Among the Dead Cities PDF Download

Author: A. C. Grayling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802715656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Presents an analysis of the miltary rationale used by Britain and the United States for bombing civilian targets in Germany and Japan during World War II, discussing the reasons why such tactics were both largely ineffective and morally reprehensible. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Author: Toshiyuki Tanaka
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595585478
Category : Bombing, Aerial
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
From British bombing in Iraq in the early 1920s to the most recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, this detailed analysis explores the history of indiscriminate bombing, examining the fundamental questions of how strategies of mass killing originated and have been employed for decades. The book includes contributions from scholars in the US and Europe as well as a bold new argument by Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa claiming that it was the Soviet invasion rather than atomic bombing that led to the Japanese surrender of the Pacific.

Author: Igor Primoratz
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845456870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
"This is an interesting, informative, and important work. Overall, the quality of the essays is very high, and the focus of the book is on a topic of great importance." Stephen Nathanson, Northeastern University. --

Author: Mark Clapson
Publisher: University of Westminster Press
ISBN: 1911534491
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The Blitz Companion offers a unique overview of a century of aerial warfare, its impact on cities and the people who lived in them. It tells the story of aerial warfare from the earliest bombing raids and in World War 1 through to the London Blitz and Allied bombings of Europe and Japan. These are compared with more recent American air campaigns over Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the NATO bombings during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and subsequent bombings in the aftermath of 9/11. Beginning with the premonitions and predictions of air warfare and its terrible consequences, the book focuses on air raids precautions, evacuation and preparations for total war, and resilience, both of citizens and of cities. The legacies of air raids, from reconstruction to commemoration, are also discussed. While a key theme of the book is the futility of many air campaigns, care is taken to situate them in their historical context. The Blitz Companion also includes a guide to documentary and visual resources for students and general readers. Uniquely accessible, comparative and broad in scope this book draws key conclusions about civilian experience in the twentieth century and what these might mean for military engagement and civil reconstruction processes once conflicts have been resolved.

Author: Randall Hansen
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0307372383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
National Bestseller An enlightening and utterly convincing re-examination of the allied aerial bombing campaign and of civilian German suffering during World War II–an essential addition to our understanding of world history. During the Second World War, Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving 80,000 pilots dead. Much of the bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of the Allied military leadership. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly. Focusing on the crucial period from 1942 to 1945, and using a compelling narrative approach, Fire and Fury tells the story of the American and British bombing campaign through the eyes of those involved: military and civilian command in America, Britain, and Germany, aircrew in the sky, and civilians on the ground. Acclaimed historian Randall Hansen shows that the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, was wedded to an outdated strategy whose success had never been proven; how area bombing not only failed to win the war, it probably prolonged it; and that the US campaign, which was driven by a particularly American fusion of optimism and morality, played an important and largely unrecognized role in delivering Allied victory.

Author: Conrad C. Crane
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700629025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Resistance is a product of will times means, Carl von Clausewitz postulated in his treatise On War. In his 1993 Bombs, Cities, and Civilians, which the American Historical Review judged "must reading for anyone interested in the subject of air warfare," Conrad C. Crane focused on the moral dimension of American air strategy in World War II—specifically, the Allied effort to break the enemy's will through targeting civilians. With decades of research and reflection, and a wealth of new material at his command, Crane returns to the subject of America's WWII airpower strategy to offer an analysis fully engaged with the "means" side of Clausewitz's equation: the design and impact of strategic bombing of the enemy's infrastructure and thus its capacity to fight. A marked advance in our understanding of the use of airpower in war in general and the Second World War in particular, Crane's work shows how, despite an undeniable lack of concern about civilian casualties in Germany and Japan late in the war, American strategic bombing in WWII consistently focused on destroying the enemy's war-making capacity instead of its collapsing will. Further, Crane persuasively argues that in the limited wars since then, separating such targets has become increasingly more difficult, and all air campaigns against states have subsequently escalated to accept greater risks for civilians. American Airpower Strategy in World War II also provides an expanded close look at the use of airpower in the last three months of the strategic air war against Germany, when so many bombing missions relied upon radar aids, as well as the first direct comparison of 8th and 15th Air Force bombing campaigns in Europe. The result is the most coherent and concise analysis of the application and legacy of Allied strategic airpower in WWII—and a work that will inform all future practical and theoretical consideration of the use, and the role, of airpower in war.

Author: Aaron William Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108428258
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This comparative account of civilian experiences of aerial bombing in World War II Britain and Japan reveals the universality of total war.

Author: General Giulio Douhet
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782898522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620

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Book Description
In the pantheon of air power spokesmen, Giulio Douhet holds center stage. His writings, more often cited than perhaps actually read, appear as excerpts and aphorisms in the writings of numerous other air power spokesmen, advocates-and critics. Though a highly controversial figure, the very controversy that surrounds him offers to us a testimonial of the value and depth of his work, and the need for airmen today to become familiar with his thought. The progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to the breadth of his vision. Douhet, together with Hugh “Boom” Trenchard of Great Britain and William “Billy” Mitchell of the United States, is justly recognized as one of the three great spokesmen of the early air power era. This reprint is offered in the spirit of continuing the dialogue that Douhet himself so perceptively began with the first edition of this book, published in 1921. Readers may well find much that they disagree with in this book, but also much that is of enduring value. The vital necessity of Douhet’s central vision-that command of the air is all important in modern warfare-has been proven throughout the history of wars in this century, from the fighting over the Somme to the air war over Kuwait and Iraq.

Author: Matthew Evangelista
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801454565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Aerial bombardment remains important to military strategy, but the norms governing bombing and the harm it imposes on civilians have evolved. The past century has seen everything from deliberate attacks against rebellious villagers by Italian and British colonial forces in the Middle East to scrupulous efforts to avoid "collateral damage" in the counterinsurgency and antiterrorist wars of today. The American Way of Bombing brings together prominent military historians, practitioners, civilian and military legal experts, political scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists to explore the evolution of ethical and legal norms governing air warfare. Focusing primarily on the United States—as the world’s preeminent military power and the one most frequently engaged in air warfare, its practice has influenced normative change in this domain, and will continue to do so—the authors address such topics as firebombing of cities during World War II; the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the deployment of airpower in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya; and the use of unmanned drones for surveillance and attacks on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere.

Author: Richard Overy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143126245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
“An essential part of the literature of World War II.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post From acclaimed World War II historian Richard Overy comes this startling new history of the controversial Allied bombing war against Germany and German-occupied Europe. In the fullest account yet of the campaign and its consequences, Overy assesses not just the bombing strategies and pattern of operations, but also how the bombed communities coped with the devastation. This book presents a unique history of the bombing offensive from below as well as from above, and engages with moral questions that still resonate today.