that historically has not been heard. Also, he places WWI and WWII against the history of imperialism, of the Europeans and the Japanese, which makes it clear that he is not a supporter of any specific country, but concerned with the effects of warfare on people at large, whoever and wherever they may be, and even if they are citizens of an enemy country.P.S. The structure of the book is really interesting. It is split into many short sections that have more or less a single point, and are centered around an event or person. These are placed in chronological order, but the book only makes sense if you read it following one of 23 strands he identifies, each focusing on different aspects of the history (i.e., "Bombing the Savages", "Hamburg, Auschwitz, Dresden", "Massive Retaliation", etc.). In this way, as you move through history, forward and backward, you flip through the book, which helps emphasize the historical placement of the events and ideas, and allows him to touch on a lot of different topics without the book becoming a mess.

Sven LindquistA history of bombingLindquist has amassed a body of evidence in this enlightening history of bombing warfare, making use of a huge range of historical sources. He arranges them in a somewhat unique way, so that they can speak for themselves and, through the course of the book, Lindquist allows the sheer weight of the evidence to draw his reader along the many possible paths through his book toward the one inevitable conclusion. Lindquist examines bombing as military strategy, considers its cultural context and, most powerfully, takes on the oft-touted concept of 'Precision bombing'. Some readers might find it interesting to also know that Lindquist was himself bombed as a child. This doesn't so much skew the writer's arguments as, from time to time, lend him a unique perspective on them.By the end of Lindquist's book we are left with the realisation that the term 'Precision bombing' has been so misused as to be virtually redundant, little more than the PR-speak governments over three generations have used to forestall objection to bombing campaigns conducted, in effect, against civilian populations: 'precision bombing' has been the catch-all moral and political get-out clause. Lindquist traces so-called 'Precision bombing' campaigns throughout human history and it quickly becomes clear that from the deliberate WW2 strategy of area bombing in key german towns to the 'shock and awe' tactics in Iraq, 'precision bombing' has more often than not turned out to be straightforward area bombing, intended to crudely terrorise and cow the general population, rather than anything else.Further to that last point, in terms of the long term effectiveness of bombing as a military strategy, Lindquist makes a good case for bombing being premised on two fundamentally faulty beliefs:1. That human beings will be cowed and supplicant to the bombers, rather than united in common cause against them;2. That bombs can and will differentiate, except in extreme instances, between the target and the innocent. Lindquist's evidence is: they won't. Bombs are by very definition a crude tool. Even with the most modern technology, the 'target' and the innocents are living side by side, harm done to innocents is an intractable and inevitable part of bombing which no talk of 'Precision' can erase. 'Collateral damage' is the military term for the women, children, infants and other innocents, young and old, who are killed, maimed, crushed, burned or buried under the rubble. 'Collateral damage' makes the child amputees in the nearby hospital sound secondary to the main point. Makes all that damage seem containable, clinical, emotionally safe information for military personnel and the public to handle.Lindquist considers the cultural milieu of bombing: often noting how bombs and bombing, by all and any sides, are tied up irrevocably with notions of manliness. He traces the ways in which this supposed interconnection between bombing and manhood is much ramped up in much of the story, film, propaganda and public debate predating the most brutal bombing campaigns; Lindquist also traces racism as having a direct relationship with bombing (the unconscious or consciously expressed idea that 'they', i.e. the bombing victims, are 'not like us', different, making it possible to detach ones familiar moral judgments and act more inhumanely toward them, or enabling a dangerous tribalism which allows a military operation to prioritise the lives of 'our' servicemen over those of even children from the opposing side, so long as they live in remote areas and there are no cameras present); Last of all, and perhaps most terrifyingly, his evidence shows that in the run up to bombing campaigns there are idealised notions about what technology may deliver. In the popular novels and stories predating Hiroshima, for instance, the bomb takes on semi-magical properties in the narrative. It can make all bad things go away in one cool, clean stroke. An infantile idea, of course, when put forward so straightforwardly, but a much more powerful and insidious one when imbedded as a message in a hundred different art forms to which the public are exposed in the years preceding a brutal bombing campaign against a civilian population. To give you a real shudder, Lindquist effectively demonstrates that all three elements: machismo, racism and 'magical thinking' were present in popular novels about bombs and bombing in the period leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima.The last piece of the puzzle is perhaps most relevant to the empathy library: the inescapable fact that a bomb kills from a distance. There is no human eye appraising a complex and moving situation, no interaction: even today there are only shadows on a screen, very much like a video game, in fact, of the kind now often used to recruit and to train armed personnel. Empathy and compassion, humanity are of course entirely absent from this detached place.Many people, including relatives of serving men and women, may object to Lindquist's evidence about the atrocity of much of aerial warfare, its effect on civilian populations, and I sympathise. My own maternal grandfather took part, as a WW2 Lancaster bomber, in some of the most heartlessly destructive bombing campaigns in human history (and no, it wasn't 'Just the Americans', as many Britons tell themselves). There was no 'gotcha', for him, I have to say. No 'shock and awe' or other macho posturing. Only a man who had to live out the rest of his years knowing that he'd been responsible, in following direct orders, for the deaths of women, children and infants. (He'd perhaps also saved the lives of other women, children, infants, but they were hypothetical for him, where the civilians he had killed were just all too real.) I personally believe he comprehended his predicament entirely and was destroyed by it. And of course it doesn't detract from the pain of the victims one iota to consider what is being asked of the (often young) men and women who serve to protect us. What is fair to ask of them. But whatever the bomber feels or doesn't feel must of course pale into insignificance when set alongside the plight of those being bombed. Lindquist makes the point that even those not directly hit or physically hurt undergo the psychological harm of knowing that the sky/roof can fall in at any moment. One can't help but wonder at the naive brand of psychology that imagines that generating this kind of climate of fear does any good to any side in the long term. Imagine, for a moment being a child raised in such a highly strung environment, of course some children might be cowed and supplicant, and decide that when they grow up they will go the bombers way, but as Lindquist effectively demonstrates, the evidence from much of human history suggests the other outcome entirely. That the bombed population will become desperate, extremist, united in a profound resistance against the bomber and all that he stands for. The bomber makes enemies that he didn't have before. Damaged and dedicated enemies.Setting aside, for the sake of argument, the question of compassion for the fearful child in the situation (and why would you ever set that aside?) there is still enlightened self interest for your own child. Lindquist brings the question home, as an aid to understanding: Did bombing attacks on Britain make the British supplicant? Were the British bombed into submission? The question beggars belief, because of course history teaches that the exact opposite occurred: a deeply class-riven and divided people were united in common cause in a historically unique and profound way. Their common goal to resist their enemy together trumped all and anything else. Bombing Britain thoroughly secured Britain's unerring sense of togetherness, fellowship, purpose. Considering how our own society has felt and reacted should make it easier to understand why drone attacks might easily miss their intended target in more than one way.The cold fact seems to be that the trajectory of modern warfare and technological development is such that wars may be increasingly waged at the flick of a button from a very great distance, and as a society it has never been more important for us to take stock, consider what it means when a button can be pushed, at no cost to themselves, by a man or woman sitting in a comfortable chair at a very great distance, having the power of life and death over people on the ground. Through their 'video game screens' they can't look into their target's eyes, see that he is ready to surrender, terrified, that he's the wrong guy, or just a child hiding under a table. We need to face this squarely and grasp it, consider what exactly it is that we are prepared to live with. Lindquist might argue that this isn't even the real question. That bombs aren't effective as a long term military strategy at all.It is perhaps Lindquist's greatest accomplishment as a historian that he has taken apart, piece by evidential piece, the moral and political get out clause of 'precision' bombing and exposed it for the myth that it is. Also tracing the infantile idea, imbedded in some sections of our culture, that there can be clean and instant solutions to complex human problems in most instances. There may be exceptions that prove the rule, of course, but as an overall strategy, with each new 'collateral damage', each innocent killed, there are tens and hundreds of new recruits to the opposite side, a thousand newly-made enemies for the bomber, and a moral war being dangerously lost a little more each day.

Anyone with an interest in how our society is the way it is should read this book. Anyone with an interest in 20th Century history should read this book. Particularly those interested in the history of the 2nd World War and the part played by Britain and the Allies who have been taught the accepted narrative of our history in school and via the media. In fact, this book should be required reading as part of British history course curriculums. The Humanity of the author is equalled only by the inhumanity he graphically describes. This book illustrates the calmly, calculated methods used by intelligent, respected human beings to have acts of mass murder committed on their behalf against their fellow human beings. The only reason I don't give 4 Stars, as I would with Lindquist's 'Exterminate All The Brutes' is the occasional difficulty encountered on the odd occasion one puts the book down then picks it up trying to find where one left off (it's designed to read in sections, requiring the reader to move from numbered section to numbered section rather than page to page). I can't imagine what the Kindle version is like to read, if there is one.

I am still trying to decide if I liked the way the information was presented in this book. I think the jumping around worked in this instance but I wouldn't like this technique to catch on with other writers.Lindqvist contradicts the standard narratives we are taught in the UK about the motives and morality of the Western powers during the 20th Century.It is a shocking and beautifully written book.

It's unusual and covers the ground excellently. The only nit I have to pick is about the activity of the Luftwaffe on The Eastern Front, 1941-43, which I think could have been more thoroughly done.

Good book. Arrived well