It was over airpower!
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| Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin |
[After the Great War], those making bold claims for airpower, [especially Italy's Giulio Douhet, America's Billy Mitchell, and Great Britain's Hugh Trenchard] gained degrees of legitimacy for a variety of reasons. The war had indicated that technological advancement could take place in a highly telescoped way. Many observers thus concluded that the technological development of air power would be fast and relentless—and offensive capabilities would outstrip defensive ones. Moreover, many assumed that some of the most daunting weapons of the war, including chemicals and gas, would be teamed with airpower. (Tami Davis Biddle, U.S. Army War College.)
One of the most important consciousness-raising attempts by politicians about the terrible realities of air warfare came in the speech by the Conservative leader Sir Stanley Baldwin to the House of Commons in 1932. Baldwin pointed out that no town was safe: "The question is: whose morale will be shattered quickest by that preliminary bombing?" Baldwin was content to ram home his point that rapidly evolving aircraft technology was a threat in and of itself: "I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through."
Source: The Blitz Companion
"whose morale will be shattered quickest by that preliminary bombing?"
ReplyDeleteWWII's answer was... nobody's? Everyone seems to have dug in under strategic bombing.
In the 1930s, people really believed that bombing in the next war could lead to utter devastation and the end of civilisation. Possibly this was fed by the media as well as politicians, and by such as Trenchard who had a vested interest in financing the RAF. The Alexander Korda film "Things to Come", based on HG Wells' book "The Shape of Things to Come" is an example. In reality, as Bryan says, people dug in and endured the bombing, and as all subsequent wars have shown, war cannot be won by air power alone unless the forces are severely imbalanced. In Britain we have the myth of the Blitz Spirit, where everyone pulled together and helped each other and kept a stiff upper lip: this is partly true, but also crime and the black market flourished. (When my father was six, his family lost their home and all they possessed in the first Coventry blitz in November 1940). After the war, the possibility of nuclear war again led to justified fear of total annihiliation. The experience in Ukraine seems to suggest that providing the aggressor desists from the nuclear option, the risk will be of "death by 1000 cuts" - manned bombers will not be able to penetrate defenses, so the alternative is to send swarms of drones and cruise missiles to overwhelm the defences and degrade the infrastructure. I wonder if today's population will cope with losing their wifi and having power cuts with the same fortitude as their forebears.
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