An interesting article...
The most devastating of the "Terror bombings" were those of Dresden and Hamburg, between 24 July and 3 August 1943. British bombers made four raids during the night, scattering incendiary bombs and the Americans attacked three times during the day - this at Dresden. The Hamburg missions followed similar patterns and had identical functions - the creation of terror sufficient to bring about moral collapse. It's not surprising that the consequence was a conflagration of staggering proportions. That conflagration (actually a "firestorm," a word that had to be invented to describe the horrible result) destroyed three-fourths of the city's built-up sections, killed more than thirty thousand people and made nearly a million homeless and forced them to live in the streets during the fall and winter of 1943, one of the worst winters in the continent's history. There may have been some small justification for Hamburg, since it WAS a prime port for the Baltic Sea trade and a prime launchpoint in the early part of the war for submarines, and even at this point the departure point for new submarines leaving for Brest, Havre and Lorient. But it is a pitiful excuse at that since the harbor area is clearly visible, and the British were quite adept at the use of "pathfinder" bombers to mark their night targets for semi-precise bombing at least. For all the furor over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it should be pointed out that more people died in the fire bombings of Tokyo alone, a few months earlier, than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Dresden and Hamburg's casualties each exceeded either of the two, despite the fact that neither of them was anywhere near the size of Hiroshima. Official estimates for the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are respectively 68,000 and 38,000. Casualties for Tokyo are listed as 84,000 persons killed immediately as a result of the bombings, and another 41,000 who died a few days later as a consequence of the injuries inflicted. And over a million rendered homeless.
I grant that the emotional impact of such destruction being the result of a single device adds horror to the image - but I see little moral difference in destroying a million people with thousands of firebombs and destroying them with a single firebomb. The device is not, in and of itself, an evil thing, and under properly controlled circumstances is capable of producing enormous benefits to the human race and the betterment of its condition. It is the purpose for which it is used which is evil - that, and the intent with which it is used.
Essentially, there were three fundamental causes of death at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Blast injury, burn trauma and radiation sickness. The first two are "conventional," and therefore somehow assume a form of "respectability." Like the earlier explosive and incendiary bombs, the primary means of killing with atomic weaponry was blast and burn, the mechanical and thermal effects of the device, which effects were incomparably more efficient that the clumsy pre- decessors.
The one new element which seemed to add a particular horror to the scene was the introduction of an entirely new means of killing - radiation. The more that was learned about this diabolic weapon, the more dangerous it appeared to be - mostly, I think, because of its invisibility. Blast and burn can be seen, and can be treated directly therefore. Radiation is invisible, and its effects can remain so for decades. It could kill within hours - or it might take weeks. It could cause delayed injury that crippled, like cataract, kidney failure, leukemia. Children of irradiated parents might or might not suffer genetic damage - and it would be very long before anyone would know.
The estimates of the effects of obliteration bombing are usually fairly accurate - there was ample opportunity following the cessation of hostilities to assess the damage at ground level. In most instances, there are even reasonably accurate estimates of civilian casualties, based on a "default" accounting...i.e., subtract- ing the known survivors from the known population base previous the raid, and presuming that most, at least, of the remaining balance were casualties of the raid. That kind of assessment is the simplest kind - it keeps the observer at an unemotional standpoint, that of statistical analysis. What is infinitely more difficult to grasp, however, is the effect as human experience on those involved, in much the same way as it is quite impossible to explain to someone who was not there, what the experiences of Treblinka, Oswiecim and Bergen-Belsen would have been like. The listener can only guess, he cannot truly "understand."
An account from a survivor of Hiroshima narrates, for example, the following: "It was a horrible sight...Hundreds of injured people who were trying to escape to the hills passed our house. The sight of them was almost unbearable. Their faces and hands were burnt and swollen; and great sheets of skin had peeled away from their tissues to hang down like rags on a scarecrow. They moved like a line of ants. All through the night, they went past our house, but this morning they had stopped. I found them lying on both sides of the road so thick that it was impossible to pass without stepping on them."
An account such as this gives some faint notion to the horror that reigned as well in the bombed cities. Yet, what they describe is so remote from the experience of normal life that imagina- tion really fails. It cannot grasp the order of magnitude of the suffering - it has not the frame of reference. We CAN understand events in which we ourselves have participated. From these we can extrapolate to some degree a new experience, for a certain distance - a short distance. We can combine in our imaginations bits of ex- perience into new patterns, and gain some idea of what it would have been like to have participated in such an event, even though we have not been personally involved. However, there is a point beyond which that process breaks down - the orders of magnitude are such that imagination cannot grasp the enormity of it, any more than the ex- pression 2*10^27 is a number which we can "imagine." We might grasp the intellectual significance of it - but it is not something we can grasp, or "realize," in the root sense of the word, "to turn into a reality." One may as well try to convey to a man born blind what "red" is.
The casualty figures might leave us relatively unmoved, because they are "mass phenomena," but human suffering is always an individual affair. Mass suffering can only exist because individual suffering exists - the concept of "mass" in this respect is only a device to concatenate individual sufferings into a single concept which can be grasped quickly. It has its price.
Only when we begin to look through and past the figures can we begin to sense in some degree the realities which these figures represent. We begin to realize that 38,000 in Hamburg and 84,000 in Hiroshima are children who will never again feel a mother's living and loving touch, mothers and fathers who will never again hug or kiss a child, or never have another. The represent sudden and excruciating pain, and long and agonizing suffering. They mean unfulfilled pro- mise, empty houses, teenagers who will go through the rest of their lives blinded, maimed and disfigured. Casualty figures mean all this - and more. Unfortunately, there are few who exercise the insight to experience the meaning.
Where there are relevant figures available, they reveal a high proportion of women among the victims. Not surprisingly, of course, since large numbers of the men among the population were elsewhere, either serving in the military or manning production lines in faraway and hidden places. In Hamburg, for example, the ratio of women killed to men was more than three to two - and the bulk of the men were elderly or otherwise unfit for more strenuous service. The numbers of children killed are also skewed from the population norms.
Postwar surveys on the effects of such tactics reveal the erroneous judgments of the military leaders who rationalized such raids. German morale had not broken, as Harris, Tedder and Spaatz had predicted. And it should readily have been foreseen as such...the Allies had, after all, the experience of the Blitz and its effect on the morale of the British people. There was no reason to presume the Germans would react differently.
One writer discussing the bombing of Germany rightly raised the following question: "Does the question of conscience arise at all for a man who releases a block-buster, unaimed, over a town filled with defenseless people? Does he wonder where it is going to explode? In a nursery, in an old people's home, in a hospital ward?" Evidence is that such did arise. But the moral problem is not simply one for the bombardier. It affects all the civil and military officials who establish the policy of obliteration bombing and who help to carry out that policy. Beyond them, it affects all the citizens of democratic countries who actively approved that policy or who passively consented to it by their silence, in precisely the same fashion as those who contributed to, actively or passively, the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany.
As was said previously, where relevant figures are available for casualties of various types in the "terror bombings" (as they were called by those who had to undergo them) of World War II, they reveal a high proportion of women and children among them. Not too terribly surprising once one realizes that most of the younger men would have been serving actively in the military - in the case of Germany, more likely than not on the Russian front where the Wehrmacht had con- centrated roughly 80% of its combat capacity. The men killed in the air raids would then have tended to have been the aged or the disabled and incapacitated. Children necessarily would have been victims even more disadvantaged by their lack of survival experience.
In surveys made following the war to ascertain the effects of obliteration bombing, (sometimes called "area bombing," or "carpet bombing") two facts became clear, and made it quite evident how erroneous had been the judgments which the military leaders had used to rationalize the raids. One was that "German morale had not broken" (and the same proved similarly true in the case of the Japanese). Captured leaders made a great point of pointing that out following the war. The British, in particular, ought to have been alert to the likelihood of that kind of assault actually strengthening determina- tion to resist - it had certainly done so in Britain's case. There was no reason to think the effects of terror bombing on the Germans would have been significantly different than they had been on Britons during the Blitz.
The second myth destroyed by the post-war investigation was that the direct effects of strategic bombing on the size of the labor force never grew to any significant proportions in Germany, nor did the bombings themselves (with the exception of those bombings deliberately concentrated on fuel production and transportation) have any significant effect on war production. Indeed, at the end of 1944, German production of war materiel in virtually every category exceeded significantly the production of German industry at any time during the war previous.
If those who were responsible for the bombing had hoped that it would either break the spirit of the civilian population or would interfere with production by creating either a labor shortage or an unwillingness to work, or even by creating a materials shortage, they were severely disappointed. Air Power had been vastly overrated. Only with the introduction of fission weapons did area destruction achieve its desired potential.
It is important to keep a single principle of morality firmly in mind here, as, indeed, it must be in ANY discussion of ANY moral problem, whether that problem is one of "just wars," abortion, or social welfare. The principle is a simple one - but probably because it IS so simple, it is often forgotten, even though it takes a great deal of effort to forget something this succinct and this powerful: "It is *NEVER* permissible for anyone to commit evil in order that good may come from it!" In this case, the morality of area bombing must be considered in its own right, as must also that of nuclear warfare.
The principle is, of course, an elementary one. It is that which makes it quite so distressing, not to mention shocking, to realize that President Truman justified his decision on the premise that the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would end the war and save lives. It is even more disturbing to realize that a man who wielded for the first time in human history such an enormous power should have been so very morally naive in such a critical area, or that he was unable to find moral advisers who had considered the matter in its moral aspects, rather than its pragmatic ones.
It makes the situation all the more tragic and reprehensible to realize that the bombings were quite unnecessary - EVEN to "save lives and end the war." Even though the "will to resist" had not been crushed as thoroughly as one would have wished, the *ability* to resist had been. The submarine fleet had strangled Japanese supply lines to the point that they were torpedoing even 12 foot fishing boats. Nothing larger sailed. There was no coal, iron or other supplies to feed the forges of the industrial machine. There was no food to feed the populace. In a matter of months, at best, Japan would have been too weakened to fight, even had it wished to do so. A people which cannot pick itself off the floor because of starvation- induced weakness is in no condition to fight a battle-trained army, fully equipped with equipment which WOULD work. Without fuel to run tanks, planes and trucks, without ammunition even for rifles, without the food that would permit troops the mobility necessary fight a truly effective campaign, nothing even *approaching* Iwo and Okinawa could have occurred. And military intelligence was keenly aware of it.
No, I'm afraid the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ventures were more in the way of a warning to the Soviet Union than to the Emperor. It may be true that the use of the bomb *hastened* surrender, but it did not end the war, and it surely did not save lives. There was no need to slaughter a hundred thousand human beings, either by fission- bombing Hiroshima/Nagasaki, or by fire-bombing Tokyo. Those actions were actions of pure vengeance, and nothing else. They had little to do with "ending the war." They were meant to punish, and if there was a redeeming military function, it was a minor one.
The morality, then, of obliteration bombing, whether by conventional means or by the more powerful contemporary thermonuclear devices, invokes the principle that no one may directly cause the death of an innocent person deliberately and with intent. (Note the word "directly" please). The Jesuit theologian, Father John Ford wrote (and it remains as valid now as it did at the time he wrote it): "I do not believe any Catholic theologian, in the face of conciliar and papal pronouncements, and the universal consensus of moralists for such a long time, would have the hardihood to state that innocent non-combatants can be put to death without violating natural [moral] law. I believe that there is a unanimity in Catholic teaching on this point, and that even in the circumstances of a modern war every Catholic theologian would condemn as intrinsically immoral the direct killing of innocent non-combatants."
The principle itself seems to be clear beyond debate. However, before we apply it to the concrete realities of the Second World War, two questions need to be answered: 1) Was the killing of the non-combatants "direct"? That is to say,w as it the immediate purpose of the bombing, or was it, perhaps, an unintended and re- gretted side effect? It makes a difference. 2) Could the civilian casualties, or most of them, be rightly classified as non-combatants under the conditions of a modern total war?
Surely the deaths of civilians must never be intended directly as the immediate purpose of a bombing raid. However, there is also a principle of moral theology known as "the principle of the double effect," which accepts in practice the thought that one may perform a *good* or at worst, an *indifferent* act [an act which is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically evil] to achieve an intrinsically good effect, even though the act may INdirectly and as an unwilling and unintended side effect, produce certain evil effects. This is simple common sense, of course, as most good moral theology is; for it is unfortunate but true that the sincerest acts of virtue often have regrettable consequences. For example, one could legitimately bomb a railway station or bridge, even though some civilians in the area might be killed. There must, however, be some proportion between the benefit and the ill result. The Lusitania, for example, almost certainly carried some small amount of guns or ex- plosives aboard from the United States to the Allies. But it hardly justified a German sub in sinking her with the loss of 1200 lives.
Likewise, the argument that the direct purpose of oblitera- tion bombing is the destruction of military objectives and that the killing of civilians is only a side effect unintended is surely wrong. The facts speak for themselves. For it is eminently clear that the FIRST and most important direct effects of the raids at Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima WERE the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. True, in these raids some military targets of some value were destroyed as well - but none of a sufficient impor- tance to have warranted the destruction of innocent human life on quite such a grand and flamboyant scale. It would be the height of absurdity to argue that bombing was primarily an attack on these secondary installations and that the civilian deaths were purely incidental, particularly in view of the fact that the armaments were specifically chosen for their capacity to inflict the casualties they did - and those armaments were utterly incapable of really destroying military installations. The worst incendiaries could done was to have delayed rehabilitation for a time.
I think it perfectly clear by this time - and in a moment or so, I doubt many would dispute the judgment - that the deliberate killing of noncombatants during World War Two by any side is not morally justifiable. The question arises, however, whether the civilians which were bombed during that war were truly "non-combatants." Twentieth-century warfare is quite unlike the warfare of any other age. The distinction between "combatants" and "non-combatants" has become so totally blurred as perhaps to be indistinguishable, and perhaps reduce the question to that of being academic. Blurred, the distinction most assuredly is. Is, for example, a worker who raises food on a farm that will go to support the armies in the field truly a non-combatant? What of the factory worker who contributes his labor and skills to the manufacture of instruments of death - tanks, guns, missiles, bombs? Is *he* a non-combatant? What of the nurse, the physician, who heal those broken bodies and send many of them back to the field to take up arms again? Has that line been blurred to the point where it now becomes licit to attack civilians like these IN JUST THE SAME WAY AS ONE ATTACKS THE MEN IN UNIFORM?
As a first comment, I think it beyond ALL argument that *at the very least*, PART of that civilian population consists of non- combatants. I should think babes in arms would qualify; it should also be true, I submit, of the very young, the chronically ill, the elderly, inmates of mental institutions, lower grades of the feeble- minded, the senile, and others.
Obviously, at the other end of the spectrum are those whose full-time jobs as civilians are directly connected with the prosecu- tion of the war and the pursuit of its successful conclusion. Surely this would include the workers in munitions factories, without whose efforts the armies in the field would quickly be rendered helpless.
There are the transport workers, who move the troops around, and keep their supplies moving to them.
There are the civilian accountants and bureaucrats who account for the men, who move the funds for military purposes, and who maintain those finances by collecting taxes and accounting for them and their disbursement. Modern warfare is unthinkable without a veritable army of bureaucrats to make it function.
Can we morally treat workers such as *these* as combatants in the same sense of the term as we do soldiers in uniform? Doubtful, I think, since even international law itself tends to limit the concept of "combatant status" to those actually bearing arms; but for the sake of this discussion at least, let us presume that we MAY so treat at least the LAST category of civilians.
Even accounting for the large portion of the public which DOES have a direct bearing on the prosecution of hostilities, there remains a very large class of citizen and of civilian workers whose duties have no clear connection with the war effort. Random examples might be anything from haberdashers to hairstylists, to milliners and shoe salesmen, pharmacy clerks, restaurant chefs and waitresses. Dry cleaners, clergymen, janitors, cleaning ladies, piano tuners and music teachers. I think it fairly obvious that these MUST be classified as "non-combatants."
I should hasten here to point out that I do NOT intend to assert that civilians are innocent *simply because* they are civilians - civilian populace in unjust wars can very readily be held account- able, for the general public - at least that portion of it which has reached the age of responsible reason - cannot be entirely innocent of having contributed toward its society or to the consequences of its actions; for they may aid and abet the prosecution of an unjust war, if by no other means, by their 'moral' support, by buying war bonds, by attending to the direct needs of the other direct workers, and in many other ways. Indeed, in this century we have already seen dozens of examples of just such a lack of innocence.
If their country is defeated, the victor may punish such persons, for example, by forcing them to pay taxes for "reparations." What is being asserted here is that, however indirectly guilty they are for having contributed to the occasion of an unjust war, their guilt is sufficiently indirect that it does not justify KILLING them for punishment - but requires a less drastic punishment to satisfy the demands of justice.
There is a principle among moral theologians which is called the "moderamen inculpatae tutelae" principle, perhaps best translated by the expression "the limits imposed by a just defense." It simply means this, despite its intimidating appearance: defense must be strictly limited in its use of force to that level of force needed to halt the unjust aggression. Thus, it is NOT moral to shoot a man on your property to keep him from stealing a loaf of bread. The mag- nitude of the force exceeds both the magnitude of the injustice AND the magnitude of the force required to prevent the theft. To kill one's husband to keep oneself from suffering a nervous breakdown is a violation of the principle, as is the murder of one's children to spare oneself the discomforts of raising it, educating it, feeding it, or simply bearing with the agonies, often very real, of bearing it in the first place.
One may kill enemy soldiers who are actively prosecuting an unjust war WHENEVER THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE WAY OF HALTING THEIR AGGRESSION. It is NOT moral to kill them on each and any occasion under which they are met, or to kill them whenever possible simply because one is ABLE to kill them then and there. And that only when there is no *other* way of hand of halting their aggressive acts. That is the principle behind the internationally accepted principle that those surrendering may NOT be killed instead of accepting the surrender. In surrendering, their aggressive action HAS been halted - and therefore, the justification for killing them has been removed as well. It is obviously NOT a necessity, in order to defend one's country, to kill a man for no better reason than that he may, or even that he HAS purchased a war bond.
By any of *these* standards it becomes painfully clear that far and away the VAST majority of civilians bombed during the war WERE "NON- combatants." And a most careful study of this very point was made by Father Ford (mentioned previously), who quite deliberately adopted a very broad definition of "combatant status," and who nevertheless found that even under THIS broad definition, and even in typically *Industrial* areas as opposed to rural areas, at least TWO-THIRDS TO THREE-QUARTERS OF THE INHABITANTS WOULD HAVE TO HAVE BEEN CLASSIFIED AS NON-COMBATANTS, UNDER THE BROADEST POSSIBLE DEFINITION OF THE TERM.
In the light of these considerations, at least, it seems clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the obliteration bombing practiced by both sides during the war of built-up residential areas was a morally unjustifiable slaughter of human beings on any account and under any category of justification. The area raids on London, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nanking, Shanghai and dozens of other places simply have no moral justification whatever. One would have to add, I should think, Hanoi to that list.
The bombing of noncombatants in war is, then, one more example of a VAST wrong for which decent and respectable citizens WERE responsible. The Allies during World War Two made no secret whatever of their bombing policy, and the public was quite well aware of what was going on. I even remember reading the newspapers and cheering them on, much to my eternal regret. I can only plead the callowness and ignorance of youth in my defense for that.
There WERE *some* protests, small, quiet, and quickly muted by the authorities, in scattered places, from scattered individuals and scattered groups, from the "historic peace churches" and others. However, there never was at any time a sufficiently large body of public opinion mobilized against the overt and public policy of obliteration bombing to force the governments to reconsider it in the light of moral principles.
It is difficult, in retrospect, to understand WHY there was so *little* protest. In the case of Catholics, this silence was particularly appalling precisely *because* Catholic moral doctrine has been traditionally applied not only to the conduct of individuals but *also* to the policies of the organized community. Communities may NOT do en masse those things which individuals among them are pro- hibited from doing singly.
Since the latter part of the Nineteenth Century the Catholic Social Movement and the great social encyclicals of that time (which shall before long find their ways into the appropriate online con- ferences) have given striking evidence of the Church's concern in social matters, public perception of which to the contrary not- withstanding. The machinery has existed in this country for a long time to have translated this concern into specific and practical action; the Catholic Association for International Peace had been set up as a national organization to speak for American Catholics on matters of international relations LONG before the war itself even began.
By the end of 1944 the mounting extent of the obliteration bombing was clear to all - estimated enemy casualties were printed daily in American newspapers. Daily there were reports of five hundred and thousand bomber raids so massive that they could simply NOT have all dumped their bombs in the same narrow spots needed for "precision bombing." A thousand aircraft in the air at the same time is a truly AWESOME sight, for those of you who have never seen it. A few *hundred* is terrifying. Unless they're on YOUR side. The destruction of Hamburg had already given a terrible example of more of the same to come. Pius XII had time and time again loudly condemned the policy. Here there is only enough room to repeat a few of his more vigorous statements: "More than once, to our great distress, the laws which bind civilized people together have been violated; most lamentably, undefended cities, country towns and villages have been terrorized by bombing, destroyed by fire, and reduced to ruins; unarmed citizens, even the sick, helpless, old people and innocent children have been turned out of their homes, and often killed." In his Christmas broadcast of 1942 (!) he said: "Mankind owes that vow to the many thousands of non-combatants, women, children, sick and aged from whom aerial warfare, the horrors of which we have denounced from the beginning - has, without discrimination or with inadequate precau- tions, taken life, goods, health, home, charitable refuge or house of prayer."
Quite clearly, "Roma locuta," Roma had spoken in unmistak- able terms. Obliteration bombing had been condemned from the very highest Catholic positions of moral authority. Theologians had added the weight of their more detailed arguments. In September of 1944 that same Father Ford had published his 49-page article in which he simply applied standard Catholic teaching on the rights of noncom- batants and concluded that obliteration bombing was immoral. Other theologians discussed the problem with various nuances; but no on really reached any radically different conclusion.
If American Catholics had acted decisively, even as late as the end of 1944, they might very well have had an impact on policy. They might very well have had an impact sufficient to dissuade the President of the United States from authorizing the use of the first Atomic Bombs. The decision had been one which was excruciatingly close as it was. If they could not have forced a change of policy, at least they would publicly have repudiated obliteration bombing and have disassociated themselves from its moral turpitude.
Yet, this did not happen. There WAS no statement from the American hierarchy. There WAS no wave of protest from large Catholic organizations. If there were any isolated protests in the Catholic press here and there, it could hardly be said that there was a large trend of editorial opinion toward a repudiation of the current policy on bombing. So American Catholics sat by passively, listening to their radios and reading their newspapers while tens of thousands died at Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the thought is to depressing to bear. More will have to wait until the next posting.
