November 16, 1940

Erasing the Front Line: Or a Look at War as We Know It Today.

After a long layoff, Lies Agreed Upon returns to examine one of the more unfortunate chapters of military history, and modestly attempts to trace the path belligerent nations took to change the face of warfare as we know it. During the First World War, the newly invented airplane took a backseat to conventional ground and naval tactics. In the generation between that war and the next, however, military leaders ensured that rapidly evolving aircraft would play an ever-increasing role in the conduct of war.

While many doubted that airplanes had any military importance at the start of hostilities in 1914, by the fall of 1940 it was clear that the future of warfare was in the sky. With devastating effectiveness, the Luftwaffe had cleared the way for German panzers to bulldoze a path across most of Poland, the Low Countries, and France. Without a naval force large enough to challenge his enemy's dominance on the waves, Adolf Hitler once again turned to his air force to reduce Great Britain, his last challenger in Western Europe.


Stuka dive-bombers became a symbol of the German Blitzkrieg. While lethal against ground targets, they were essentially useless in air-to-air combat.



In May of 1940, in complete control of the Continent, Hitler launched wave after wave of bombers in an attempt to subdue the British and prepare for a cross-Channel invasion. Initially, the Germans targeted shipping and munitions plants, but led by the indomitable Winston Churchill, the British resolve failed to waver. German strategy would have to change.

Soon, they began targeting civilian areas, hoping to demoralize the population and blast the British right out of the war. On November 14, 515 German bombers attacked Coventry in one of the most destructive raids seen during the Battle of Britain. Two days later the British enacted their revenge.

A little after midnight on November 16, 1940, 200 bombers of the Royal Air Force rumbled their way over Hamburg, Germany, leveling parts of the city. It was not the first raid on Hamburg, nor was it the most devastating night the area would see during the war, but the raid was launched in direct response to the raid on Coventry. For the first time, even though they claimed the moral high-ground over the modern day "Huns", the British carried out an attack with the express purpose of targeting German civilians. War, as it was known at the time, was changed forever.

Hamburg, pictured here at the end of the war, was one of the many victims of the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive. Particularly effective was a new weapon first used by the Allies in 1944: napalm.


It had become increasingly clear during the first years of the Second World War that civilians were no longer safe in their homes behind the front lines. The German and Japanese genocides in their conquered territory hinted at this, but the Battle of Britain confirmed it beyond all doubt. Not only did airplanes make civilians living near military targets vulnerable, but as the war progressed they found themselves liable to be targeted directly. Over 50,000 residents of Hamburg were killed as a result of the Allies' Strategic Bombing campaigns.

In centuries past, Western warfare was limited to opposing armies meeting on a clear field of battle. While the landscape was open to devastation, civilians generally found themselves out of bounds. As war changed, and concepts of total war came into play, civilians saw every aspect of their lives geared toward arming, clothing and feeding a far-off army. With the advent of the airplane as a major weapon, however, civilians found themselves just as likely to be killed as men in uniform.

At the outset of World War I, few commanders believed aircraft could be used even for reconnaissance, let alone for aerial combat. In less than twenty-five years, military aviation had evolved to be the most important factor in a nation's ability to project power. The Battle of Britain was the first large-scale air battle in history. Eighteen months after the raid on Hamburg, the Americans and Japanese fought the first naval engagement to only involve aircraft in the Battle of the Coral Sea. A few years later, the war came to a conclusion in the clouds above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In just five years, and only a generation after flight was first used in combat, the face of war underwent a complete overhaul.

The Second World War was the first major conflict to see a higher number of civilians become casualties than combatants. Civilian deaths have outnumbered military deaths in every single major conflict since.