Giulio Douhet and the Politics of Airpower

Abstract

The Italian, Giulio Douhet, was the foremost pioneer thinker on air warfare. His distinctive contribution was twofold: he insisted that to win a war in the industrial age, one has to have command of the air: not superiority but total control. Second, that in order to obtain this at a time of international tension, a state has to pre-empt by all-out attack from the air against civilian as well as military targets. ‘Command of the air’, although popular with ‘blue-suiters’ the world over, inevitably antagonised the other branches of the armed forces who have seen air power as auxiliary and nothing more. Massive pre-emption has outraged those who believe war can somehow be won the easy way with minimal casualties but who end up conducting long campaigns in which suffering is the greater – but which are extensive rather than intensive (the First World War). Like most innovative and purist thinkers who have aroused controversy, Douhet from the outset suffered ostracism, abuse, and misinterpretation. Yet while his first precept – command of the air – has been demonstrated to be true, his second precept – pre-emption – has never been tried on any major scale, except against Iraq. Thankfully the US Air Force was never allowed to do so during the cold war. The main misinterpretation, however, comes from taking a selective reading of his work to justify or condemn the mass Allied bombing of Germany in the Second World War that took place over four years or the bombing of North Vietnam over two years, of which he would never have approved. This in part stems from the fact that his work has been available in English, but not entirely so. The explanation also lies elsewhere: in the politics of airpower past and present.