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Abstract
Recent years have seen a revival of interest in Michael Walzer's doctrine of ‘supreme emergency’. Simply put, the doctrine holds that, when a state confronts an opponent who threatens annihilation, it can be morally legitimate to violate one of the cardinal rules of the war convention – the principle of non-combatant immunity. Walzer cites the case of Britain's decision to bomb German cities in 1940 as a case in point. Although the theory of supreme emergency has been scrutinised, the historical case that Walzer refers to has not been looked at in depth. This article seeks to remedy this problem by asking whether the principle actors involved in the decision to bomb German cities understood themselves to be in a supreme emergency. It argues that the British leadership never openly admitted that they were in fact targeting German civilians, and that the principle reason for this was a widespread belief that the British and American publics would not support such a campaign. As a result, throughout the war, the British government publicly maintained the fiction that the devastation of German cities was a collateral product of attacks on its industrial infrastructure. This, in turn, suggests that liberal societies – even those facing imminent destruction – do not tend to support a relaxing of the rules of non-combatant immunity, suggesting that the prohibition on deliberately killing non-combatants may be more embedded than has hitherto been thought.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the editors of the Journal of Military Ethics and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful advice on an earlier draft of this article. I also owe a large debt of gratitude to Jodie Curth for her assistance in preparing the text. Finally, thanks to Sara E. Davies for help and advice.
Notes
1. The strategy was ‘perfectly justified’ according to Robin Neillands (2001: 69). The idea that the combatant/non-combatant distinction breaks down in total war is put forward by Melden E. Smith (Citation1977: 184).
2. It is important to note that, in the European theatre, the USAAF remained committed to precision bombing, though in practice the inaccuracy of targeting meant that the USAAF also rained bombs down on German cities. The US participated in the infamous attack on Dresden, for instance. For the purposes of this discussion, however, I will limit my comments to considering the RAF in Europe and the USAAF in Japan.
3. Paul Ramsey, for example, insisted that there were only two essential elements to just war thinking: acting with a loving intention and respecting non-combatant immunity (2002: 141–147). In addition to Walzer, the supreme emergency exception is defended by John Rawls (1999: 104–105) and Brian Orend (2006: 140–159).
4. For example, Mark Evans (Citation2005: 15) and Paul Christopher, who describes the exception as ‘too restrictive’ (Citation2004: 163). Brian Orend offers a more sophisticated account of supreme emergency as a moral tragedy in the fullest sense (2006: 140–159). By contrast, Bellamy offers an ‘absolutist’ conception of non-combatant immunity which permits no derogation (Bellamy Citation2006: 130–133).
5. The ‘special permission’ view is put forth by Daniel Statman (2006: 58–79). This is quite different to Walzer's understanding, for an actor acting with ‘special permission’ does not commit a wrong, but the moral tragedy understanding put forth by Walzer insists that the deliberate killing of non-combatants remains wrong.
6. Statman, for instance, believes that liberal societies are prepared to tolerate the deliberate killing of non-combatants in supreme emergencies (2006: 79).
7. This summary of Walzer's account of supreme emergency thinking draws its argument and some of its text from Bellamy (Citation2004: 811–833).
8. The first principle is that, once war starts, opposing soldiers may intentionally attack one another (Walzer 1977: 138).
9. On the presence of non-combatant immunity in major religious perspectives, see Paul Robinson (2002).
10. Early canon laws articulating the principle of non-combatant immunity tended to limit it to those groups, such as farmers and clerics, whose work was essential for the peacetime functioning of the society. The prohibition on killing non-combatants was often therefore based on instrumentalism rather than deontological principle (Russell 1975, Keen 1967).
11. The pacifist case in this regard is put forward most persuasively by Robert Holmes (1989).
12. This argument is made throughout Colm McKeogh (2002). For an alternative critique of the doctrine of double effect, see Alison McIntyre (2001: 219–255).
13. Brian Orend has convincingly challenged Walzer on this (see Orend 2001: 125–127).
14. Emphasis added.
15. Emphasis added.
16. This is utterly untrue. Not to mention the partisan soldiers that opposed Germany throughout Europe and especially in the Balkans, Britain in 1940 received considerable assistance from the Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, and India especially). This point has been made by both Terry Nardin (1983) and Brian Orend (2001).
17. An issue discussed at length by Grayling (2006).
18. Most notably, the bombing of Dresden.
19. Though Statman argues that Walzer and his commentators misuse utilitarianism in this regard (see Statman 2006: 60–64).
20. Though this is precisely the position endorsed by Christopher Toner (2005: 545–561).
21. This consensus persisted well after the Second World War (see Ward 2006: 1–33).
22. Emphasis in the original.
23. In 1923, a Commission of Jurists had drafted rules to govern aerial warfare which prohibited ‘aerial bombardment for the purposes of terrorizing the civilian population’. The draft regulations were resoundingly rejected by all the main European powers (see Quindry 1931: 474–509).
24. Trenchard, 27 June 1918.
25. Liddell Hart commented that Hitler had been ‘remarkably reluctant to get into the war’ and expressed doubts about the existence of concentration camps (see Mearsheimer 1988: 99–126, 154).
26. There is evidence to suggest that Douhet's ideas were very popular in the UK (see Sigaud 1941).
27. But neither were the allies convinced of its legality. According to Telford Taylor, ‘aerial bombing had been used so extensively and ruthlessly on the Allied as well as the Axis side that neither at Nuremberg nor Tokyo was the issue made a part of the trials’ (Taylor 1970: 89).
28. As the Chief of Bomber Command put it in 1939, the war had entered ‘a phase when for political reasons we are confined to a course of action which is neither economical nor fully effective’ (Hastings 1979: 62).
29. Originally published in the Daily Mail, 10 September 1940 (cited in Connelly 2002: 47).
30. Though he did go on to say ‘I quite appreciate your point. But my motto is “business before pleasure”’ (cited in Nicolson 1967: 121–122).
31. The US plan, developed by Ira Eaker (Eighth Air Force), held that ‘it is better to cause a high degree of destruction in a few really essential industries than to cause a small degree of destruction in many industries’ (Webster & Frankland [v. II] 1961: 15).
32. In March 1942, for instance, Lord Cherwell argued that destroying 58 German cities would break the will of the German people and force an end to the war (see Parker 1989: 152–153).
33. For a discussion of Harris’ interpretation of the Casablanca directive, see Beck (Citation1982: 330).
34. Exchange recounted by Parker (1989: 164). In the House of Lords, Lord Robert Cecil, Secretary for Dominion Affairs, made precisely the same argument. In February 1944, he told the House that the ‘Royal Air Force has never indulged in pure terror raids […] of the kind which the Luftwaffe indulged in at one time on this country’ (cited in Garrett 1993: 31).
35. According to Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, the targeting point was irrelevant. In response to public criticism of BBC war coverage which, some people complained, whitewashed the fact that the RAF was aiming at cities not industrial targets, Portal wrote to his deputy, Sinclair, arguing that ‘in order to make the matter clearer I have for some time been expounding that the whole of an industrial city is in itself a military target’ (Portal 1943).
36. Emphasis in original. Documents cited and discussed in Hastings (1979).
37. Thus, he insisted that ‘[a]ttacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified so far as they tend to shorten the war and to preserve the lives of Allied soldiers’ (Overy 2005: 290). The influence of Sherman's ‘war is hell’ doctrine on Bomber Command's leadership is clearly evident in an argument used by Sir Robert Saundby, Harris’ second-in-command, to justify the controversial raid on Dresden. According to Saundby: ‘It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself. Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanized or civilized, and if one side attempted to do it would most likely be defeated. So long as we resort to war to settle differences between nations, so long we will have to endure the horrors, barbarities and excesses that war brings with it. That, to me, is the lesson of Dresden’ (Garrett 1993: 133).
38. Emphasis added.
39. Likewise, in April 1940, the Bishop of Liverpool wrote to his diocese that ‘when we do make war we make it decently […] whatever others may do, we will never resort to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians […] this shows that we are fundamentally decent’ (cited Wilkinson 1986: 266). After the German bombing of London, the Bishop of Portsmouth described terror bombing as murder and the Germans as ‘semi-barbarians’ (Chandler 1993: 926).
40. At the height of the Battle of Britain, the Daily Mail told its readers that ‘Berliners are learning that their city is no more immune than is London from large-scale bombing. The one difference is that our airmen select their targets and concentrate on objects of military value’. In September 1942, The Times’ diplomatic correspondent argued that RAF bombing was targeting German industry not its cities and non-combatants (Connelly 2002: 55).
41. Biddle provides a good overview (Citation2005: 62).
42. The decision to strike Dresden was driven by two imperatives. On the one hand, the significant reverses suffered by allied forces in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge demonstrated that although victory was likely it was not assured, and that the Germans still had the capacity to inflict huge casualties on allied forces. On the other hand, it was widely believed that the allied air forces should do more to support the advancing Red Army in the east, and Dresden lay in the Red Army's path (Biddle Citation2005: 63).
43. The New York Times emphasised Dresden's strategic position as an important industrial town and the centre of a major rail network (Biddle Citation2002: 255). The Daily Express told its readers that the destruction of Dresden had sowed confusion amongst Germans in the region (Connolly 2002: 51).
44. Similarly, the Daily Mail reported that ‘Dresden was completely wiped out […] Today we can only speak of what once was Dresden in the past tense’ (Connolly 2002: 51).
45. A few weeks later, however, Churchill told Truman that ‘the war situation has now turned so much in our favour that the making of these great explosions in German cities is no longer of its former importance’ (Biddle Citation1999: 655).