Talk:Aerial bombing during World War II

General discussion

Vfd anyone? Or if not NPOV, possibly "original research"?GraemeLeggett 11:42, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's enough there for an article, but it needs a new title and introduction — the present one is obscure and not really related to WW2, in which "precision bombing" was rarely possible or even intended. Grant65 (Talk) 13:40, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

G65, you've missed the point of the article. The stuff about modern precision bombing is context. OTOH, I think there is scope for an article like "Comparison of accuracy of contemporary and WW II bombs" as this is the subject of a variety of popular and sustained misconceptions. It seems a good article on the topic of the title. Mr. Jones 09:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think that article comes close to consensus -- except for the Atomic Bombings where NPOV may be close to impossible. It does need to be sourced and some general cleanup would be good. Robert A West 19:27, 8 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The question of weapons accuracy goes all through military history, where each war fuels technological advancement, to improve prior weapons, that the military leaders have trained their troops on the basis of. In the US Civil War, the death rate at Gettysburg was much larger than most battles of the Napoleonic era, because the troops had been drilled on long guns whose accuracy and range had vasly improved, without changing tactics to compensate for that. In WW II, advances in machine guns, and WMD were a huge surprise. User:AlMac|^(talk) 12:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Total War when invented

I changed a section of the introduction to read:

Prior to the 20th century, the proportion of non-combatants who died as a direct result of war was low compared to the deaths of combatants, but with the increasing mechanization of war, successive wars saw an increase in non-combatants’ deaths. However, there were numerous cases in Central European history, where nations would invade others, kill off or enslave the entire population, so as to colonize the territory with their people, only to have the same done to them a generation or so later. Total war, a modern invention meaning the commitment to war of an entire nations, resources and peoples blurs what constitutes a legitimate target, when the civilian population itself is also a form of materiel

I need to cite some of those Central European cases so you know what I am getting at.

Genghis Khan is probably the first military leader to wage Total war in most European history books, but he did not start it. He had sent ambassadors to some city in Persia, when he wanted to get in on the caravan trade to China, at which point he was ruthless organizing among his own people, but not in warring outside the Mongols. That city killed all of his peaceful envoys, quite brutally, so he attacked the city, killed all the occupants, salted the earth so nothing could grow there, and forbade people, on pain of death, to mention the city name again. To this day, history only knows what happened, not the name of the city.
- The death rate in Europe thanks to the Mongol invasion, as a proportion of the total population, was probably greater than what happened in WW II.
One of the causes of the current war on terrorism was the conflict between Christianity and Islam, known today as the Crusades. There was also the effort to convert people to a particular religion, such as the Inquisition. This was not a conflict where civilians were spared, rather it was one that specifically targeted civilians.
Poland and some other nations were overrun numerous times in medieval times, in fact the definitions of borders between Central European nations was redrawn many times, and each time the civilian population in the areas that changed hands, took casualities far out of proportion to the military casualities.
Look at map of Europe before and after WW I, and a few hundred years further into the past. Whole peoples were obliterated. When Austria Hungary Russia and other empires lost WW I, and the other peoples grabbed the territory, they were just trying to recover what had been taken from them centuries earlier.
The breakup of Yugoslavia into what is wanted by various peoples of the Balkans is the best contemporary example of what was going on for centuries, long before WW II. For each special interest culture there, they see an opportunity to recover what had been taken from them centuries ago.

This concept of total war was not something invented by WW II, it just got greater publicity due to the growth in democracies and news media. User:AlMac|^(talk) 12:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To quote the Total War article, "total war is a 20th century term". I might be willing to accept a slightly wider definition, which the article addresses, but the Mongols, the Crusaders, &c, &c, were not waging total war. If you associate total war with vernichtungskrieg, that's fine, but that isn't how WP or most comentators define things. Wars of annihilation have clearly always been possible, and have been implemented, total wars have not. Be that as it may, this article is certainly in need of attention. Angus McLellan 22:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Redirected

I have redirected this article to Strategic bombing during World War II because they've covering the same content, except that the other article is larger, more heavily edited, and referenced. Tuba mirum 13:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well done I agree with the redirect. --Philip Baird Shearer 16:01, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]