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HUGH TRENCHARD'S VISION
The concept of strategic area bombing (or ‘terror bombing’) which the RAF adopted in Britain’s Second World War on the Germans, and which it used par excellence in the Dresden massacre in February 1945, originated in the new form of warfare developed by England in 1917/8 and first implemented against German and Ottoman civilians.
Sir Charles Webster and Dr. Noble Frankland noted in their book, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany (Vol. 1, p. 42) issued by H.M. Stationery Office, London, in 1961, that: “Sir Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air Staff from 1919 to 1929, had a decisive influence on the future of the R.A.F.” They explained that the essence of Trenchard’s policy was that “future wars would be won by producing such moral effect on the enemy civilian population that its government would have to sue for peace. The advantage of destroying military installations and factories was recognised but he maintained that it was easier to overcome the will to resist among the workers than to destroy the means to resist” (p. 86).
According to his biographer Lord Hugh Trenchard, the ‘father’ of the Royal Air Force, called for “fighting the Germans in Germany” from as early as June 1916 (Andrew Boyle, Trenchard, p.295). This was something the British Army was incapable of due to the defensive effectiveness of the Germans.
Trenchard’s main accomplice in the development of terror bombing was the Glasgow industrialist at Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions, William Weir. Weir’s “ambition was to build bombers by the hundred to carry the war into Germany.” (p.202) In the Spring of 1917 Weir put forward the idea of a long-range bombing campaign against Germany. Lord Weir was appointed Air Minister to the Lloyd George government in 1918.
During 1917 Trenchard implored the War Cabinet to let him “attack the industrial centres of Germany” (p.295). He declared himself unimpressed with any sporadic bombing the German air force had done over England and “the few occasions French machines raided the Rhineland cities, it was always emphasised that such attacks were in the nature of reprisals. Trenchard was against retaliation; his sole concern was to cripple Germany by means of a sustained air offensive.” (p.296)
Trenchard argued for a new form of aerial warfare – not the miserable, retaliatory sorties/raids of the German and French machines but a strategic campaign of terror and devastation of civilian areas. He authoritatively described the role that strategic bombers should play in war in a study prepared for the Allied Supreme War Council in 1918. He specified two main objectives for his proposed force of strategic bombers – to destroy the enemy both morally and materially. In order to achieve this end, he argued for the need to attack enemy industrial centres where striking at the centres of production could do vital damage. This entailed precision bombing. But he also argued for achieving the maximum effect on the morale of the enemy by striking at what he saw as the most vulnerable part of the German population – the working class. This entailed saturation area bombing.
According to his biographer Lord Trenchard had a major effect on the developing United States Air Force and its philosophy of war from the skies. Apparently Trenchard “conceived and shaped, under the stress of war, the embryo of the future US Strategic Bombing Command; fed by British machines, nursed by British technicians, its first members were enrolled and initiated in Trenchard’s exacting school… He was thinking in terms of the future, of the destruction which would rain down on the industrial vitals of Germany the following Spring…” (p.297)
But the chief of the Allied military command, Foch, denied Trenchard the resources for his strategic air offensive in 1917/8, and his desired large, long-range bomber fleet. So Trenchard decided to spread terror to the general German population:
“Lacking the resources to concentrate attacks on one target at a time, Trenchard so spread his raids that no city within range could feel entirely safe. The bombers might cause little destruction; what counted was their impact on the spirit of the German people. The cumulative effect on morale would far exceed the actual toll of damage inflicted, providing the bombing went on, day and night, with few interruptions…” (p.304)
This was the blueprint for things to come when the RAF and USAF used sustained bombing over days to systematically pulverise German civilian centres and their occupants in the Second World War on Germany. Trenchard imagined it in 1917 and had planned it for 1918-19.
In June 1918 over 70 tons of bombs were dropped on German cities by Trenchard’s machines. In July 85 tons were dropped on Cologne, Coblenz, Mainz, Stuttgart and Saarbrucken. From August to November 75 of Trenchard’s long-range bombers were lost out of his fleet of 120 machines. But despite the enormous losses of his airmen Trenchard was encouraged by letters captured from German soldiers from their relatives in the Rhineland cities which “evoked the terror sown in the Rhineland and Saarland cities, a terror which indirectly affected husbands, sons and brothers in uniform as well.” (p.311)
Istanbul was also subjected to air raids. Between March and October 1918, a dozen air raids were made on the Ottoman capital. All air raids were night time attacks, maximising the chances of civilian casualties. Hundreds of people were killed, many of them Christians, in the indiscriminate attacks. The bombs did not discriminate between Turk, Jew, Greek or Armenian.
The Ottoman Harbiye Nezareti, (Ministry of War) communicated a request to the “Government of England” from Hariciye Nezareti, (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) stating that
“İstanbul is a city which enjoys a number of very valuable hospitals, whereas it has no military institutions of significant importance. Continuous air attacks on İstanbul are nothing but a violation of legal norms vis-à-vis civilians. In the event that these attacks will not cease, the Government of Turkey will be obliged to transfer all enemy aliens to internment camps regardless of their age and gender. This is due to the increasing tension among the public facing these air attacks and in the event that a public retaliation against the resident subjects of the governnments of Allies shall take place, the difficulty posed by the possible prevention of this should be duly taken into account of by the Government.”(Harbiye Nezareti to Hariciye Nezareti, August 28, 1918, File No: 7310/8959, [BOA HR.SYS 2456/27-3], Department of Ottoman Archives, Prime Ministry of the Republic of Turkey. I am grateful to Turan Cetiner for this information).
But the British ignored the request and the air raids continued and intensified. The threat embedded in the message of the Ottoman Ministry of War was not carried out.
Lord Trenchard’s biographer makes it clear that civilian casualties were no concern of his:
“It was still only the experimental overture to a dreadful revolution in warfare. No squeamishness for the fate of civilians distracted Trenchard’s mind. His sole purpose was to weaken the enemy’s will to resist. It was for moralists and lawyers to argue whether a munitions’ plant and the workers’ houses about it should be struck off the list of legitimate war targets; it was for statesmen to act on their verdict… Trenchard consoled himself that his bombs were not aimed indiscriminately at civilians but at factories which supplied the armies and so prolonged the slaughter on the battlefield. He prided himself on strictly professional thinking unclouded by vindictiveness or mawkish sentimentality.
“Weir was less pernickety than Trenchard. ‘I would very much like if you could start a really big fire in one of the German towns,’ he wrote in September, suggesting that incendiary bombs could be used to spectacular advantage in older built-up districts where there were few ‘good, permanent, modern buildings.’ And again: ‘If I were you, I would not be too exacting as regards accuracy in bombing railway stations in the middle of towns. The German is susceptible to bloodiness, and I would not mind a few accidents due to inaccuracy.
“I do not think you need be anxious about our degree of accuracy when bombing stations in the middle of towns. The accuracy is not great at present, and all the pilots drop their eggs well into the middle of the town generally.” (p.312)
This represented an innovative blurring of the traditional difference between combatant and civilian in which civilian lives were treated in the same way as those of combatants. And it prepared the way for ‘accidents’ or ‘collateral damage’ as it is called today, so that aerial terrorism waged by states could be practiced on women and children without any moral remorse. In the years that followed British air war strategists almost completely abandoned the idea or pretence of precision bombing in favour of the strategy of anti-civilian bombing.