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[Moderator's Note: As with the last press release, we are posting this release
 only to soc.history.war.world-war-ii for the soc.history.* groups. We have
 preserved the other groups....rhm]

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===================================================================
For immediate release                       Contact: Kathy Pitman
Feb. 10, 1995                               (919) 681-8061
                                            PitmanK@
                                                 mail01.adm.duke.edu

Editors: note Feb. 13 anniversary in 3rd graf.


SIDEBAR
HORRORS OF WORLD WAR II
NOT LIMITED TO HIROSHIMA


     DURHAM, N.C. -- Conventional strategic bombing in World War
II was often just as deadly as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, according to Duke University's Tami Davis Biddle.
     In the nighttime hours of March 9-10, 1945, an incendiary
attack on the city of Tokyo killed 80,000 Japanese -- more than
were killed by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima months later, she
said.
     Feb. 13 marks the 50th anniversary of the destruction of
Dresden. The city, once known for its beautiful art and
architecture, was bombed by 800 aircraft from the Royal Air
Force, and shortly thereafter by 400 aircraft from the U.S. Army
Air Force.
     The bombing of Dresden, like the bombing of Tokyo that
followed it, started large numbers of fires that drew together in
one massive conflagration. These firestorms were so big and
powerful, they sucked all the oxygen from the surrounding areas,
creating high winds. The firestorms pulled all the air out of
bomb shelters and the people in those shelters suffocated, Biddle
said.
     "I'm not sure if people realize that by the time atomic
weapons were used in World War II, the bombing of cities had
become a rather common occurrence," Biddle said. "The situation
at Dresden was particularly tragic because the city was full of
refuges fleeing the fighting between the Russians and the
Germans. The vast majority of the people killed were women,
children and the elderly."
     The Allied leaders believed that because there were so many
refugees in Dresden, an attack might cause confusion and
disruption behind German lines. The Allies also hoped to ease the
path of Russian armies westward because the Germans would have a
hard time moving their own soldiers to the front in the midst of
so much chaos.
     "The problem was that by that point the war had become so
brutal that no one stopped to think about what the decision meant
in human terms," Biddle said.
     "Dresden happened because a big, bureaucratic war machine
was up and running, and it was devastating everything in its
path. By that time in the war nobody was pausing to think very
hard about the consequences for non-combatants. Unfortunately,
that's what things had come to; the war had taken on its own
tragic dynamic," she said.
     During the years between World War I and World War II, there
had been attempts to develop international laws that would
protect civilians from the worst effects of aerial bombardment in
future wars, but these were not successful, Biddle explained. No
nation trusted that its potential enemies would adhere to such
laws in wartime.
     As the war progressed, civilian casualties mounted as both
the number of bombers and the size and destructive capability of
the bombs increased. Hiroshima represented the culmination point
of an ongoing trend, she said.
     "People tend to think of the American bombing campaign as
being characterized by `precision' attacks on military and
industrial sites," Biddle said. "One has to realize that against
Japan we switched over almost totally to city attacks; between
February and August we fire-bombed 66 Japanese cities. Even in
Europe, where we endeavored to stay with strictly military
targets, our bombing was often inaccurate."
     The cloud cover in Northern Europe frequently made
bombsights useless. The Allies began bombing blindly with the
help of limited navigational and target-finding aids.
     "Technology had given us the means to build tremendously
powerful bombs and bombers, but it had not yet given us the means
to use them in a discriminating way," she said. "We are only now
arriving at a time when aerial bombing can be made truly precise.
Unfortunately, though, our air force is one of the few in the
world that possesses such capabilities."
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