A History of Bombing

Description

A daring literary and historical look at the ideologies of war and violence, by the author of "Exterminate All the Brutes" On November 1, 1911, over the North African oasis Tagiura, Lieutenant Giulio Cavotti leaned out of the cockpit of his primitive aircraft and dropped a Haasen hand grenade. Thus began one of the most devastating military tactics of the twentieth century: aerial bombing. With this point of entry, Sven Lindqvist, the author of the highly acclaimed "Exterminate All the Brutes", presents a cleverly constructed and innovative history. Now available in paperback, A History of Bombing tells the fascinating stories behind the development of air power, bombs, and the laws of war and international justice, demonstrating how the practices of the two world wars were born from colonial warfare. "A profound litany of what might someday be considered among the most counterproductive military actions ever taken." — The Nation "An original work, written with a moral passion that is uncommon." — Sunday Times [London] "Continuously interesting, often fascinating." — Financial Times "Extraordinary and beautifully written." — San Francisco Chronicle "Impassioned, wide-ranging." — The Times [London] "Lindqvist plots a clear path towards the ever more horrendous holocausts that lie ahead. It is gripping stuff." — New Statesman "Profoundly disquieting, but that obviously is Lindqvist's ultimate purpose." — Associated Press Sven Lindqvist is a prominent Swedish writer known internationally for his books on China and Latin America. His previous works available in English include "Exterminate All the Brutes" and The Skull Measurer's Mistake (both from The New Press). He lives in Stockholm. Translator Linda H. Rugg is an associate professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Picturing Ourselves. This is a corrected version of an ebook previously available online which looks like it was auto-generated from a scanned copy. That version had all the errors you’d expect from an unedited scan—misread letters leading to nonsense words, issues reading layout which led to the first sentence of each section being rendered as gibberish, all sorts of formatting issues. There was also an omission of sections 172-175 which were missing from the original scan. This version, as far as possible, corrects those errors. Inevitably there will be things I’ve missed, particularly around spelling and words which were misread in the original conversion as other correctly-spelled words (for instance where an ‘l’ has been read as an ‘t’, making ‘while’ into ‘white’). My apologies for those. Sections 172-175 have been inserted using a translation of the corresponding sections in the Spanish version of the ebook, also available online. The cover, which was a very poor scan, has been replaced with a higher-resolution version. The illustrations have been replaced with better versions taken from the original scan, and in some places moved in the text to prevent the interruption of sections. Formatting has attempted to imitate the original as far as possible, but inevitably there are some differences. Spellings follow those of the original, which are UK English. The major change, though, is to offer the text in two different orders. The author proposes two ways of reading the book - chronologically and by theme. The original text was arranged chronologically, in 399 numbered sections. This presentation is retained as the second half of the text. However, the author states that he prefers the book to be read thematically in 22 separate strands. As this would be difficult to do in an ebook without inserting a large number of cross-referencing anchors, I have arranged the sections by theme and appended the as the first half of the book. This seemed like it would be easier for the reader. Matt Newcastle, February 2021 Cover Copyright Notes on the ebook edition How to read this book Ways into the book Bang, You're Dead In the Beginning Was the Bomb The History of the Future Death Comes Flying What Is Permissible in War? Bombing the Savages Bombed Into Savagery The Law and the Prophets From Chechaouen to Guernica The Splendid Decision Hamburg, Auschwitcz, Dresden Tokyo The Dream of a Superweapon Hiroshima Living With the Superweapon Bombs Against Independence Korea Massive Retaliation Flexible Retaliation Surgical Precision The Bomb on Trial Nothing Human Chronology A History of Bombing 1 Bang, You’re Dead 2 In the Beginning Was the Bomb 3 The History of the Future 4 Death Comes Flying 5 What Is Permissible in War? 6 Bombing the Savages 7 Bombed Into Savagery 8 The Law and the Prophets 9 From Chechaouen to Guernica 10 The Splendid Decision 11 Hamburg, Auschwitz, Dresden 12 Tokyo 13 The Dream of a Superweapon 14 Hiroshima 15 Living With the Superweapon 16 Bombs Against Independence 17 Korea 18 Massive Retaliation 19 Flexible Retaliation 20 Surgical Precision 21 The Bomb on Trial 22 Nothing Human 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 Notes Bibliography