h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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War has never been kind to the people who've been in its way.

I don't think there's any legal blame for any person whether they're in the air or on the gound who inadvertanltly kills an innocent by-stander.

In WWII, I recall a story about a bomber in Europe that accidently dropped ordnance in the wrong place. I forget who did it to whom. Then after that things escalated to wholesale bombing of cities.

One thing to think about. Once you're in general warefare where nations are fighting for survivial, the concept of a non-military target gets pretty murky. If everyone works to support a war effort, then does every individual become a legitmate target of war. I suspect this is the sort of logic that let things slide in WWII that would be totally unacceptable now.

You may be referring to the bombing of Dresden which may or may not have been in response to what some say was the accidental bombing of Coventry. More likely it was a decision by Air Marshall Arthur Harris in a move to destroy morale. Another theory was that it was an attempt to destroy the large Red Army contingent that was in the city. See Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five for all the angst you can muster about the tragedy.

In any case I was referring to the general period around the turn of the century when shooting unarmed civilians simply wasn't the thing to do, doncha know. It seems before that a blind eye was turned to it and afterward heaven's knows but wasn't there a period when the Geneva Convention was being formed when war seemed a lot more civilized?

You may also be thinking of the undeclared war between the U.S. and Switzerland, in which a number of Swiss cities, including Geneva were bombed and, after diplomatic warnings that intruding bombers would be attacked, a number of American bombers were, in fact, attacked by the Swiss and shot down.

I think it was before America was in the war. From what I recall a British or German bomber accidently dropped bombs in a civilian area in Germany or England respecivily. It was something I recall from the History Channel when they were talking about bombing, WWII and acceptable targets. I'm sorry, I can't give much more than that. I just remember it being very interesting, but I was doing something else at the time.

Here's what I was thinking of: http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj00/sum00/helmreich.html

Seems it was actually the British that did Geneva. The Americans did Zurich and Basil.

The bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War is considered to be the first saturation bombing of a civilian population.

can't help it:


http://www.mala.bc.ca/~lanes/english/hemngway/picasso/guernica.htm

Yeah, I was sorely tempted to do the same, but couldn't face trolling through all the images googled tossed up to choose from. I did find a number of stories about how they covered the mural at the UN to avoid having it as a backdrop for announcements about bombings.

I thought about that, too.

I think the escalation some people may be thinking of was a probably accidental German raid on London leading to a retaliation attack against Berlin, and a subsequent shift to city bombing as a major offensive tactic.

There were orders from the highest level not to bomb London, but on the night of 24/25 August 1940, a small raid on the Thameshaven oil terminal went off-target, and accidentally hit the East End of London, damaging the church of St Giles, Cripplegate.

The next night, a retaliatory raid on Berlin, at the extreme limit of range of British bombers led to the detruction of a summer house in a garden in the suburb of Rosenthal, and the injury of two people.
The next night, the RAF attacked four other German cities, as well as two in Italy.
The following night, Berlin was attacked again, leading to 8 deaths and 21 injuries. Other German cities were also attacked.
That led to the revocation of the order forbidding attacks on London.

It appears that many people in the German military had been wanting to attack London for some time, but Hitler had been against it, quite possibly for very sound reasons.
From the British point of view, the shift from purely military targets to civilian ones could be seen as advantageous, since it took some of the strain off hard-pressed airfields and strategic industrial targets, and arguably made the war less remote for civilians.
It may be that the 'retaliation' attacks on Berlin were actually calculated to provoke a shift in German policy to one potentially less damaging to British military infrastructure.

Around the 1900s and a little bit after? I think you've picked one of the least civilized periods ever...

Immediete wars that spring to mind are colonial, including I believe just about the nastiest thing the British have ever done: the Boer War.

There's also a lot of fuss in the decaying Turkish Empire, lots of massacres and in one province genocide.

1906 Russian Revolution? Not particularly nice that one. Suppressed in traditional Tsarist style.

And then we get to WWI, the complete devestation of much of eastern France, a wave of Communist Revolutions and a lot of very bloody civil wars and enforced starvation of millions in the Ukraine by the Russians.

Erm....does a little scuffle called the Crusades ring a bell? you know the one where the Christian crusaders massacred the entire population of Jerusalem, until the blood ran ankle deep in the streets?
Or going back even earlier, how about Alexander the "Great" at Thebes? Up to 10,000 massacred and 30,000 sold into slavery...

the notion that one doesn't make war on civilians is a fairly recent concept I think.

I agree, Rev. We should, I think, celebrate the modern enlightened decision that civilians should not be a target of war (a hopeful step on the road to the elimination of war) and lament the horror of turning away from that decision.

The Geneva Convention's government website mentions that the first Convention, conceived to protect the sick and wounded in wartime was signed in 1864. Previous to that it mentions such things as a reference to war crimes in the Hindu code of Manu as early as 200 BC and the trial of Sir William Wallace in 1305 for the wartime murder of civilians.
http://www.genevaconventions.org/
It sounds like just another case of convenience for countries as to whether they want to conform to morality and/or international law.

What I was referring to was how technology has allowed individuals to evade responsibility for what is in effect murder. If you were to pose the original questions and add *remotely with little chance of negative personal legal consequence or responsibility* I imagine some of the answers would change.

"the trial of Sir William Wallace in 1305 for the wartime murder of civilians" Shhhh You'll spoil BraveHeart for all the people that haven't seen it.

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Indeed!

Oh hey that's not how the story goes, William Wallace never killed any civillians, and he obviously wasn't a Sir but probably worked down the pit and defeated the billions strong evil English army with the sheer power love...

No, wait, that was Star Wars...

Personally, I have always found the concept of a "Civilised" war extremly amusing. I keep getting images in my mind of a soldier blowing someones brains out then shouting "Sorry!"....blow someone elses brains out........"Sorry!"

Troops running home to mummy blubbing that "He tried to shoot me"

How on Earth can any war ever be "Civilised"? The idea of war, surely is to smash the enemy as fast as you can so that you can be home and tucked up in bed for the 10 o'clock CNN highlights?

If that is the aim, then surely you go in as hard and as violently as possible to keep the whole awful thing as short as possible - and if that is the case, then civilians will die.

If anyone went to war with the proviso that no innocents should die, then you would have both sides simply fill their military targets with women and kids and Voila! No war possible!

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Not that bad of an idea, then...