Thereafter, Japanese bombers targeted civilians in Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing and other cities. The Japanese Imperial Navy engaged in the first indiscriminate bombing in the Asia-Pacific region with a January 1932 attack on civilians in Shanghai. By the end of the war, 131 German towns and cities had been bombed, and approximately 600,000 German civilians killed by indiscriminate bombing conducted primarily by the British with support from US forces. The Germans suffered particularly heavy casualties. Both the Axis and Allied sides engaged in such bombing, resulting in the mass slaughter of civilians and destruction of cities. In the European theater of World War II, indiscriminate bombing –- now termed "strategic bombing" –- was increasingly used to terrorize civilians as the war intensified. British administrators commended this use of airpower as "outstandingly effective, extremely economical and undoubtedly humane in the long run." The technique of indiscriminate or terror bombing targeting civilians was used throughout the British Empire, including India and South Africa. Over several years from 1920 onward, the RAF attacked rebel groups in Iraq - for which Britain was the trustee nation at the time - dropping bombs, including incendiary bombs, on remote villages and tent encampments. Shortly after World War I, planes from the British Royal Air Force (RAF) were sent to the Middle East to engage in a new type of operation -– the bombing of what an RAF document refers to as "rebels of uncivilized tribes" who refused to submit to British rule. By the time World War I ended in 1918, both sides had conducted indiscriminate bombing, killing or injuring several thousand civilians.
By the end of 1914, the Allies were also making serial air raids into German territories. The indiscriminate bombing of civilians was first conducted by German planes against Parisians in August 1914, 11 years after the Wright brothers successfully flew the first aircraft in 1903. One result was the expansion of war zones another was indiscriminate attacks on civilians. However, the use of airplanes in the early 20th century led to a quantum change in war strategy. Initially air balloons were used simply to locate the size and position of enemy forces, but military planners soon realized their potential for dropping grenades and other deadly objects on enemy forces. The origin of aerial bombing can be traced to the application of hot-air balloons in warfare in the late 18th century. The frequent use of aerial bombing in modern warfare surely owes something to the attackers’ complete inability to imagine the terrifying experiences of their victims. This sharp juxtaposition of abstract and concrete within a distance of a few hundred meters is a phenomenon unique to aerial bombing. By contrast, the experience of their victims is the "concrete" reality of injury, death and destruction.
For the bombardiers and pilots, the people on the ground are simply "abstract" targets. Yet, the attackers, high in the air above, have little sense of the horror below. The reality of such attacks is all too often scores, hundreds or thousands of bodies blown to pieces by the blast or consumed by fire. There is little warning of such attacks as monstrous bombers overhead, emitting ferocious noises followed by the sharp, ear-splitting sound of on-coming missiles. This passage from a poem by Hiroshima A-bomb victim Kurihara Sadako, graphically depicts the horror experienced not only by A-bomb victims, but by all who have suffered air raid attacks. Indiscriminate Bombing and the Enola Gay LegacyĪnd a writhing mass of humanity fled for safety."