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7+ opere 42 membri 2 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Thomas Hippler is a research associate in the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of Wa r at Oxford University, and an Emmy-Noether fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).

Opere di Thomas Hippler

Opere correlate

UN HISTORIEN DANS SES LENDEMAINS : PIERRE CHAUNU (2021) — Collaboratore — 1 copia

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Data di nascita
1972
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
UK
Luogo di residenza
Caen, France

Utenti

Recensioni

On the whole, I was not impressed with this monograph, as the writing is sufficiently prolix and roundabout that the author gives the impression they never really mastered their material. Part of this might be expectations on my part, in that the author seems to come out of a political science environment, and is mostly concerned with the implications of Douhet's concepts for the law of war, the role of the citizen in wartime, and how this contributed to post-1918 theories of Total War. Whereas I was mostly concerned about Douhet's military vision, what this meant for Italian military aviation, and, if Douhet was all that foundational, why did Italian air power seem to consistently punch below its weight in World War II?

As for my question, it appears that Douhet had enough authority in the early Fascist regime, and was sufficiently tendentious, that he was a net detriment to the development of effective Italian air power; particularly since that a force executing his theories would have required a lot more resources than Rome could have afforded. Hippler sees a vibrant environment of debate; I see a failure to generate a viable doctrine in a timely fashion. This is not to mention that Douhet seems to have had a rather weak technological vision, and seriously underestimated the development of the fighter interceptor, and what that would mean for his all-singing, all-dancing, "battleplane," which was the practical instrument of his theories (basically an improved version of the Caproni bombers that Douhet was familiar with). The battleplane turned out just to be a bomber-sized aircraft that did nothing well; at least in the French execution of the concept.

It has been observed that it took nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to really achieve the strategic impact that Douhet envisioned, and that the "bomber will always get through" crowd feared. Also, at the end of the day, popular will turned out to be a lot stronger than Douhet imagined, and it's on that reality the more expansive elements of his vision floundered on. Still, someone has to be first, and Douhet has that honor, as the prophet of strategic airpower, but there is a certain mystique to the man's name that seems unjustified.
… (altro)
 
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Shrike58 | 1 altra recensione | Sep 28, 2022 |
I came to this book looking for a discussion of bombing civilian populations during air war and the ethics thereof. As its subtitle indicates, Bombing the People is really about the thinking of one particular air-power strategist, the Italian general Giulio Douhet. Douhet was an advocate for total war, and Hippler provides a comprehensive intellectual history of his thought-- if I recall correctly, many of the works Hippler examines had previously not been translated into English, leading to misrepresenation of Douhet's actual belief. Douhet's intellectual evolution is actually kind of fascinating and worth recounting in full.

Hippler argues that early on, Douhet actually considered the bombing of civilians unconscionable; during World War I, he advocated for a World State that would abolish war. As someone who reads a lot of science fiction from 1880-1915, I find this a very familiar dream: H. G. Wells wanted this to happen, but so did many other proto-sf writers, like George Griffith and Louis Tracy, and Hippler reports that Douhet actually cites Wells. But Douhet went from seeing military forces as the only legitimate targets of aerial bombing in 1911 to calling for strategic bombing of urban centers in 1915. How did this happen?

It's actually a pretty compelling chain of logic. Relationships between nations are essentially anarchic; if you want there to be civilization between states, not just within them, you need international police and international courts. Only such an organization could successfully ban war. Thus, a nation that carries out war anyway is not an enemy nation, but a criminal nation, and we believe that criminals must be punished for their misdeeds, partly to discourage other criminals from carrying out misdeeds. So if war is unjust, and we want to stop war, we actually need aerial bombing as a punitive measure, because there's no other way to effectively punish a state for its misdeeds. If the leadership is responsible, the people will eventually rise up and change the leadership, ending the war, and thus leaders will be discouraged from starting wars. If you attack the enemy's population center from their air and break their will, there will actually be fewer casualties than in a long, drawn-out war. It's an amazing argument, I think, and one that recognizes that all civilization is fundamentally based on violence; the last bit even presages ways that President Truman allegedly rationalized using the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II. But that makes sense, if you keep in mind that in the 1910s, all-out air war was perceived as being as apocalyptic as nuclear war would be in the 1950s.

Douehet actually wrote his own future-war novel in 1919, Come finì la grande Guerra, where he got to put some of his ideas into practice. I must seek it out. Thanks to Hippler for covering in detail this important strategic thinker, tangling with in reality the same ideas I see pored over in fiction from the same era.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
Stevil2001 | 1 altra recensione | May 19, 2017 |

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Statistiche

Opere
7
Opere correlate
1
Utenti
42
Popolarità
#357,757
Voto
3.0
Recensioni
2
ISBN
19
Lingue
3