The Global War on Civilians, 1905-1945

ongoing

This may be one of the most ambitious efforts to apply the methods of global history to the study of war and society in several countries around the world. We explore the evolution of types of warfare that explicitly targeted the enemy’s civil population. WAR-ON-CIVILIANS focuses on (1) aerial bombardment, and civil defense against it, (2) food blockades, and home front campaigns to ration food, and (3) efforts to “demoralize” enemy civilians, while boosting “morale” at home. This is much more than a comparison of discrete case studies. Global or transnational history emphasizes the connections between nations. Here we investigate how the circulation of knowledge and practices culminated by World War II in systematic attacks on civilians and the creation of home fronts that mobilized civilians. The spatial sweep is global, going well beyond conventional Eurocentric accounts. We will connect Japan’s long World War II in China and Asia-Pacific with that in Britain, Germany, France, and USA—plus the seldom-integrated cases of Italy, Spanish Civil War, and Soviet Union. The PI is uniquely positioned to direct the project. A leading historian of Japan, he also writes transnational histories based on extensive archival research in Britain, Germany, and France. And in its temporal sweep, WAR-ON-CIVILIANS breaks new ground by researching transnational developments going back to 1905, when Japan demonstrated new forms of mobilizing civilians in defeating Russia, and the British Admiralty began planning a wartime blockade of the German food supply. We examine the “lessons” of World War I, smaller wars, and developments in the oft-neglected interwar decades that led to the assault on cities in World War II. The project analyzes the impact of political regimes. Bombing, blockade, and civilian morale became common features in a variety of warring states—from democracies to authoritarian regimes on Right and Left, despite important differences.