A History of Bombing (Paperback)

~ (Author), Linda Haverty Rugg (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Describing genocide as part of the "master story" of Western civilizations, Swedish author and political activist Lindqvist (The Skull Measurer's Mistake) argues that before the development of powered flight, bombs delivered from the air were regarded as an efficient way to kill large groups of people at a safe distance. What the bombs and rockets have from the beginning been intended to do, he continues, is slaughter "others" and "outsiders"--"peoples of color" who will not submit to imperialism, or who are just somehow in the way. Lindqvist offers here a work whose format is more striking than its contents. The book, translated by Berkeley Scandinavian studies professor Linda Haverty Rugg, is composed of excerpts and vignettes, drawn from remarkably diverse sources on aerial bombardment, and numbered 1 to 399, proceeding chronologically from the A.D. 762 to 1999, but mostly concerning the 20th century. (Number 155 begins, "During the 1920s, novels about the future often dealt with a time of barbarism.") Most intriguingly, according to Lindqvist, the widespread use of aerial bombardment by Western states against each other in the two world wars was an anomaly made possible not by dehumanizing, but by "dewesternizing" the targets. The end of the Cold War stripped away the mask; Kosovo was only the first stage of an aerial reign of terror. Lindqvist's case, too simplistic and too overstated to be convincing, is nevertheless powerful. His juxtaposition of fact-based history with passages taken from survivalist fiction, racist fantasies like The Turner Diaries and dystopian future-war predictions demonstrates the extent to which aerial bombing is regarded as an ultimate weapon for destroying the opposition. Anyone who thought twice about what happened in the Gulf War or Kosovo will find this intentionally fragmentary analysis compelling; others will be less sympathetic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

A profound litany of what might someday be considered among the most counterproductive military actions ever taken. -- The Nation

An original work, written with a moral passion that is uncommon. -- Sunday Times [London]

Continuously interesting, often fascinating. -- Financial Times

Extraordinary and beautifully written. -- San Francisco Chronicle

Impassioned, wide-ranging. -- The Times [London]

Lindqvist plots a clear path towards the ever more horrendous holocausts that lie ahead. It is gripping stuff. -- New Statesman

Profoundly disquieting, but that obviously is Lindqvist's ultimate purpose. -- Associated Press

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565848160
• ISBN-13: 978-1565848160
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #626,892 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How does it feel to get bombed?, October 2, 2001

By	mason inman (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Bombing (Hardcover)

A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist

This book explores the history of bombing with a focus on those who were bombed, and the attitudes of those who did the bombing. It is not a technical history, but rather a moral history, along the lines of Jonathan Glover's book Humanity, although their emphases and styles are very different.

He draws from many sources to put together a view which is very unique, combining military history, literary history, and political history (especially of European colonies) with analyses of the development of international law regulating warfare and of politicians and officer's views of war. He also adds in autobiographical elements of his fear of attacks as a child during WWII. He follows the development of technologies of bombing, and the techniques of bombing that came along with them (localized to strategic to area bombing, with nuclear bombing of civilians being the culmination of this). He looks at many futuristic novels to see what people's attitudes were toward war and the massive annilhilation possible through bombing, and finds much racism, and also many predicitions of how destructive bombing would become. He looks at many military theoreticians and shapers of international law, both before and since the advent of planes and bombing, to see what has formed our views of what is acceptable in warfare, and how these laws have been bent and broken.

One of Lindqvist's main points is the element of racism in bombing, and how bombing was initially acceptable only when conducted against those who were not civlized, or less than human. Europeans became used to the idea of bombing in the colonies, and this paved the way for the massive bombing which first took place in "civilized lands" in WWII.

He does not shy away from criticizing those groups who are supposed to be the vanguard of civilization, such as the British and Americans. He discusses colonial interventions, and how bombing was integrated into the general program to civilize the "savages" of Africa and Asia. He points out how little value was given to the life of one of the colonized as opposed to one of the colonizers. Only with this inequality could bombing could be used as a police action (i.e., to put down rebellions) which was cheaper, in terms of money and lives--but only in terms of lives of the colonizers. This inequality also comes up when looking at international law. The laws concerning warfare, such as the Geneva conventions, were shaped during the period when Europeans held colonies. Even though these laws were put in universal terms, in practice they were only thought to apply to fighting between "civilized" countries, and not to what goes on in the colonies. Again, this inequality comes up with regard to national sovereignty, and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

A large part of the book focuses on WWII, and he criticizes many of the choices of the Allied powers, such as area bombing and firebombing in Germany, firebombing and nuclear bombing in Japan. Some people may therefore find this book one-sided, but remember that this is the side that historically has not been heard. Also, he places WWI and WWII against the history of imperialism, of the Europeans and the Japanese, which makes it clear that he is not a supporter of any specific country, but concerned with the effects of warfare on people at large, whoever and wherever they may be, and even if they are citizens of an enemy country.

P.S. The structure of the book is really interesting. It is split into many short sections that have more or less a single point, and are centered around an event or person. These are placed in chronological order, but the book only makes sense if you read it following one of 23 strands he identifies, each focusing on different aspects of the history (i.e., "Bombing the Savages", "Hamburg, Auschwitz, Dresden", "Massive Retaliation", etc.). In this way, as you move through history, forward and backward, you flip through the book, which helps emphasize the historical placement of the events and ideas, and allows him to touch on a lot of different topics without the book becoming a mess.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the title was changed in the English version, October 29, 2007

By	L. Rugg (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As the translator of the book, I probably don't count as an unbiased reviewer. But I learned a great deal in reading and translating it, and I think it is quite ingenious and also devastating. An important book. I wanted to say that the book's English title is considerably more sedate and formal than the Swedish title. Readers like the ones expecting a traditional military history might have been misled by the publisher's decision to omit the Swedish title: "Bang! You're Dead! The Century of Bombing" in favor of a more graspable "The History of Bombing." You may judge for yourself the impact of the original title versus the changed one.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...focus your comments on the book's contents..., April 8, 2003

By	Paul Moyer (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Bombing (Hardcover)

... That such people disapprove of this book makes me proud to number it among my favorites. Alright, alright, I WILL focus on the book but I'm allowing myself some potshots.The book is unabashedly pacifist but not so at the expense of intellectual rigor. It is a fair critique that the author has an anti-war bias, so S.O.F. types need look no further unless they are interested in, God forbid, understanding a point of view that might disagree with their own and learning a thing or two. Rather than prattle on in the usual bleeding heart hyperbole the author presents an almost legalistic case for his ideas. He is anti-war, but it is important to note what KIND of war the he inveighs against in this book, namely, the large-scale killing of civilians from the air simply because they ARE civilians, not merely of the other side, but of a lesser, somehow inhuman, group of beings. This is where the author's chilling insight into the strategic bombing mindset is most profound. A previous reviewer implies that though large-scale bombing of civilians began in WW1 it should be exempt from the book because it was only "white on white." What this fails to recall about the actual point of the book is: the author argues that such a thing happened precisely because the European powers were able to think of each other in an almost racist fashion. Racism, or more accurately, dehumanization, is the necessary step in this scenario. He presents evidence that this process with had begun with the pre-WW1 use of bombing against civilians in colonial uprisings and was only accelerated between the wars and afterwards.The author's main premise is that an inhumane mindset, be it racist, colonial, or what have you, is a prerequisite for the acceptance of the bombing the civilians by governments or by individuals, whether passively or actively. I don't think the author would argue with the assertion that 9/11 was a direct consequence of such a mindset, further, that Gen. Curtis LeMay and Osama bin Laden might have something in common: they both showed complete disregard for the lives of innocents in the accomplishment of their strategic goals. What is most compelling about the book is the way it demonstrates thoughout history the temptation to use bombing simply because one can; how early Science Fiction racist pulp novel fantasies had an ugly way of coming true, in some form, all through the 20th century, much the same way "The Turner Diaries" were horrifically actualized at Oklahoma City.Apart from all the rubarb of whether any of this is gospel truth, the author has a fascinating and truly poetic way of trying to prove a point. The book flows in fragments and you are forced to read it in pieces by jumping around from numbered section to numbered section instead of page by numbered page, like you were reading random articles from a newspaper. I have'nt read it yet "out of order," that is, by page number in sequence, but I think it must be something like a vast version of "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot, only much more heart- breaking and closer to home.If you are interested in an invigorating, disturbing (no matter what side of the political fence you read from) and thought-provoking read, give this book a chance.