Victory Through Air Power is a 1943 Walt Disney animated Technocolor feature film released during World War II. It’s based on the book–of the same title–by Alexander P. de Seversky.
Its thesis is summed up in its title: That by using bombers and fighter aircraft, the United States can attain swift, stunning victory over its Axis enemies: Germany, Italy and Japan.
Although it’s not explicitly stated, the overall impression given is that, through the use of air power, America can defeat its enemies without deploying millions of ground troops.
The movie has long since been forgotten except by film buffs, but its message has not. Especially by the highest officials within the U.S. Air Force.
The Air Force regularly boasted of the tonage of bombs its planes dropped over Nazi Germany, but it failed to attain its primary goal: Break the will of the Germans to resist.
On the contrary: Just as the German bombings of England had solidified the will of the British people to resist, so, too, did Allied bombing increase the determination of the Germans to fight on.
Nor did the failure of air power end there.
On June 6, 1944–D-Day–the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
It opened shortly after midnight, with an airborne assault of 24,000 American, British, Canadian and Free French troops. This was followed at 6:30 a.m. by an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armored divisions on the French coast.
The operation was the largest amphibious invasion in history. More than 160,000 troops landed–73,000 Americans, 61,715 British and 21,400 Canadians.
Allied air power bombed and strafed German troops out in the open. But it couldn’t dislodge soldiers barricaded in steel-and-concrete-reinforced bunkers or pillboxes. Those had to be dislodged, one group at a time, by Allied soldiers armed with rifles, dynamite and flamethrowers.
American soldier using flamethrower
This situation proved true throughout the rest of the war.
Then, starting in 1964, the theory of “Victory Through Air Power” once again proved a dud–in Vietnam.
Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay said, “We should bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age.” And the bombers under his command did their best to achieve this.
From 1964 to 1975, 7 million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia–more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II.
Yet the result proved exactly the same as it had in World War II: The bombing enraged the North Vietnamese and steeled their resolve to fight on to the end.
American bomber dropping its cargo over North Vietnam
The belief that victory could be achieved primarily–if not entirely–through air power had another unforeseen result during the Vietnam war. It gradually sucked the United States ever deeper into the conflict.
To bomb North Vietnam, the United States needed air force bases in South Vietnam. This required that those bombers and fighters be protected.
So a force to provide round-the-clock security had to be maintained. But there weren’t enough guards to defend themselves against a major attack by North Vietnamese forces.
So more American troops were needed–to guard the guards.
North Vietnam continued to press greater numbers of its soldiers into attacks on American bases. This forced America to provide greater numbers of its own soldiers to defend against such attacks.
Eventually, the United States had more than 500,000 ground troops fighting in Vietnam–with no end in sight to the conflict.
Then, in 2014, with forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launching a blitzkreig throughout Iraq, President Barack Obama caught the “Victory Through Airpower” disease.
ISIS had thrown the American-trained Iraqi Army into a panic, with soldiers dropping their rifles and running for their lives.
This led Republicans to accuse the President of being about to “lose” Iraq.
As a result, he shipped at least 300 American “advisors” to Iraq, to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad.
And he authorized American Predator drones to traverse Iraq, keeping tabs on the advancing ISIS forces.
Then, in September, 2014, Obama ordered airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.
Yet that didn’t alter the balance of power in Iraq. Nor had it worked for America in the 1991 and 2003 wars against Iraq.
Both wars opened with massive barrages of American missiles and bombs. The 1991 war saw the first use of the vaunted “stealth bomber,” which could avoid detection by enemy radar.
The 2003 war opened with an even greater bombardment intended to “shock and awe” the Iraqis into surrendering. They didn’t.
Baghdad under “shock and awe” bombardment
Nor did air power prove effective on the Iraqi insurgency that erupted after American forces occupied Baghdad and much of the rest of the country.
That war had to be fought by U.S. Army regulars and Special Operations soldiers–especially Navy SEALS. It was a dirty and private effort, marked by nightly kidnappings of suspected Iraqi insurgents.
Finally, on February 11, 2015, Obama called on Congress to formally authorize the use of ground forces against ISIS. This would include supporting and training Iraqi forces and Syrian insurgents on the ground
Obama stressed that his request for authorization does not call for deploying American ground troops in Syria or Iraq.
The rerun of the Vietnam/Iraq experience will begin showing in the months ahead.
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WHAT “AMERICAN SNIPER” DOESN’T TELL: PART THREE (END)
In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 30, 2015 at 12:15 amNaturally the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.
But, after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along….
All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country.
–Rcichsmarshall Hermann Goering
Much of the moral basis for American leadership was destroyed by the dark parallels between Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Among these:
ADOLF HITLER
Adolf Hitler (third from left) with his generals
In 1970, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s former architect and then Minister of Aramaments, published his bestselling postwar memoirs, Inside the Third Reich. In a striking passage, he revealed how the Fuehrer really felt about German soldiers who were suffering and dying in a war he had provoked.
One evening during the middle of the war, Speer was traveling with Hitler on the Fuehrer’s private train. Late at night, they enjoyed a lavish dinner in the elegant rosewood-paneled dining car.
As they ate, Hitler’s train slowed down and passed a freight train halted on a side track.
From their open cattle car, recalled Speer, wounded German soldiers from the Russian Front–starved, their uniforms in rags–stared across the few yards to their Fuehrer’s dining-car window.
Albert Speer
Hitler recoiled at seeing these injured men intently watching him–and he sharply ordered an adjutant to lower the window shades.
Hitler had served as a frontline soldier in World War 1 and had won the Iron Cross for bravery as a dispatch runner.
As Fuehrer, he often boasted of his affinity with the average German soldier. He claimed that “my whole life has been one long struggle for Germany.”
Yet throughout the six years of World War II, he refused to visit German cities ravaged by British and American bombs.
Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, despaired at this.
Joseph Goebbels
Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain, often visited cities hit by German bombers, and Goebbels knew these visits greatly boosted British morale.
Goebbels urged Hitler to make similar visits to bombed-out German cities, but the Fuehrer refused.
Albert Speer believed that Hitler couldn’t bear to see the carnage wrought by his decision to provoke a needless war.
George W. Bush “looking” for WMDs in the White House
GEORGE W. BUSH
Similarly, Bush showed his contempt for the soldiers suffering and dying in his own unprovoked war.
On March 24, 2004, at a White House Correspondents dinner, he joked publicly about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).
To Bush, the non-existent WMDs were nothing more than the butt of a joke that night. While an overhead projector displayed photos of a puzzled-looking Bush searching around the Oval Office, Bush recited a comedy routine.
“Those weapons of mass destruction have gotta be somewhere,” Bush laughed, while a photo showed him poking around the corners in the Oval Office.
“Nope-–no weapons over there! Maybe they’re under here,” he said, as a photo showed him looking under a desk.
In a scene that could have occurred under the Roman emperor Nero, an assembly of wealthy, pampered men and women–-the elite of America’s media and political classes–-laughed heartily during Bush’s performance.
Only later did the criticism come, from Democrats and Iraqi war veterans–especially those veterans who had suffered grievous wounds to protect America from WMDs.
Click here: Bush laughs at no WMD in Iraq – YouTube
In his Presidential memoirs, Decision Points, Bush failed to mention his joking about the “missing WMDs” at the correspondents dinner.
In writing about discovering insights into the human character, the ancient historian, Plutarch, said it best:
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.
Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
* * * * *
So add it all up:
Who says history is irrelevant? Or that it doesn’t repeat itself?
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