|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
|
Buy Now
The Next War in the Air - Britain's Fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941 (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,617
Discovery Miles 16 170
|
|
|
The Next War in the Air - Britain's Fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941 (Paperback)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
|
In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight
changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also
on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First
World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities
attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first
strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the
fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began
to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion
or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial
bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause
tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be
shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully
mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction,
would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air
solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had
largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists
alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis,
when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled
London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe
during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The
knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with
consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air
reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was
articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so
widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it
shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great
issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing
on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional
publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first
perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz
ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The
Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins
and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual
phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
You might also like..
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(1)
(1)
