Bombardments of the RAF in the Great Iraqi Revolt
Table of contents
Table of contents...2
Introduction...3
1. Bombardments and the role of civilians...13
1.1 Definition of strategic and tactical bombardments...13
1.2 Bombardments in international law...15
1.3 Connection between total war and bombardments...18
1.4 Conclusion...20
2. New form of warfare...21
2.1 Historical background of the development of strategic bombing...21
2.2 Air theorists...25
2.3 Conclusion...30
3. Motives for and the justification of bombardments...31
3.1 Historians’ perspective on the use of bombardments in Iraq...31
3.2 Justification bombardments through imperialism...35
3.3 Conclusion...37
4. Historical analysis...38
4.1 Historical debate about defining the air policy of the RAF in Iraq...38
4.2 The position of civilians in bombardments...43
4.3 Conclusion...51
Conclusion...52
Abstract...55
Literature list...56
Frontpage. Photo of Sergeant Grant, RAF’s Photo Album. The pilot is Flight Lieutenant Samuel Kinkhead, a fighter ace from the First World War. Alongside him are Squadron Leader Robb and Flight Officer French.
Introduction
In the Second World War, bombardments of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on cities such as Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne are known as strategic bombardments. While tactical
bombing aims at military and economic objectives, strategic bombing is a strategy which has more room for interpretation.1 Strategic bombing signify to break the morale of civilians but
is a sensitive term because it is associated with inflicting civilians. The RAF started in the Second World War with bombing economic targets, like factories. As the war continued, the RAF aimed more at the demoralization of the German population. Demoralization was part of the strategy which Trenchard, Chief of the British Air Staff from 1918 till 1930, advocated from 1918 onwards, arguing that strategic bombardments ‘may include the intent to
demoralize and inflict civilian casualties’.2
One of the strategic bombardments of the RAF in the Second World War were the bombardments on Dresden in February 1945, which killed twenty-five thousand German civilians. German historians, like Eberhard Spetzler, Hans Rumpf, Norbert Frei and Mathias Beer, devalue the German atrocities in the Second World War and compare the strategic bombardments of the RAF on German cities with a genocide.3 The American historian
Donald Miller even mentioned Dresden an urban holocaust.4 Comparing a bombardment
whereby twenty-five thousand civilians were killed with the systematic murder on a specific population group is a hard assumption.
Genocide is a limited term by taking the definition of the United Nations in 1948, because you need to have the intent to destroy a specific group. To measure the intent to kill someone is difficult.5 In the Second World War, the Air Staff knew that German civilians
would be killed during bombardments on German cities, because all soldiers were at the front. On the other hand, the RAF did not bomb the cities to kill German civilians. It was their aim 1 Richard Overy, ‘Air warfare’ in: Charles Townshend, The Oxford history of modern war (Oxford 2005) 264. 2 Richard Overy, The bombing war Europe, 1939-1945 (New York 2014) 1-55, there 3.
3 Bas von Benda-Beckmann, German Historians and the Bombing of German Cities. The contest air war (Amsterdam 2015) 7-264, there 37 and 70.
4 Donald L. Miller, Masters in the Air. America’s bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany (New York 2014) 15-672, there 557.
5 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) Article two: genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious groups such as: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Article three: the following acts shall be punishable. Genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; attempt to commit genocide; complicity in genocide.
to demoralize and hopefully end the war sooner.6 Demoralizing civilians without inflicting
civilian casualties is however almost impossible.7 The Air Staff accepted this as revenge for
the German atrocities on, for example, London. The Air Staff are the officers who lead the RAF. Trenchard was the Chief of the Air Staff and he cooperated closely with Secretary of State for War and for Air Winston Churchill. Jacques Sémelin, French historian, psychologist and political scientist, argued that the term genocide legitimized situations since the term is justified as part of the UN. For this reason, Sémelin states that the term loses its meaning.8
Sémelin is opposed to use the term genocide and is the founder of the Online Encyclopaedia of Mass Violence (OEMV).
Mass violence is a broader term than genocide. It stands for violence against unarmed civilians with the intent to kill them indiscriminately and could contain genocide but does not have to. This signifies to not make a distinction between combatants or non-combatants or between men, women and children. Dutch sociologist Abraham De Swaan mentioned bombing as asymmetric mass violence. Asymmetric signifies that armed and organized men kill unorganized and unarmed people.9 Just like De Swaan, British historian Richard Overy
stated that strategic bombings are a mass killing of unarmed civilians.10
This thesis uses the point of view of De Swaan to consider strategic bombing as mass violence. Mass violence means the intent to kill indiscriminately and Trenchard stated that all people – including women and children – should be bombed.11 Violence against unarmed
civilians is the other characteristic and Trenchard stated in a memo on August 14, 1919 that the bombardments of the RAF in Afghanistan and Somaliland ‘show that against a semi-civilized enemy unprovided with aircraft, aerial operations alone may have such a deterrent effect as to be practically decisive’.12
The term strategic bombing is sensitive since the Second World War, because it is associated with inflicting civilians. There is however no conclusive definition of strategic bombing. Analyst Scot Robertson, who has written extensively on arms control and various aspects of contemporary strategic issues, states that strategic bombings aim at ‘targets far
6 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 3. 7 See historical debate chapter four.
8 Jacques Sémelin, Purify and Destroy. The political uses of massacre and genocide (Paris 2007) 1-383, there 324, there 312.
9 Abraham De Swaan, The Killing Compartments. The mentality of mass murder (London 2015) 1-325, there 1 and 3-5.
10 Richard Overy, Keynote address: “Perpetrator Research in International Context”,, 18-19. 11 Trenchard to Young, August 22, 1921, 39645, CO 730/2, PRO.
from the fighting front’.13 Overy agrees with Robertson and adds that the term is ‘neither neat
nor precise’.14 American historian Donald Miller states that strategic bombing is the idea that
aircrafts hit (small) targets with a lot of precision from great heights. A radar can hit specific targets. While the radar developed in the 1930s and during the Second World War, it was not perfected.15 Concluding from above mentioned historians, this thesis states that strategic
bombing is a broad term with room for interpretation in contrast to tactical bombing. Because the RAF knew civilians could be killed as a consequence of the strategic bombardments, it is comprehensiblethat historians consider killing civilians as aim of strategic bombing.
The RAF had the aim to demoralize civilians with the use of strategic bombardments in future conflicts after the First World War.16 Trenchard and Churchill were aware of the
limited technology and the possibility to hit civilians with strategic bombardments. The RAF stated that strategic bombing was a more humane form of warfare in comparison to the trench warfare in the First World War. As a consequence, civilians were unintended casualties. The Air Staff had to convince the parliament that strategic bombardments would lead to less casualties. Trenchard ‘took steps to censor reports before they reached his political masters’ because it ‘could harm government and air force’.17 The Air Staff justified the possible
civilian casualties by using the ideology of social Darwinism. When the RAF tested the use of strategic bombardments in, for example, the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May-August 1919) and the campaign in Somaliland (February-March 1920), the Air Staff accepted civilian casualties, because the citizens of these countries were considered inferior.18 The RAF was
established as independent air force in April 1918 and strategic bombing was a new strategy that settled this independence.19 For this reason, it was crucial that the use of strategic
bombing was promoted as success.20
Based on the definition of tactical bombing and the definition of strategic bombing Trenchard drafted, this thesis will use the following definition of strategic bombing: 13 Robertson, ‘The development of Royal Air Force’, 43-46.
14 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 13.
15 Donald L. Miller, Masters in the Air. America’s bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany (New York 2014) 15-672, there 21-22.
16 Overy, ‘Air warfare’, 266.
17 Birds of Death. A television documentary on RAF bombing of civilians in 1920s and 1930s. Director George Case, a Wall to Wall television production for Channel 4, 1992. Transcribed by Stephen Hewitt from a broadcast on 21 April 1996. Available on: http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/birds_of_death/transcript.html
18 The idea that social Darwinism and imperialism played a large role during the Great Iraqi Revolt to legitimize the bombardments on Iraqi civilians is further discussed in chapter three and four.
19 Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996) 58-62, there 59-60.
20 Tanaka, ‘British ‘humane bombing’ in Iraq’, 13-16; David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The
bombardments behind the fighting front, aimed at the morale of the civilian population which could lead to civilian casualties. Because strategic bombing could contain inflicting civilian casualties, historians refrain from mentioning bombardments strategic. This thesis includes the element of making civilian casualties in the term strategic bombing and does not judge bombardments in the interwar years as strategic by solely looking from the stance of the strategic bombardments in the Second World War.
Strategic bombing can be considered as mass violence because the Air Staff killed indiscriminately. By not mentioning the bombardments of the RAF in the Great Iraqi Revolt strategic, historians disregard the possibility that civilians could become casualties as
consequence of bombardments. Strategic bombing was not always a form of mass violence because civilian casualties could be a consequence of the bombardments. For this reason, this thesis adds something to the scientific debate.
Before the outbreak of the Second World War, there were more instances of strategic bombing. Most of the literature consider the bombardments of the German Luftwaffe on the Spanish city Guernica in 1937 as the first strategic bombardments.21 However, because of the
sensitivity of the term, most historians do not consider the bombardments of the Royal Air Force on Iraq during the Great Iraqi Revolt in 1920. This thesis focus on the bombardments in the Great Iraqi Revolt. Therefore, the historical account of the revolt is elaborated below.
The Great Iraqi Revolt lasted from May to October 1920. However, the origins of the revolt started before the First World War. The Ottoman Empire conquered Iraq in the
sixteenth century. With the outbreak of the First World War, Great Britain captured the Iraqi province Basra. Great Britain was already interested in Mosul before the First World War, because the province contained a lot of oil, which the British needed for the Royal Navy. Furthermore, Iraq was important for the prestige of the British empire because it was close to
21 Anthony Beever, The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (London 2006); John F. Coverdale,
Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton 1975); James S. Corum, ‘The Luftwaffe’s Army Support
Doctrine, 1918-1941’ in: The Journal of Military History 59 (January 1995); James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe:
creating the operational air war 1918-1940 (Kansas 1997); James S. Corum, ‘From Biplanes to Blitzkrieg: The
development of German Air Doctrine between the wars’ in: War in History 3 (1996); Thomas Gordon, The day
Guernica died (London 1975); Klaus A. Maier, Guernica 26 April 1937: Die Deutsche Intervention in Spanien und der "Fall Guernica." (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1975); Williamson Murray, Strategy for defeat. The Luftwaffe 1933-1945 (Alabama 1983); Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: inquisition and extermination in twentieth century Spain (London 2012); L. Raymond Proctor, Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War
(London 1983); Herbert Rutledge Southworth, Guernica! Guernica! A study of journalism, diplomacy,
propaganda, and history (Berkeley: California Press 1977); Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War. (Penguin
Books. 2001); Robert H. Whealey, Hitler and Spain: the Nazi role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Lexington 1989).
British India. After 1915, Britain had already occupied the provinces Basra, Bagdad and Mosul.22
In May 1916, Great Britain and France agreed in the Sykes-Picot treaty to divide Southwest-Asia into influence spheres if they defeated the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Great Britain and France would furthermore not acknowledge the independence of Arabic states. The inhabitants of the three provinces reacted differently to the British occupation. Basra reacted with relative equanimity. Mosul reacted with anti-Ottoman uprisings but did not support the British either. In Bagdad a possible uprising against the Ottoman authorities was possible. Most of the Iraqis welcomed the removal of Ottoman control but were apprehensive about the British military occupation. In early 1918, the Society of Islamic Revival was founded. This organisation reacted against the tighter administrative control and disbursement of funds of the British. It culminated in the
assassination of a British official. In respond, the British blockaded the city Najaf in 1918 and reasserted their control.23
At the end of the First World War, the British still occupied the three provinces.24 The
Ottoman Empire lost the war and was expulsed from Iraq in 1918. The Arabs believed that the expulsion would lead to greater independence. However, the League of Nations decided that the territories could be independent but under the guidance of one of the victorious countries who won the First World War. Great Britain officially received Iraq as a mandate from the League of Nations.25
The situation in Iraq was getting worse because the Iraqis did not want to become part of the British empire. Furthermore, the British desperately did not want to harm their
hegemony. In March 1920, Iraq held a congress in Damascus which declared the
independence of the Iraqi state. In May of that year, the Iraqis started the Great Iraqi Revolt to become independent of British rule and create an Arab government. One month later, the San Remo conference of Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan decided that Great Britain received the mandate over Iraq.26
The Great Iraqi Revolt started with peaceful demonstrations. In May 1920, there were mass meetings in Bagdad against the British mandate. A month later there started an armed 22 Maurice Blessing, ‘Irak na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Britse bommen op Irak’ in: Historisch Niewsblad 2 (2015).
23 Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 33-34.
24 Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge 2010) 1-44, there 31-32.
25 Mark Jacobsen, ‘Only by the sword: British counter-insurgency in Iraq 1920’ in: Small Wars and
Insurgencies 2:2 (August 1991) 323-363.
revolt in response to a couple of incidents. The revolt spread across the country, because the Iraqis were stronger than the British Army. As a consequence, the nature of the revolt changed.27 Because the prestige of the British empire prevailed, all possible means were
allowed. The revolt should be suppressed through a ‘structural supporting role’. Furthermore, Iraq was governed by British-Indian colonial civil servants and soldiers who were used to establish authority through the establishment of military intimidation.28
The revolt became increasingly acute because Great Britain did not want to lose their hegemonial status. Churchill would like to save money, because Great Britain had financial problems after the First World War. Besides, Churchill wanted the home front to think that the revolt in Iraq was small and more humane than the trench warfare of the First World War. While ‘strategic bombing’ had proved useful in Afghanistan and Somaliland, Churchill decided to ‘discipline’ the revolt through strategic bombing, states Arabist and journalist Maurice Blessing.29 The first squadrons of the RAF came into action in June 1920. The
advantage changed to the side of the British and the rebels ran out of supplies. In October 1920 the revolt ended when the rebels surrendered Najaf and Karbala, two cities, to the British authorities.30
The British army command censured the news about the revolt. There are no reliable sources about the number of Iraqis who fell victim to the strategic bombardments of the RAF. While Charles Tripp, specialized in the politics and history of the Near and Middle East, stated that the number was six thousand, Blessing argued there were eight thousand ‘enemy fighters’ who were killed. Architectural critic and writer Jonathan Glancey stated there were nine thousand victims, while Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence stated the
number was ten thousand.31 However, it is unclear how many of these victims were soldiers or
civilians. Furthermore, not only did the pilots bombed villages, they also shoot at Iraqis from their planes, so it is unknown from the literature, how many civilians were killed through the bombardments in the Great Iraqi Revolt. Some villages that were bombed by the RAF are Rowanduz, Kaniya Khoran, Barzan en Sulaymanya.32
In the Second World War, the RAF killed thousands of civilians with strategic bombardments. During the Great Iraqi Revolt, between six and ten thousand Iraqis lost their 27 Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 43.
28 Maurice Blessing, ‘Irak na de Eerste Wereldoorlog’. 29 Maurice Blessing, ‘Irak na de Eerste Wereldoorlog’. 30 Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 43.
31 Maurice Blessing, ‘Irak na de Eerste Wereldoorlog’; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 43; Glancey, ‘Our last occupation’; T.E. Lawrence, ‘A report on Mesopotamia’, in: The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920.
lives because of this strategy. And even nowadays, when the RAF is at war with ISIS in Iraq, civilians fell victim to bombardments, even though the British Ministry of Defence claims to make ‘no civilian casualties with the air campaign’.33 This shows the social relevance of this
thesis, because Great Britain have used bombardments from 1918 onwards till 2018. Just like the British Ministry of Defence nowadays conceals the fact that civilians are casualties of bombardments, historians are wary to do the same about the bombardments in the Great Iraqi Revolt. The Air Staff knew in the Second World War that the bombardments would inflict civilian casualties, because it turned out during the war that precision bombing was
impossible. For this reason, historians assume that strategic bombing always inflict civilian casualties as consequence. While the strategic bombardments of the RAF in the Second World War are labelled as genocide either as mass violence against civilians, the question in this thesis is raised if historians mention the strategic bombardments of the Royal Air Force in the Great Iraqi Revolt of 1920 as mass violence against civilians.
Methodology
To answer the main question, primary sources are necessary. However, after contacted different persons, no useful sources came to the fore. Sebastian Ritchie, Deputy Head of the Air Historical Branch of the Royal Air Force, argued that there were no strategic
bombardments during the Great Iraqi Revolt. He further wrote that ‘you have to define clearly what you mean by ‘strategic bombardments’’, whereby strategic bombardments is between quotation marks.34 Furthermore, Rolf de Winter, who works at the Ministry of Defence and
the Dutch Institute for Military History, contacted me to Peter Grimm, who is the former chairman of the Lecture group Air War 1939-1945. Both put question marks at the fact that the bombardments of the RAF in Iraq in 1920 were strategic. At the time of this contact, the research for this thesis was at a starting point. As a consequence, the opportunity is missed to further ask questions to these men about the fact that they mentioned the bombardments tactical.
Furthermore, the possibility to use British newspapers like The Guardian and The Times is researched, but British newspapers rather do not use the term bombardments to define the policy of the RAF in the Great Iraqi Revolt. Also because of the message the RAF wanted to bring to the home front. This means that different searching terms, like air policy, Mesopotamia, bombardment and Iraq did not gave any results which were useful for this 33 Tim Sculthorpe, ‘The RAF has dropped more than 3,400 bombs on ISIS in Iraq and Syria and claims to have hit NO civilians’ on: The Daily Mail 27 October 2017
thesis.35 No Arabic sources are used because of a language barrier which does mean that the
Iraqi side is underexposed which restricts this thesis to a more western viewpoint. For above mentioned reasons, this thesis does not make use of primary sources. Besides, during the search for secondary literature, there is not many literature on the Great Iraqi Revolt. Most of the sources that are used for this thesis, do mention the revolt. The historians however focus on the period before and after the revolt, which explain the causes and context of the situation. The revolt only lasted six months and the conflict between Great Britain and Iraq lasted till the 1930s. Besides, literature on strategic bombing focus on the First and Second World War and foremost on the origins of the strategic bombardments in the Second World War.36 The theories of air war theorists like Trenchard and the Italian general
Giulio Douhet are extensively researched too.37
This research is foremost based on secondary literature. Most of the literature is from recent years, which shows that the use of bombardments is still a developing field. The sources which are discussed in this thesis, are mentioned below. It is possible that multiple opinions emerge by using historians with different geographical and academic backgrounds.
There is debate how historians define the air policy of the RAF in the Great Iraqi Revolt. Three points of views are elaborated here and are more extensively discussed in chapter four. This debate demonstrates if historians attempt to mention the bombardments in the Great Iraqi Revolt as strategic. Only Robertson and Overy mention strategic
bombardments cautious in their works, but do not state that the RAF made use of strategic bombardments during the revolt. On the other hand, Ritchie, American air power historian James Corum, British historian David Omissi, British historian David Killingray and
35 Mesopotamia is the area which is the core of the current state of Iraq. At the time, the western world still called Iraq Mesopotamia.
36 For example on the First World War: Peter Gray and Owen Thetford, German Aircraft of the First World
War (London 1962); Lee Kennett, The First Air War 1914-1918 (London 1991); Rodney Madison, ‘Air Warfare,
Strategic Bombing’ in: The Encyclopaedia of World War I: A Political, Social and Military History I (Santa
Barbara 2005); Earl Tilford, ‘Air Warfare: Strategic Bombing’ in: he European Powers in the First World War:
An Encyclopaedia (Santa Barbara 1996).
For example on the Second World War: Horst Boog, The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1944/5. Germany and the Second World War. VII (Oxford 2006); John Buckley, Air
Power in the Age of Total War (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1999); James Holland, The Battle of Britain (London 2010); Donald L. Miller, Masters in the Air. America’s bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany (New York 2014); Richard Overy, The bombing war Europe, 1939-1945 (New York
2014).
37 Guilio Douhet, Command of the air (1942); Thomas Hipper, Bombing the people: Guilio Douhet and the foundations of air power strategy 1884-1939 (Cambridge 2013); H.R. Allen, The legacy of Lord Trenchard (London 1972); Andrew Boyle, Trenchard: man of vision (London 1962); Vincent Orange, Trenchard, Hugh Montague, first Viscount Trenchard (1873–1956) in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press 2004).
American historian Priya Satia speak of tactical bombardments.38 Because tactical
bombardments aim at military targets, this form of bombing is considered to fit in the legal framework. This could be a possible ground why scholars chose to mention the
bombardments tactical and refrain from label the bombardments as strategic.
Third, other scholars, like the American historian Susan Grayzel, German military historian Pieter Lieb, Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka, the British political scientist Toby Dodge and British historian Charles Townshend label the policy of the RAF just as air policy.39 This term is rather vague and, in this way, Churchill and Trenchard could advertise
the strategy of the new independent RAF to the parliament.40
Nowhere in the literature are the strategic bombardments of the RAF in the Great Iraqi Revolt examined with mass violence against civilians. For this reason, this thesis fills in a gap in the current literature by answering the question of whether the bombardments of the Royal Air Force on Iraq in the Great Iraqi Revolt were mass violence against civilians.
The structure of this thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter elaborates the difference between strategic and tactical bombing. Tactical bombardments aim at military targets and are considered as justified. Strategic bombing, on the other hand, aims at the morale of the population and can inflict civilian casualties. Strategic bombing is a form of mass violence and a sensitive term which could mean that historians refrain from mentioning bombardments strategic. For this reason, the difference between the two forms of bombing is elaborated.
Second, laws about aerial warfare are discussed. The development of international law is illustrated which is crucial to show the stance of countries towards the role of civilians. Are civilians protected against bombardments? Related to this, the question is raised if the Great Iraqi Revolt was a form of total war. In a state of total war, civilians are considered legitimate military targets, because they supported the war effort. If civilians are considered legitimate 38 Sebastian Ritchie, The RAF, Small Wars and Insurgencies in the Middle East, 1919-1939 (Swindon 2011); James S. Corum, ‘The Myth of Air Control: Reassessing the History’ in: Aerospace Power Journal 14:4 (2000); David Killingray, ‘‘A swift agent of government’: air power in British colonial Africa, 1916-1939’ in: The
Journal of African History 25:4 (1984); David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919–1939 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press 1990); Priya Satia, ‘The Defense of
Inhumanity: Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia’ in: The American Historical Review 111:1 (February 2006).
39 Yuki Tanaka, ‘British ‘humane bombing’ in Iraq during the interwar era’ in: Marilyn Blatt Young and Toshiyuki Tanaka, Bombing civilians: a twentieth-century history (New York 2010); Susan R. Grayzel, At home
and under fire. Air raids and culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge 2012); Peter Lieb,
‘Suppressing Insurgencies in Comparison: The Germans in the Ukraine, 1918, and the British in Mesopotamia, 1920’ in: Small Wars and Insurgencies 23 (2012); Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building
and a History Denied (New York 2003); Charles Townshend, When God Made Hell: the British invasion of Mesopotamia and the creation of Iraq 1914-1921 (London 2011).
targets in warfare, bombing them cannot be considered as mass violence, because the distinction between combatant and non-combatant is blurred.
The second chapter discusses the context why Great Britain chose to change their way of warfare and start using strategic bombardments in future conflicts. The Air Staff and parliament were looking for a cheaper, shorter and more humane form of warfare and argued that strategic bombardments would satisfy all these three wishes. This is related to theories that developed after the First World War about the use of air warfare. This demonstrates the ideas that arose to chose to use strategic bombardments as new strategy.
The third chapter describes the motives for and justification of bombardments. First, historians mention different motives for why the RAF chose to use strategic bombardments in the Great Iraqi Revolt. Because the First World War costed millions of lives, a more humane form of warfare was desired. Theorists believed that strategic bombing fitted in this picture. While it was omnipresent that civilians could become casualties, the justification for the use of strategic bombing is discussed in the second paragraph with elaborating social Darwinism.
The final chapter examines if historians deliberately underestimate the fact that the RAF made civilian casualties during the Great Iraqi Revolt or mention the bombardments as form of mass violence. This chapter answers how historians define the air policy of the RAF. Do they mention it strategic or tactical bombing or vaguer like air control or air policy? Besides, the question is answered how historians write about making civilian casualties.
1. Bombardments and the role of civilians
Bombardments can be either tactical or strategic. Because tactical bombing is considered legitimate and strategic bombing is labelled as a form of mass violence, in this chapter the difference between a tactical and a strategic bombardment will be expanded on. Because strategic bombing can be considered as a form of mass violence, the question is posed what the role of civilians is by showing what international law states about their role and through the concept of total war
1.1 Definition of strategic and tactical bombardments
Tactical warfare signifies that attacking your enemy so that he cannot fight anymore because he does not have enough men or material. Tactical bombardments are meant ‘to break up enemy attacks, destroy artillery, disrupt reinforcement of the battlefield and bomb or strafe rear communications and supply depots’.41 Tactical bombardments are aimed at military
targets, like infrastructure or factories. During the First World War, aircrafts were foremost used for reconnaissance and tactical support, because the bombardments support the ground troops.
Another form of bombing is strategic bombing. Strategic warfare is warfare on a higher level and means to end a war more indirect by, for example, deterring civilians.
Strategic bombing is described as a ‘knock-out attack’. According to John Buckley, professor of military history, ‘major urban centers would be devastated [through bombing], that there would be no viable defense against such an attack and that offensives of this type would encapsulate the future of air war and indeed war more generally’.42
In the Second World War, air forces were aware that they would kill German civilians with strategic bombardments. Technology was still not enough developed to precisely hit a wanted target. The bombardments of the RAF on the city of Dresden in February 1945, for example, had the aim to demoralize civilians. The nature of the war contained atrocities on both sides and therefore the RAF accepted casualties among German civilians. Because Dresden did not contain any military targets, the bombardments are defined as strategic and are considered a form of mass violence against civilians, states German historian Hans
41 Richard Overy, ‘Air warfare’ in: Charles Townshend, The Oxford history of modern war (Oxford 2005) 264. 42 John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1999) 1-230, there 158-159.
Rumpf.43 According to German historian Horst Boog, who is specialised in the history of the
Second World War, strategic bombing is labelled as illegal and criminal.44 For this reason,
historians refrain from mentioning bombardments strategic.
As is mentioned in the introduction, Dutch sociologist Abraham de Swaan mentioned the shelling and bombing of unarmed civilians a form of mass violence.45 He is not the only
one who states this. German historian Birthe Kundrus enhanced this to state that bombardments – in general – were ‘acts of violence against colonial civilians’ and it is questionable if this kind of bombings are justified. She does not distinguish between tactical or strategic bombardments. Related to this, is the question if bombardments on western civilians is of a different calibre than on colonial civilians, wondered Kundrus.46 Her stance is
interwoven with the idea of social Darwinism, because western powers argue that colonial civilians are inferior to western civilians.47
Sémelin stated that strategic bombing is a ‘massacre from a distance’, because the pilot does not see his victim.48 He further defined terrorist violence as being indirect. Terrorist
violence does not seek to achieve its objectives by eliminating a given category of persons, but by influencing the adversary’s political will: the terrorist combatant supposes that the population, terrorized by the attacks, will put political pressure on its leaders to make them yield to the terrorist’s demands in exchange for a halt to the terror.49 For this reason, strategic
bombing can also be described as terrorist violence through which Sémelin tried to let strategic bombing fit in the legal framework.
43 Hans Rumpf, Das war der Bombenkrieg (Oldenburg 1961).
44 Horst Boog, Germany and the Second World War Vol VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in
the West and East Asia 1943-1944/45 (Oxford 2015).
45 De Swaan, The Killing Compartments, 3-5.
46 Kundrus, ‘From the Herero to the Holocaust?’, 302. 47 This is more elaborated in the third chapter.
48 Sémelin, Purify and Destroy, 324.
49 Sémelin, Purify and Destroy, 351, based on Christian Mellon, ‘Face au terrorisme, qulques repères’ in: Esprit
1.2 Bombardments in international law
Because strategic bombing is associated with making civilian casualties, this paragraph shows if civilians were legitimate targets according to international law. The context of the
development of international law, from 1907 till the 1930s, show how laws about aerial warfare changed over time and if the role of civilians altered. By looking at aerial warfare, this paragraph explains what international law state about the use of air power against civilians.
The Second Hague Convention of 1907 prohibited to bomb ‘undefended towns, villages, habitations or buildings in times of war which were not defended’. To target non-combatants was also forbidden.50 These prohibitions, however, applied not in the colonial
territories of the signatories, stated British historian Donald Cameron Watt.51 According to the
British Convention and international law, Britain was justified to bomb towns in their colonies. However, from a morale point of view this justification is questionable.
On January 25, 1919, the League of Nations was founded by the United States to maintain world peace, to advance disarmament and to ensure just treatment of native inhabitants.52 Members were the victorious powers of the First World War, among whom
Great Britain. The initial idea was that the League depended on the assumption that states were deterred from an illegal war because they knew the consequences: countries would form alliances which could lead to a world war. The dependence on the victorious powers of the First World War was one of the League’s fundamental weaknesses.53
The League also failed in its aims, because of the heterogeneous nature of the participants. All countries had different expectations and demands and pursued their own strategies, which undermined the viability of the League.54 Self-interest was more important to
them than multilateral agreements. Furthermore, all states were free to join the League and they did not need to make decisions against their own will.55 Not only was there an uncertain
economic and political environment in the interwar years, but there was also an inadequacy in the structure and between the members.56 For example, Britain and France oversaw the
50 Grosscup, Strategic terror, 26.
51 Donald Cameron Watt, “Restraints on War in the Air before 1945,” in: Michael Howard, ed., Restraints on
War: Studies in the Limitation of Armed Conflict (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979) 5-20, there 11.
52 Jari Eloranta, ‘Why did the League of Nations fail?’ in: Cliometrica 5:1 (2011) 27-52, there 29.
53 Zara S. Steiner, The lights that failed: European international history, 1919-1933 (Oxford 2007) 350-362, there 352.
54 Eloranta, ‘Why did the League of Nations fail?’, 32 and 47. 55 Steiner, The lights that failed, 352.
League but had competing interests. Great Britain received Iraq as a mandate from The League and Iraq was administered on behalf of The League. It was a treaty and a constitution which contained to protect the native inhabitants. However, the mandate of Iraq was not enacted.57 For this reason, Great Britain got the free hand to policy Iraq.
In 1920, the Great Iraqi Revolt ended. Churchill decided that a new administration was needed in Iraq. In March 1921, there was a conference in Cairo to discuss the future of Iraq. British officials decided that they still wanted control over Iraq but with indirect means. In 1923 there was a draft convention titled The Hague Rules of Air Warfare. The United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands criticized the convention as too unrealistic and did not ratify it.58 According to a former officer in the marine corps Hays
Parks, The Hague rules were a failure because they were not adopted by any nation. No country accepted the rules because ‘the authors were out of step with realist political and military leaders and pundits who – with great excitement about air power’s real and forecast technological advances as well as with thrilling new ideas on strategy (particularly the vast potential efficacy of independent bombing) – were unwilling to put the powerful genie back into the bottle’, states Hays Parks.59
Paragraph 24, article three of The Hague Rules of Air Warfare is very specific about the protection of civilians:
The bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings not in the immediate neighbourhood of the operations of land forces is prohibited. In cases where the objectives specified in paragraph 2 are so situated, that they cannot be bombarded without the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment.60
This paragraph stated that the indiscriminate bombing of civilians is prohibited. However, the law was never ratified.
In 1925 the Geneva Protocol was signed. It came into force on February 8, 1928 and was an addition to The Second Hague Convention of 1907. The protocol prohibited the use of
57 Steiner, The lights that failed, 352.
58 Tetsuo Maeda, ‘Strategic bombing of Congqing by imperial Japanese Army and Naval Forces’ in: Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young, Bombing civilians: a twentieth-century history (The New Press 2010) there 144. 59W. Hays Parks, ‘Air War and the Law of War’ in: Air Force Law Review 32 (1990) 1-225.
60 The Hague Rules of Air Warfare, December 1922-February 1923. Chapter Four: Hostilities. Paragraph 24, Article 3.
all forms of chemical and biological warfare.61 The treaty was signed, but however not
ratified. The British Home office established an air raid precautions department for civilians in 1935. While shelters were too expensive, evacuation was a better option. In Britain, emphasis was put on preparations for gas warfare, since fear of gas bombing remained at the forefront of British interwar anxieties about the bombing war.62 Only in 1935 did Great
Britain express concerns about the fate of enemy civilians.
The attempts to set binding legal limits on air warfare in the interwar years failed.63
According to Hays Parks, the interwar years did not lead to greater reflection and progress in morale and strategic thinking.64 Consequently, the parliament and Air Staff required other
ways to justify the bombardments in the Great Iraqi Revolt.
61 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs.
62 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 32 and 35-36.
63 Klaus A. Maier, ‘The Condor Legion. An instrument of total war?’ in: Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939 (Cambridge 2003) 285-295, there 291.
64 Joel Hayward, ‘Air power, ethics and civilian immunity during the First World War and its aftermath’ in: Global War Studies 7:2 (2010) 3-31, there 31.
1.3 Connection between total war and bombardments
International law did not protect civilians against aerial warfare. The First World War is labelled as the first modern war and as a total war. There is a historical debate on when the concept total war was first introduced. This debate is important because if the concept was introduced after the Iraqi revolt, civilians were no legitimate targets during the revolt. This in turn show how historians justify the bombardments on Iraq. For this reason, the different stances on this topic are elaborated below.
Total war means that there is no difference between combatants and civilians in a war. The home front and war front are interwoven. Before the First World War, combatants fought other combatants, which mostly meant men fighting men. Women, children and elderly were civilians, and thus non-combatants. They could survive a war unscathed as far as bodily harm. In a total war, non-combatants were part of the war effort too. Women, children and elderly worked in factories. They produced weapons and provided their men with clothes and food. In a state of war, this work is considered as supporting the war effort. Without clothes, food and equipment, soldiers cannot fight a war. For this reason, the idea arose that there was now a fluid distinction between soldiers and non-combatants. The home front became a crucial part of the war effort and civilians became consequently legitimate targets of military action in a total war, according to French professor Talbot Imlay.65
American historian Roger Chickering, who is specialised in the German Empire and the First World War, and French historian Jean-Yves Guiomar argue that the French
Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) saw the beginning of the concept total war. With the advent of the French Revolution, where the concept of a ‘nation in arms’ developed, civilians became legitimate targets of military action.66 One of the key characteristics of a nation in arms is the
blurred line between combatants and non-combatants.67
On the other hand, the British scholar of war and strategy Joel Hayward argues that total war is intertwined with the advent of industrialization, which was around 1850.68
Likewise, Buckley states that air power was not only a direct cause but also an indirect measure of the new age of industrial warfare. Historian Arthur Marwick states that air power was a measure of total war because it was a product of industrial warfare. Because to
65 Talbot Imlay, ‘Total war’ in: Journal of Strategic Studies (June 2007) 547-570, there 555 and 551. 66 Ibidem, 563 and 551.
67 Hayward, ‘Air power’, 7 and 25. 68 Ibidem, 7 and 25.
Marwick air power shaped total war and was its most significant weapon, there existed no total war before the introduction of air power.69 In the book Der Totaler Krieg of 1935, Erich
Ludendorff mentioned the concept of total war, which points to it already existing at that time.70
Related to the concept total war is the concept civilian society, which was a new phenomenon in the twentieth century. The concept gave strategic bombing a political dimension, because ‘it raised the problem of maintaining social cohesion and political allegiance in the face of extreme levels of direct military violence against the home front’, states Overy.71 Civilians must now take for granted that they were combatants during wartime,
that they were automatically part of the war effort and that there might be some degree of democratic legitimacy in bombing them if the entire society was mobilized for war. The idea that civilians could be bombed, foremost influenced public imagination. The idea that civilians could be bombed led to public anxiety, because civilians could not defend themselves against the bombardments because an air force was a new weapon.72
An ‘innocent civilian’ no longer exists in a state of total war. According to Horowitz and Deiter, there is no difference between economic choke points and the population
anymore, especially not in urban societies where these two are intertwined. They stated that civilians are part of the war effort and the distinction between civilians and economic objectives is blurred.73 Iraqi civilians encountered this new role in the revolt. The role of
civilians changed radically: they were now more vulnerable.
69 Buckley, ‘Air power’, 12-13, based on A. Marwick. G. Wright, The ordeal of total war (New York 1968). See for the historical debate further among other things: Calvocoressi and Wint, Total War (London 1995); B. Bond, War and society in Europe 1870-1970 (Montreal 1998).
70 Erich Ludendorff, Der Totaler Krieg (Dresden 1935). 71 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 15.
72 Ibidem, 15 and 38.
73 M. Horowitz and D. Reiter, ‘When Does Aerial Bombing Work?: Quantitative Empirical Tests, 1917-1999’ in: The Journal of Conflict Resolution 45:2 (2001): 147-173, there 151-152.
1.4 Conclusion
The difference between a tactical and strategic bombardment is important because tactical bombing is considered as legitimate because these bombardments aim at military targets. A strategic bombardment can be considered as a form of mass violence against civilians. It is a more indirect measure to end a war. These bombardments are more aimed at targets behind the battlefront, like the morale of the enemy. Strategic bombardments can inflict civilian casualties. Because strategic bombing can be considered as a form of mass violence against civilians, historians would like to distance themselves from the concept.
The role of civilians in warfare is elaborated because bombardments cannot be
considered as form of mass violence if civilians are legitimate targets. Great Britain and other countries failed to set rules about air warfare which meant that civilians and especially
colonial civilians were not protected against bombardments. Countries started as late as in the 1930s with some rules concerning protecting civilians. Until that time, it was permissible to bomb cities, and thus civilians, in their colonies.
In a state of total war, civilians are legitimate military targets because they supported the war effort by providing food, weapons and clothes for the soldiers. However, the question remains if the concept total war originated before the Great Iraqi Revolt. If so, the revolt can be labelled as having been in a state of a total war. According to Chickering, the French Revolutionary Wars saw the start of the concept. Hayward and Buckley associated total war with the advent of industrialization. These two stances would support the fact that Iraqi civilians were legitimate targets and the bombardments of the RAF were no form of mass violence.
2. New form of warfare
The First World War changed the way countries thought about waging future wars. The question of this chapter is, why Britain chose to change their way of warfare to use bombardments. How does air theorists write about this?
2.1 Historical background of the development of strategic bombing
The First World War is generally known as a trench war in which thousands of soldiers lost their lives. Great Britain lost almost a million men. Both Germany on one side and Great Britain and France on the other barely gained terrain throughout the entire war. For this reason, this form of warfare was labelled as hopeless. The experience of the First World War convinced European countries, among Great Britain, to wage future conflicts differently. The British parliament chose strategic bombing instead of their usual way of warfare.
Germany was the only country who tested long-range or ‘strategic’ bombings during the First World War.74 The strategic bombardments were attacks with Zeppelins against
‘civilian targets far from the battlefronts’. These air raids took place on British port cities and on London in 1915 and 1916 and created mass panic. However, the war ended soon after these bombings took place, which meant that this new form of air warfare could not be further tested.75
A debate arose how to shorten future wars after the First World War.76 The British
parliament was looking for a more morale way of fighting because so many soldiers lost their lives in the trench warfare of the First World War.77 The war had shown that future conflicts
changed and were not going to be fought between huge armies, but with tanks and aircrafts.78
Not just the role of the army, but also the role of aircraft should change from reconnaissance and tactical to strategic.
British aircrafts were present but appeared late in the First World War. The Royal Flying Corps, as the British air force was called from 1912 till 1918, was part of the British army.79 It was foremost occupied with reconnaissance. Furthermore, the Air Ministry had the
plan to bomb ‘iron and steel [factories], chemicals, the aero-engine and magneto industries’ in 74 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 20.
75 Overy, ‘Air warfare’, 263-266. 76 Grosscup, Strategic terror, 16.
77 Robertson, ‘The development of Royal Air Force’, 44. 78 Strachan, ‘War and society’, 37.
the Ruhr-Rhineland industrial region. However, aircrafts were in its technical infancy; the scale was tiny and the impact on the course of the war negligible. Strategic bombings caused little material damage in the First World War and therefore air forces focused on the impact that the strategy could have on civilian morale. British pilots were encouraged to attack towns if they could not find a selected target: ‘densely population industrial centers to destroy the morale of the operatives’ could be raided.80
The British parliament learned from the First World War that psychological targets were also valuable in ending a war.81 By bombing towns, aircrafts created widespread
disruption and demoralized the workforce.82 The production fell when there was frequent
bombing in an area.83 Workers spent nights underground, performed poorly on their work or
they did not show up at all. Strategic bombing provided a way to decrease the enemy’s war production without destroying factories. Only flying over cities was enough to let the war production decrease because civilians were terrified by the sound of airplanes.84 Because
bombing would damage enemy morale, the RAF accepted that inaccurate bombs would hit and kill civilians. The Air Staff concluded that psychological targets instead of material targets could influence ending wars.85
The idea of strategic bombing existed already before the First World War. However, it consisted more on paper because Air Staffs did not have the means to execute the strategy as was written down. The First World War influenced the development of the concept of strategic bombing in the interwar years.86 As German military historian Gerhard Weinberg
stated, ‘some new developments, like bombing from the air of towns far distant from the actual fighting, had aroused horror and these continued to haunt the memory of the past and reinforce fears for the future’.87
Many air forces adopted tactical air warfare as strategy after the First World War because the strategy supported both the army and navy and strategic bombings had not proven to be successful. The Royal Air Force was established on April 1, 1918 and became the first and only independent air force in the world. For this reason, the Air Staff wanted to stand out 80 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 20-23.
81 Overy, ‘Air warfare’, 266.
82 Overy, The bombing war Europe, 22.
83 Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996) 58-62, there 61.
84 Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing, 50-51. 85 Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, 5. 86 Robertson, ‘The development of Royal Air Force’, 42.
87 Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘The politics of war and peace in the 1920s and 1930s’ in: Marilyn Blatt Young and Toshiyuki Tanaka, Bombing civilians: a twentieth-century history (New York 2010) 23-35, there 23.
and were looking for a different strategy.88 An own strategy would show the independence of
the air force of the army and navy. The Air Staff adopted strategic bombing as their strategy, which was ‘a form of air combat in which aircraft undertook operations independent of surface forces’.89
During the Third Anglo-Afghan and the campaign in Somaliland, the Air Staff tested strategic bombardments to end conflicts quicker. The bombardments in Afghanistan were targeted at cities. The capital Kabul was bombed which seems to have been intended ‘more to demoralize the Afghanis than to cause extensive damage’ according to Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka.90 Jalalabad was bombed three times on May 17, 20 and 24 1919, which was a
retaliation because the Afghan king attacked British troops who were stationed in India. While the bombardments destroyed the military zone, they also ruined the civilian quarter. Afghan tribes were foremost terrified by the sight and sound of British aircrafts and fled.91
The bombing campaign in Somaliland was promoted as a success in suppressing a political uprising against the religious leader of his own established Dervish State in Somalia, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan.92 Because the population of Somaliland had never seen
aircrafts, the bombardments were a novelty and the effects impressive. The psychological effects were successful. Furthermore, few ground troops were needed and the expenditure of the air force was very small in comparison with mounting a major ground expedition.93 For
this reason, the Air Staff was encouraged to use it again in future conflicts, among which the Great Iraqi Revolt.94 These two conflicts demonstrated to the RAF that bombardments could
terrorize and demoralize civilians and this experience convinced the Air Staff that the strategy was successful.
According to analyst Scot Robertson, who has written extensively on arms control and various aspects of contemporary strategic issues, the experience the RAF gained in these two conflicts would ‘unduly influence the theory and doctrine of strategic bombing in the larger sense’.95 The tribes in these two conflicts could not defend themselves, but in the future, the
88 Overy, ‘Air warfare’, 267.
89 John Buckley, ‘Air power’ in: Matthew Hughes and William J. Philpott, Modern Military History (New York 2006) 153-171 there 154.
90 Tanaka, ‘British ‘humane bombing’ in Iraq’, 13-14.
91 Anne Baker, From Biplane to Spitfire: The Life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond (Yorkshire 2003) 152-171, there 161-162; Tanaka, ‘British ‘humane bombing’ in Iraq’, 13.
92 Tanaka, ‘British ‘humane bombing’ in Iraq’, 14-16; David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The
Royal Air Force 1919–1939 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990) 19-40, there, 20.
93 Sebastian Ritchie, The RAF, Small Wars and Insurgencies in the Middle East, 1919-1939 (Swindon 2011) 4. 94 Corum, ‘The myth of air control’, 75.
enemies of the RAF would not be so disadvantaged.96 Robertson further argued that the
experiences of the First World War were only a theory, ‘a hypothesis that required
considerable effort to transform it into a doctrine of strategic airpower which could serve in operations’. While the Air Ministry based their ideas completely on the view of the Chief of the Air Staff, Trenchard, his ideas were not static. Technology developed and the ideas of Trenchard evolved over time.97 Therefore, Robertson argued that ‘early strategic theorizing in
the RAF drew heavily on the limited experience of “strategic” bombing in the First World War’. Robertson was convinced there were no strategic bombardments in the First World War.
British historian Richard Overy argued that it was a delusion that strategic bombings would change future warfare. He stated that there was ‘a widening gap between what air power had actually done [in the First World War] and popular perception of its potential’.98
However, the British parliament and the Air Staff were convinced that air power would be decisive in future wars. Tanaka agreed with this by stating that the use of strategic
bombardments was ‘simply a myth that has never been proven’ and RAF officers insisted that bombing campaigns were ‘a scientific expedient for sparing life’.99
The Air Staff had the chance to test this new psychological form of warfare further in the Great Iraqi Revolt, which started in May 1920. The Iraqis were stronger than the British Army. Churchill decided to use squadrons of the RAF in June 1920 to hopefully shift the advantage to Great Britain. In this way, the RAF could test strategic bombardments and show off their just established independence. Besides, Churchill hoped to show that the use of strategic bombardments would be a more humane form of warfare and end the revolt sooner.
96 Ibidem, 42
97 Ibidem, 51 and 44-46; The ideas of Trenchard are explained in the next paragraph. 98 Overy, ‘Air warfare’, 266.
2.2 Air theorists
The nature of warfare had changed because of the introduction of tanks, machine guns and aircrafts in the First World War. Soldiers and military theorists were wondering about how future conflicts should be different. In the next section, the most important theories for the development of the RAF are discussed. The RAF was established in 1918 and the Air Staff would like to settle the independence further by proving that the strategy of the RAF, strategic bombardments, was successful.
British Second Chief of the Air Staff Frederick Sykes proposed that city bombing was part of RAF missions. He wrote a document in December 1918, entitled War power
requirements for the empire.100 In Sykes’ view, ‘the objectives of [air] striking forces will be
nerve centers, the armies and navies of the opponent, the population, his national morale and the industries, without which he can’t wage war’. For Sykes, the bombing of the population arguably came after targeting governments, which he calls nerve centers, and after armed forces.101 The ideas Sykes had, were unrealistic and the British government used financial
reasons to reject his plans, states Buckley.102
British soldier and military theorist Basil Liddell Hart and British officer and strategist J.F.C. Fuller anticipated that the next conflict would start with an air attack which was aimed at the civilian population for morale and material reasons.103 Another aim of that air attack
would be to disrupt the mobilization of the enemy’s army and create chaos. If the home front could not produce equipment or support the army, the army could be conquered more quickly. According to Scottish military historian Hew Strachan, the support of air power had a more fundamental purpose:
it was designed to restore political utility to war. […] Aerial attack was therefore not only a means of widening the war into the third dimension, and of forcing fronts to be deep as well as lateral; it was also intended to achieve results in shorter order, and – in the most optimistic scenario – through demoralization rather than through destruction.104
100 Lieutenant-Colonial Eric Ash, Sir Frederick Sykes and the Air Revolution 1912-1918 (Taylor and Francis 2012) 171.
101 Beatrice Heuser, The bomb: nuclear weapons in their historical, strategic, and ethical context (Oxfordshire 2014) 41.
102 Buckley, Air Power, 74. 103 Strachan, ‘War and society’, 37. 104 Strachan, ‘War and society’, 46.
Strachan concludes that an air force could end a war with bombardments when the army failed to decide a war. As a result, the use of the air force would lead to a reduction in the size of the army which meant fewer casualties. To end a war with a decisive air attack was thought to be possible. However, this was impossible in the interwar years.105
Giulio Douhet was a member of the general staff of Italy since 1900. He witnessed bombing in Libya in 1911 and during the First World War. He advocated that air power should be part of the Italian military strategy. He was imprisoned because he criticized the Italian military strategy of the cabinet. In 1921 his book Command of the air was published wherein he outlined his idea of strategic bombing. To end wars quicker he proposed killing or terrorizing civilians, which was more efficient than armies slaughtering each other.106 Douhet
stated that this way of waging a war was more effective and more morale in terms of lives lost because, as a country, you did not need to have a huge army. Pilots had a reduced risk to die and Douhet thought that this would avoid wars of multiple years, which would resemble the trench warfare in the First World War. A bombing war would cost fewer victims on both sides and would be shorter, he stated. However, this kind of warfare could only be waged if there was no distinction between combatants and non-combatants.107 Therefore, Douhet advocated
for all wars to be total. In his book he stated that ‘all of the citizens will become combatants […] there will be no distinction any longer between soldiers and civilians’.108 He argued that
‘aerial bombing should target peacetime industrial and commercial establishment; important buildings, private and public; transportation arteries and centers and certain designated areas of the civilian population as well’.109
The idea of Douhet did foremost influenced the air forces of France, Germany and the United States. Churchill had a more prominent role in establishing the RAF. He used the RAF as an instrument for his own political advancement. He resigned from the government
because he oversaw the failed Gallipoli Campaign (1915-1916). In 1917, he returned and was appointed Minister of Munitions and in January 1919 he became Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. This last position was created on January 10, 1919 to manage the affairs of the RAF. Because the RAF and Air Ministry received immense political pressure, the Secretary of State for Air was not a Cabinet position. The Air Ministry was a department of the government and Churchill had the political authority over the department. 105 Ibidem, 46.
106 Hayward, ‘Air power, ethics and civilian immunity’, 25. 107 Evangelista, ‘Blockbusters, nukes and drones’, 6.
108 Giulio Douhet, Command of the Air (Washington D.C. 1998) 9-10. 109 Grosscup, Strategic terror, 21.
For this reason, it was possible for Churchill to make different decisions than the government.110
The government had other reasons for adopting strategic bombardments as a strategy. They especially advocated a cheaper way of warfare. While the interests of the government and Churchill overlapped, Churchill still had to find support in the parliament to use air power. He hoped to bring a knock-out blow to the enemy, which would end the Great Iraqi Revolt quicker and meant less casualties.111 By using bombardments, less ground troops were
needed which meant a more humane way of warfare. He used this argument to promote the use of the RAF in Iraq towards the parliament.
In the First World War, Churchill proposed the bombardment of Aachen after Germany bombarded the Belgium city Ostend, which was ‘an open town of no military significance’. Churchill explained the use of bombardments to Foreign Secretary Edward Grey:
After this [the bombardment of the town] had been done, I should explain the reason and announce that this course will be invariable followed in the future. This is the only effective way of protecting civilians and non-combatants. Care will of course be taken to aim at barracks and military property.112
With this, Churchill showed that he would like to protect civilians and that the bombardments would aim at military targets. Against the Cabinet, Churchill stated that aircrafts ‘cooperated with our troops’. He further argued that the use of the RAF was tactical and not strategic. Besides, he argued that the use of bombs should ‘cause disablement of some kind but not death’ and he also states on August 29, 1920 that gas bombs ‘would inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them’.113 This suggests that Churchill
tried to ingratiate with the parliament to state that the bombardments were tactical and no civilians would be killed with the bombardments. Because Churchill used the RAF for his own political advancement, these pronunciations are questionable.
110 John Sweetman, ‘Crucial Months for Survival: The Royal Air Force, 1918-1919’ in: The Journal of
Contemporary History 19:3 (July 1984) 529-547, there 529-531.
111 Killingray, ‘A swift agent of government’, 435.
112 Sir Martin Gilbert, ‘Churchill Proceedings – Churchill and Bombing Policy. The fifth Churchill lecture: The George Washington University.’ (Washington 18 October 2005) on:
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-137/churchill-proceedings-churchill-and-bombing-policy/
Churchill based the concept for the RAF on the theory of Chief of the Air Staff Hugh Trenchard.114 Trenchard fought as an infantryman in the Boer War (1899-1902) where he got
injured. Besides, he served with the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, which was then part of the army. Because he was injured as a soldier and saw aerial action, he advocated for the independence of the air force. He can be considered as one of the founding fathers of the RAF. Trenchard stated in a memo on August 14, 1919 that the bombardments in
Afghanistan and Somaliland ‘show that against a semi-civilized enemy unprovided with aircraft, aerial operations alone may have such a deterrent effect as to be practically decisive’.115
A few months after the memo, on December 11, 1919, Churchill presented the White Paper, largely written by Trenchard, wherein he outlined his views on the future of the Royal Air Force. The memorandum was titled: ‘Permanent Organization of the RAF- Note by the Secretary of State for Air on a Scheme Outlined by the Chief of Staff’. Churchill fervently supported the independence of the RAF.116 A morale attack on the population was twenty
times more important than the material effect, stated Trenchard in his theory.117 It was
however questionable if demoralizing civilians would succeed. Trenchard argued that demoralizing the enemy led to a shorter war, but it was only a theory which was not yet proven.
The purpose of strategic bombing was to undermine the civilians’ political will to resist, stated Trenchard.118 However, he rejected the indiscriminate bombing of civilian
populations and argued that ‘precision’ bombing of industrial targets would easily undermine the morale of the working class and eventually of the general population. The bombing of a city with the aim to terrorize civilians was improper but striking at legitimate military targets within that city which caused the destruction of civilian life and property was acceptable. Trenchard described the targets of strategic bombings as follows: ‘production facilities, rail systems, docks, shipyards, wireless stations and postal and telegraph systems’. It was
legitimate to frighten workers because their work was part of the war effort. Thus indirectly, it was acceptable that civilians were bombed because they were part of the war effort.119
114 Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control, 38.
115 Robertson, ‘The development of Royal Air Force’, 44, based on AIR 8/2 memorandum.
116 Royal Air Force, ‘Permanent Organization of the RAF- Note by the Secretary of State for Air on a Scheme Outlined by the Chief of Staff’ (London 1919) 2.
117 Tanaka, ‘British ‘humane bombing’ in Iraq’, 13; Corum, ‘The myth of air control’, 66. 118 Grosscup, Strategic terror, 15 and 22.
The Italian general Giulio Douhet and the British officer Hugh Trenchard were two of the most known air war theorists in the interwar years. Both believed that ‘the great cities contained the most delicate and susceptible part of the enemy’.120 Furthermore, wars were
closer to home if the enemy possessed an air force. Civilians were considered as military targets which meant that they could not live rather unharmful during wartime anymore.
Writing down a theory of air warfare had two aims. It was important for the military justification for the independent air force and second, in influencing political thought on a future war.121 The Air Staff ‘wanted a strategy which gave them greater independence from
the navy and army services’.122 The idea of strategic bombing was the basis for the strategy of
the RAF. Theorists were however separated from technical and scientific reality, so their ideas were unrealistic, stated Overy.123
120 Ibidem, 43 and 52.
121 Pape, Bombing to Win, 59-60. 122 Overy, ‘Air warfare’, 266.
