In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

44  Developing Submarines WAr mAchineS: the bomber AS A bAckGrounD exAmPle Military thinking about goals of war and its conduct can be and were influenced by available weapons technology.1 Technology gave the military such weapons as the machine gun (which played a decisive role during the massive clashes and bloodbaths in the trench battles of World War I), the big guns, tanks, the bomber, the battleship, and the submarine. While some of these weapons (e.g., the machine gun, the tank) were designed primarily for use on the battlefield, other weapons were designed for other uses and, in fact, expanded the cultural definition of what a“battlefield” was. For example , developing long-range weapons with more intensive destructive power could help direct military thinking more and more into a concept of a war in which combat is not just between armies who clash directly but is aimed at faraway infrastructures and civilian populations. Such conceptualization is not necessarily dictated by the technology as such but is the result of cultural decisions about how to use such weapons and developing persuasive justifications for such use. Two developing technologies helped military planners and thinkers into trying to apply and incorporate them into ideas of what the goals of wars should be, adopt them into battle situations, and promote their actual usage.These new ideas altered perceptions about moralities and, consequently, altered cultural cores in a profound way and opened the door for new and innovative ways of doing battle (as well as redefining what a battlefield is). These two new developing technologies were the bomber and the submarine.2 It is thus appropriate to have a very short glimpse at the development of air bombardment of cities and then move on to submarines. For many years, wars were mainly conducted on the ground. The idea of using the air to fight a war belonged to the genres of fantasy and sci- Developing Submarines 45 ence fiction or mythologies. Only when technology developed and reliable machines that could fly became a reality did ideas about how to use such machines in wars begin to be considered by military planners. The first such machines were, of course, airships, particularly zeppelins. How could such airships be used in a military context? Uses that come to mind include observation posts, intelligence gatherings, transportation of ground forces, moving supplies, and other such errands. However, could these ships also be used for actual combat, perhaps to bomb or strafe enemy positions or in battles pitting one airship against another? Major disadvantages of these airships were that they were slow to move,and German airships used hydrogen gas, which could easily ignite and doom everyone aboard. Nevertheless, it did not take much time for military planners to realize that one could send such slow ships, traveling at very high altitudes, to drop bombs on cities. Indeed, already during World War I and beginning in 1915, German zeppelins were used to bomb British cities3 and, in fact, preceded the bomber.4 These bombardments had a few purposes, such as revenge against the British naval blockade of Germany, demonstrating that German military power could damage British civilian life just like the British naval blockade could damage German civilian life, and terrorizing citizens and causing a problem in their morale aimed to erode their support of the war. Indeed, Dyer notes, “Bombing civilians in cities—not by accident while trying to hit military targets , but with the deliberate purpose of killing civilians and breaking their morale—was the final step in the brutal logic of total war.”5 Nevertheless, deciding to hit civilian centers in such a way required thinking about the nature of war, of combat and its goals, in terms of ideas about what a proper mode of combat is or should be like. This is not a simple issue of“necessity” or of power, although these two conditions play a part in processes involving changes in cultural cores. Decisions to use weapons and how to use them have a very strong cultural element. The next step, apparently, was to wait for the development of more reliable flying machines that could perform better than the zeppelins did. Because the decision to bomb civilian cities had already been made, justifications for that were developed, and actual bombardment took place, the road was open for a continuation.Cultural cores already included this script. Indeed, it did not take long for such a machine to come into being—the bomber. It was...

Share