%0 Journal Article %1 noauthororeditor %A Hayward, Joel %D 2010 %J Global War Studies %K "Billy" Air Airpower Douhet First Force Giulio Gotha Hugh Mitchell RAF Royal Trenchard WWI War William World Zeppelin air airpower, attacks; bombing; civilian ethics immunity international law; legal; morality myown power raids; %N 2 %P 3-31 %T Air Power, Ethics, and Civilian Immunity during the First World War and its Aftermath %V 7 %X Little has been published on the ethical and legal basis of air attacks on non-combatants during the First World War. Existing works have focused mainly on the injustice of the German Zeppelin and Gotha raids on British towns. They present British air campaigns on German towns and the formation of the Royal Air Force as a reasoned self-defensive response. This article breaks new ground as it attempts to paint a richer picture by explaining the influence of retributive passions – vengeance – on British thinking about how best to respond to the villainy of German air raids. By using unpublished primary sources to uncover the moral and legal rationale used by British decision-makers, it shows that they (as their German counterparts had) exploited ambiguities or "loopholes" in the ethical and legal prohibitions on the bombardment of non-combatants and explained away their own air attacks on civilian towns and villages as legitimate acts of reprisal. It ends by demonstrating that, far from feeling grave concerns about the inhumanity of targeting civilians and their environs, the most influential air power thinkers after the war were relatively uninterested in moral concepts of proportionality and discrimination. They saw air power's ability to punish the strong and culpable by attacking the weak and vulnerable as a way of making wars shorter and therefore less expensive.

@article{noauthororeditor, abstract = {Little has been published on the ethical and legal basis of air attacks on non-combatants during the First World War. Existing works have focused mainly on the injustice of the German Zeppelin and Gotha raids on British towns. They present British air campaigns on German towns and the formation of the Royal Air Force as a reasoned self-defensive response. This article breaks new ground as it attempts to paint a richer picture by explaining the influence of retributive passions – vengeance – on British thinking about how best to respond to the villainy of German air raids. By using unpublished primary sources to uncover the moral and legal rationale used by British decision-makers, it shows that they (as their German counterparts had) exploited ambiguities or "loopholes" in the ethical and legal prohibitions on the bombardment of non-combatants and explained away their own air attacks on civilian towns and villages as legitimate acts of reprisal. It ends by demonstrating that, far from feeling grave concerns about the inhumanity of targeting civilians and their environs, the most influential air power thinkers after the war were relatively uninterested in moral concepts of proportionality and discrimination. They saw air power's ability to punish the strong and culpable by attacking the weak and vulnerable as a way of making wars shorter and therefore less expensive.}, added-at = {2021-08-15T11:28:15.000+0200}, author = {Hayward, Joel}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/267a42b31fccec99032aef879f539f26a/geheimjoel123}, description = {Little has been published on the ethical and legal basis of air attacks on non-combatants during the First World War. Existing works have focused mainly on the injustice of the German Zeppelin and Gotha raids on British towns. They present British air campaigns on German towns and the formation of the Royal Air Force as a reasoned self-defensive response. This article breaks new ground as it attempts to paint a richer picture by explaining the influence of retributive passions – vengeance – on British thinking about how best to respond to the villainy of German air raids. By using unpublished primary sources to uncover the moral and legal rationale used by British decision-makers, it shows that they (as their German counterparts had) exploited ambiguities or "loopholes" in the ethical and legal prohibitions on the bombardment of non-combatants and explained away their own air attacks on civilian towns and villages as legitimate acts of reprisal. It ends by demonstrating that, far from feeling grave concerns about the inhumanity of targeting civilians and their environs, the most influential air power thinkers after the war were relatively uninterested in moral concepts of proportionality and discrimination. They saw air power's ability to punish the strong and culpable by attacking the weak and vulnerable as a way of making wars shorter and therefore less expensive.}, interhash = {0181630b3ba3caf7c6c66c3434f51363}, intrahash = {67a42b31fccec99032aef879f539f26a}, journal = {Global War Studies}, keywords = {"Billy" Air Airpower Douhet First Force Giulio Gotha Hugh Mitchell RAF Royal Trenchard WWI War William World Zeppelin air airpower, attacks; bombing; civilian ethics immunity international law; legal; morality myown power raids;}, language = {English}, number = 2, pages = {3-31}, timestamp = {2021-08-15T11:28:15.000+0200}, title = {Air Power, Ethics, and Civilian Immunity during the First World War and its Aftermath}, volume = 7, year = 2010 }