soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Michele wrote:
[Yugoslavia]
> In other words, in that case the air campaign did bring an end to the war
> directly; it was helped by the threat of the ground campaign, yes, but as it
> happens the ground campaign was not needed.

You're moving the goalposts. The claim that I replied to was the
following "the idea of strategic bombing being able to bring about the
end of the war directly, through morale collapse, was wrong. The idea
was certainly proven wrong until the much more recent Yugoslavian air
war."

I disagree that air strikes against Yugoslavia over Croatia / Bosnia
and later Kossovo brought about "the end of the war directly, through
moral collapse". In both cases, the end of the war only came after a
ground component had become part of the equation, and a decisive part
at that.

I can't think of an example where strategic bombing collapsed enemy
morale. I can think of several cases of air attacks being a big factor
for civilian morale, but most of the time the target had done the math
beforehand and didn't need a demonstration before being convinced.
Therefore, it seems that successful strategic bombing (in a morale-
targetting mode) acted mainly as a deterrent.

Another case for winning the war from the air alone was by physical
destruction. That was the aim pursued by the USAAF during WWII, and in
other conflicts as well. I'm not sure that I can think of a victorious
war consisting solely of air attacks either.

The much-praised interwar British "control" of rebellious tribes by
air attacks would fall squarely between both categories, and like all
police actions calling it victorious requires a careful definition of
when war starts and ends.

> In the Rotterdam case, the air threat had its weight in the Dutch decision,
> but the ground campaign was being carried out, and its outcome was pretty
> much obvious - in fact, as you state, the decision was _accelerated_, not
> _made_, by the air threat. The ground campaign success was needed.

Yes, on the other hand it does count as a successful - and ultimately
victorious - attack on enemy morale. Given that most attacks on enemy
morale failed, I thought that even a less than pure positive case
deserved mention.

It's the same case with Hiroshima / Nagasaki: the atomic bombs seem to
have been the critical factor in swinging the Japanese over to
surrendering, on the other hand they came on top of a whole chain of
other military disasters.

> This is evidenced by the fact that plenty of
> countries not having nuclear weapons accepted war against countries that did
> have them.

No non-nuclear country ever declared war against a nuclear country,
the only exception being Argentinia which took great pains to point
out the limited character of its operations.

I understand the point you're making about a victorious war from
bombing enemy morale. As far as I can tell, that never happened and
certainly not over Yugoslavia or Kossovo. The only cases that I could
find where strategic bombing had a decisive effect on enemy morale,
. leading the other side to cave in, were either "less than pure"
ones such as Rotterdam, or - more relevantly IMO - nuclear deterrence.

The Soviet Union backed down over Cuba, the US backed down over
involving China during the Vietnam war. Both the USA & USSR
successfully deterred the other from doing as it wished. I agree
that's only a limited version of victory, but that's all there is...


LC