Bombing of Civilians
Bombing of Civilians.The practice of attacking civilians is as old as warfare itself. Shelling cities by naval or land artillery, for example, long has been commonplace; it continued in the modern‐day sieges of Leningrad and Berlin during World War II and of Sarajevo in the 1990s. Aerial bombardment of civilians—widely predicted even before it began, eagerly by pundits who saw it as a way to avert protracted wars—extended that practice. In the 1930s, Fascists in Spain, Italians in Ethiopia, and Japanese in China offered notable examples, ones condemned by American leaders. Imperial powers also bombed civilians in efforts to curb challenges to their rule. In World War I and at the start of World War II, Germany and Great Britain were primarily responsible for initiating deliberate bombing of cities. As embodied in agreements like the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, legal prohibitions of such practices were clear...
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