Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History
Books / Hardcover
Books › History › Modern › 20th Century › General
ISBN: 1595583637 / Publisher: The New Press, February 2009
A provocative assessment of the practice of indiscriminate bombing as a warfare method explores the reasons why military strategists of the past century shifted their focus from military to civilian targets, in an account that poses key arguments about international law and the morality of war. 10,000 first printing.
Read More
From the British bombing of Iraq in the early 1920s to more recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, indiscriminate aerial bombing has been a frighteningly common strategy of modern warfare, owing much to the relative safety of the attackers and the complete vulnerability of the victims.In Bombing Civilians, leading experts Marilyn B. Young and Yuki Tanaka have brought together a group of distinguished scholars from Japan, the United States, and Europe to explore the history of indiscriminate bombing, examining the shift from bombing military targets to bombing civilians. This bold collection examines the fundamental questions of how this theory justifying mass killing originated and why it has been employed as a compelling military strategy for decades, both before and after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.With major new arguments, including Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's claim that it was the Soviet invasion rather than the atomic bombs that compelled the Japanese to surrender in the Pacific War, Bombing Civilians combines historical and contemporary analysis to make a powerful argument about international law and the morality of war.
Read Less