Enemy Morale and Terror Bombing
One of the aims of war is to demoralise the enemy; facing continual death and destruction may make the prospect of peace or surrender preferable. The proponents of strategic bombing between the world wars, such as General Douhet, expected that direct attacks upon a country's cities by strategic bombers would lead to rapid collapse of civilian morale, so that political pressure to sue for peace would lead to a rapid conclusion. When such attacks were tried in the 1930s—in the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War—they were ineffective. Commentators observed the failures and some air forces, such as the Luftwaffe, concentrated their efforts upon direct support of the troops.
Terror bombing is an emotive term used for aerial attacks planned to weaken or break enemy morale. Use of the term to refer to aerial attacks implies the attacks are criminal according to the law of war, or if within the laws of war are nevertheless a moral crime. According to John Algeo in Fifty Years among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms 1941-1991, the first recorded usage of "Terror bombing" in a United States publication was in a Reader's Digest article dated June 1941, a finding confirmed by the Oxford English Dictionary.
Aerial attacks described as terror bombing are often long range strategic bombing raids, although attacks which result in the deaths of civilians may also be described as such, or if the attacks involve fighters strafing they may be labelled "terror attacks."
Read more about this topic: Strategic Bombing
Famous quotes containing the words enemy, terror and/or bombing:
“We are fighting in the quarrel of civilization against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny. Germany has become a menace to the whole world. She is the most dangerous enemy of liberty now existing.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
“Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.”
—Helen Hayes (1900–1993)
“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)