Une arme nouvelle au centre de la guerre: les bombardements dans la stratégie des Alliés

Knapp, A. (2016) Une arme nouvelle au centre de la guerre: les bombardements dans la stratégie des Alliés. In: Barzman, J., Bouillot, C. and Knapp, A. (eds.) Bombardements 1944: Le Havre, Normandie, France, Europe. Histoire et Patrimoines. Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, Rouen, pp. 73-90. ISBN 9791024006116

Abstract/Summary

In the 1930s two great powers undertook programmes that would lead, from 1942, to the mass production of four-engined bombers capable of destroying whole towns and killing their populations: not Nazi Germany, not Fascist Italy, nor yet the Soviet Union, but two democracies, the UK and the USA. Why was it these two apparently peaceful countries that invested so heavily in weapons so likely to kill civilians? Why did so-called ‘strategic’ bombing occupy such an important place in their way of making war? And what were the consequences for France?