If the First World War was marked by the total devastation of the front line a dozen or two kilometers deep, then the Second was famous for the massive destruction of cities located hundreds and even thousands of kilometers from the front line. And the reason was not only the evolution of technical means. The preconditions for the shattered Coventry, the burned Dresden and the destroyed Hiroshima lay there, in the gloomy trench labyrinths of the Great War.
Breaking through the defenses of the First World War was extremely difficult, but still possible. Artillery, assault groups, mines - all these methods made the attack easier, but they still could not end the war. Even the successful offensives of the final period of WWI did not lead to a change in strategic position sufficient for victory. It was achieved on psychological rather than purely military frontiers, and cost Europe the most serious cultural and political changes.
The world has changed beyond recognition. The exhausting war weakened the grip of the great powers, and the demon of the national liberation struggle broke free. Empires fell apart one after another. The seemingly calm Europe again began to resemble a seething cauldron. Many military men and politicians understood that new wars in such conditions were no more than a matter of time, but they desperately did not want to lose the remnants of the Old World to which they were accustomed. They needed not just a new tool, but a concept of warfare. One that will overcome the positional impasse and will allow you to win a quick victory, which does not require prolonged exertion of forces fraught with riots and revolutions.
And such a concept turned up in time.
Death from the sky
Italian officer Giulio Douet was a kind of "anti-careerist" - he did not hesitate to argue with his superiors and sharply criticize his native army right during the war. The line between such liberties and the spread of anxiety is quite thin, and the outspoken Giulio went to jail. True, in the fall of 1917, the Italians suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Caporetto, and many of the reasons coincided strikingly with what Douai had warned about in his memoranda. He was released, but soon, frustrated by his attitude, he retired from the army, devoting the rest of his life to formulating and refining his theory of air war.
Douai's 1921 book Dominance in the Air became a kind of bible for Douai's supporters. The author grasped the main thing well: the outcome of the First World War was decided not on the battlefield, but on the streets of the rear cities. In order to win, one must not break through the enemy front, but provoke a revolution - with the unbearable hardships of a big war. The question was how to do it quickly in order to prevent revolutions at home. After all, being at the beginning in the same camp with the future victors, Russia could not withstand the earlier defeated Central Powers. And in the armies of the victors (say, the French) at the end of the war there was a riot after a riot.
Douai knew about the bombing of the First World War. Even then, German airships could even reach London, not to mention Paris and other cities in continental Western Europe. The Entente responded with flights. The tonnage of the dropped bombs was "childish" even by the standards of the aviation capabilities of 1919, but this did not prevent the achievement of a tangible psychological effect - in some cases it was a question of full-fledged panic. The psyche of civilians is always weaker than a unit welded together by training and prepared for war.
But World War I flights were not part of a grand strategy - most of the resources went to the battlefields. Douay believed that if you immediately concentrate efforts on bombing the rear cities, and not armies on the battlefield, this would very quickly create unbearable conditions for the enemy population. Mass riots will flourish everywhere, and the enemy can be taken with bare hands.
Air armies, according to Douai's theory, were the main means of victory in the war. Therefore, the primary target for the strike should be enemy airfields, and then aircraft factories. After that, it was necessary to begin the methodical destruction of large cities. Douay did not postulate a false humanism. The Italian has developed his own formula for the bomb load. A third were supposed to be high-explosive bombs - for the destruction of buildings. Another third are incendiary, and a third are chemical, the poisonous substances of which were supposed to interfere with extinguishing fires from previous ones.
At the same time, Douai worked out not only general, but also tactical issues. Here for us, armed with a convenient message, a lot looks ridiculous. For example, an Italian proposed to unify all aircraft by releasing only one model for ease of production. Two modifications were supposed - a bomber and an "air combat aircraft". The latter was distinguished by the fact that instead of bombs it carried many firing points. Air battles in Douai would not look like "dog dumps" of the First World War, but a rapprochement on parallel courses, culminating in fierce machine-gun fire. The reality of the same World War II was different. More maneuverable fighters solved the problem of bombers bristling with machine guns, simply concentrating the fire of several machines on one enemy.
How is it in practice?
The Douai doctrine turned out to be useful not only as a technical means of breaking the positional impasse. A coherent theory of air warfare has become an excellent aid in bureaucratic disputes. Aviation supporters strove to separate it into a separate branch of the military. More conservative generals were against it. In America, for example, one of the zealous "aviaphiles" was General William Mitchell - he adored the Douai doctrine. Even before the release of Air Superiority, he agreed on an interesting demonstration - bombers were to attack the old battleship Indiana. The experience went well. True, Mitchell's opponents did not tire of reminding that the battleship did not fire back, did not maneuver, and the survivability team did not act on it. And in general, it was outdated.
This dispute could only be resolved by deeds. It was the Second World War that began in September 1939. The air battle for England, which began in July 1940, gave Douai's formations a chance to be tested. But it all went wrong. Many more bombs fell on the unfortunate island than Douai himself considered necessary for victory in the early 1920s. But there was no immediate collapse. The reason for this, oddly enough, was the theory of air war itself.
Douai's calculations were based on the situation during the First World War. The implication was that no one was ready for the bombing - neither financially nor psychologically. But in reality, the cities were no longer so defenseless. Training was carried out, bomb shelters were built, air defense was being established. And the supporters of Douai, who colorfully paint the devastation from the air, managed to scare the inhabitants of Europe well before the outbreak of the war - and thereby morally prepare them.
But where there was no large tonnage, it worked very large. Since 1943, the Allies launched a full-fledged air offensive. Thousands of heavy bombers were sent to Germany. The cities were burned one after another, but this did not lead to the expected results. The bombing partially affected the industry and the operational environment, disrupting communications. But there was no strategic effect - the voluntary surrender of Germany. But in Japan, the Douai doctrine worked one hundred percent.
The Allies fought a naval war in the Pacific. In the summer of 1944, they took Guam and Saipan, islands large enough to receive strategic bombers. Devastating raids on Japan began - after experimenting with bomb loading, the Americans settled on incendiary ammunition. For paper-and-wood Japanese cities, this meant the most terrible fires. Any city could become the scene of the appearance of hundreds of "Superfortresses" and disappear from the face of the earth. By August 1945, Japanese industry was almost completely paralyzed by bombing and a naval blockade.
This coincided in time with the defeat of the Kwantung grouping in Manchuria by the Red Army. It was a great operation, but its effect on the enemy was more psychological. Japan could no longer seriously use the continental territories for a big war - almost all channels of sea communications were cut by American submarines, and the ring continued to narrow. But the loss of industry in the industrial war was an unaffordable luxury, and the Japanese surrendered.
The face of the coming
The emergence of nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles did not abolish, but only strengthened the Douai doctrine. Yes, the role of the aircraft has diminished in the architecture of the nuclear balance, but the essence of the theory of air war is not at all in it, but in the emphasis on the enemy's cities. It is the ability to destroy the enemy's industrial base and the workforce living in the cities in hours that has become that "unacceptable damage" that still keeps the great powers from another world war. The same strike on the most important rear centers predicted by the shrewd Italian, and not at all the use of nuclear weapons against armies on the battlefield.
Douai's theory is bloodthirsty and not constrained by the principles of humanism. On the other hand, crossed with the achievements of scientific and technological progress, it has become a truly real reason for the absence of a big war. This world, of course, is not eternal, but in terms of duration it has already surpassed that four decades of the "Belle Epoque", which is a very short break between the two world wars. And this, by the standards of European history, is a rather serious achievement.
