In October, Queen Elizabeth of England visited Germany. Parts of the German press demanded an apology for the bombing of German cities in World War II. The bombing issue is more than historical, because it bears on the evolving character of war and on what is happening now in Iraq. During World War II, bombing brought the war home to German civilians in a way unlike what they had experienced during World War I. It is possible that one motive for city bombing was to effect not only wartime civilian morale, but also the postwar attitude of the mass of Germans. Certainly by 1939 it was clear that the majority of Germans considered war far more acceptable than did other Western Europeans. How did Hitler persuade Germans to fight a new world war when everyone else in the major European countries was aware of how devastating the previous war had been? It seems at least arguable that Hitler succeeded with the Germans because they accepted the myth that they had been victorious. The myth was credible to German civilians who had never been touched by the Allied armies. If that were believed, then it followed that a little adjustment could win the second time. The effect of bombing during World War II was to demonstrate that Germany was losing the war.
The existence of current spokesmen trying to draw the moral equation with German atrocities demonstrates that at least some Germans never understood what happened. They never accepted German responsibility for the war and for its horrific consequences. Some have argued that many Germans felt free to forget their gruesome past when reunification was achieved.
Dresden is particularly important to these current views. It is in effect the symbol of the injustice of the wartime bombing campaign. It is generally described as a nonmilitary target, struck simply to inspire terror when the war was winding down. Dresden certainly was a masterpiece of medieval architecture, and much art was lost. Thus, its destruction can be presented as a crime not only against Germans but also against European culture. However, recent accounts make it clear that it was very much a military target, a center for some important precision industries. It was also an important transportation center. Moreover, in the late winter of 1945, the German Army was still fighting furiously on two fronts. It was by no means obvious that the war would be over soon, nor that a few more mass attacks might not shorten it. This is not even to mention that Dresden was apparently a particularly Nazi city. Nor is it to mention that the Germans were the first to consider cities legitimate military targets-as early as World War I, when they bombed London and Paris. Terror bombing was a German weapon at the outset of World War II, when Warsaw was destroyed during the attack on Poland, and when the business center of Rotterdam was bombed to compel the Dutch government to surrender in 1940.
In 1945, however, the effect of the bombing seems to have been to convince Germans not to resist after official surrender. The Nazis did form a resistance movement, which smoldered for some years. After all, most of them had supported the Nazi regime. They considered themselves defeated and occupied, not liberated. Many of them had been directly complicit in Nazi crimes; they were saved, in effect, only by the outbreak of the Cold War. In Germany, the direct attack on civilians did not change necessarily the hearts and minds, but it did help preclude any postsurrender violence like what is now being seen in Iraq.
The Allied objective in World War II was not to remove German troops from Allied soil, but to make it unlikely that the Germans would seek revenge again in another two decades. One vital target, then, was the German population. To what extent are the attitudes of populations still important wartime targets? To what extent are wars decided by dealing with enemy military forces? In a larger sense, what war aims are either achievable or worthwhile?
Since 1945, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. view has been that direct attack against enemy civilians is an evil to be avoided. The implication is that the objective in war is simply to stop an enemy government from some objectionable act. That was the case, for example, in Iraq in 1991. What made the 2003 war in Iraq different was that this limitation was discarded, on the theory that Saddam Hussein's regime was a danger to its neighbors. Is the current resistance proof that it is difficult or impossible to gain such unlimited ends using carefully limited means? In an unlimited war, the real objective is the attitude of the population. In Germany, the bulk of the population had accepted the idea of a war of conquest. It may be objected that a population that supports the enemy regime and its program will not be affected by restraint. Is it possible that civilian populations are sometimes not only legitimate targets but also the most important targets?
Now consider Iraq. Many critics of the U.S. policy there have taunted the Bush administration for its unwillingness to look beyond the successful invasion to the need to resist the later insurgency. If, as the administration insisted, it had liberated Iraq, why had armed resistance taken root? Surely that resistance demonstrates the bankruptcy of U.S. policy. In fact, the situation is not so contradictory. Prewar Iraq had three main ethnic groups: Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south, and Sunnis in the center. The Sunnis, and particularly Saddam's tribe from Tikrit, ran the country; both the Kurds and the Shi'ites were oppressed. Both of these groups did consider themselves liberated by the Americans. To the extent that there is a Shi'ite resistance, it is an attempt to play within Iraqi politics.
The Sunni area, which is where the majority of attacks occur, is a very different proposition. It is much more like Germany in 1945. Its inhabitants benefited from Saddam's regime; many of them were Ba'ath Party functionaries. Their future in a liberated Iraq is bleak because so many of them either have blood on their hands or expect to be attacked by the previously suppressed Kurds and Shi'ites. The U.S. miscalculation was to forget that a vicious dictatorial regime is much more than the dictator himself. He must have numerous followers, and those followers will not appreciate losing power and privilege. It now appears that Saddam organized a Ba'ath Party resistance organization at the outset of war, providing financing out of the vast amounts he had stolen from the Iraqi state.
The other Sunni resistance is that of al Qaeda. To the extent that much of the Arab world is Sunni, and to the extent that the Sunnis in Iraq can present themselves as prospective victims of the American attack, this movement seems to enjoy considerable outside financing.
The Ba'ath Party members seem analogous to the Nazis who watched Allied tanks drive through German streets in 1945. There may have been an implicit U.S. calculation that even those Iraqis opposed to U.S. intervention would appreciate how carefully nonmilitary targets had been avoided, that decent treatment would win friends. The main implication of the continuing Ba'ath resistance seems to be that such calculations were fantasies.
Defeating the Sunni movements matters. It is still the case that the Middle East is seething because of the failure of most of its governments to deal with modernization. The turmoil provides recruits for organizations like al Qaeda. An Iraq freed of Saddam Hussein has a chance of demonstrating that an Arab government can succeed, and thus of providing a model for reform elsewhere in the region. That may or may not absorb energies that otherwise would feed into terrorism, but it seems to offer the only valid option. The key, however, is that the war on Saddam was an attempt to change the character of the country. It may well succeed, but the question is still whether the kind of dramatic military victory achieved in 2003 was counterproductive precisely because it was so clean. Do modern precision weapons miss the point of warfare?
Maybe the right question is whether the wars we are likely to fight in the future will be limited to attempts to convince governments to withdraw as we want, or whether the goal will be to destroy unacceptable governments that are likely to continue to act unacceptably. If the enemy government has thin enough support, simply defeating its army may be enough. It is unlikely to be enough if the enemy government has a mass following, as in Nazi Germany or Ba'ath Iraq. Is it time to rethink the cruder weapons of the past?