1 / 17

War, Violence, Modernity: Faces of War

War, Violence, Modernity: Faces of War. Lecture 1: Modernizing War --Industrializing war: toward total war -French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars -Clausewitz: ‘On War’ -American Civil War: technology, resources and ‘will’ --WWI: technological changes, total war mobilization, dehuminization

lgreenawalt
Télécharger la présentation

War, Violence, Modernity: Faces of War

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. War, Violence, Modernity: Faces of War Lecture 1: Modernizing War --Industrializing war: toward total war -French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars -Clausewitz: ‘On War’ -American Civil War: technology, resources and ‘will’ --WWI: technological changes, total war mobilization, dehuminization --WWII: The view from East Asia: War in China The Pacific War

  2. The French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars • Subjects of the old regime become citizens of the new nation • Reconstitution of the military—development of a volunteer army drawn from the citizens militia of the revolution • Levee en masse of 1793 • Jourdan law of 1798: system of universal conscription

  3. Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) • Highly influential military theorist • “On War” his opus on warfare, published after his death in 1832 • Concepts of absolute war (similar to total war), limited wars (wars with more narrowly defined objectives) • “War is a continuation of politics by other means” • The “fog” of war

  4. The American Civil War, 1861-1865 • “Test of will”—two states at war over “way of life” • Rise of Industrial War—Railways, telegraph, machine guns • War of attrition—North has more people and Industrial resources • Over 600,000 Killed

  5. World War I • Shocking violence—end of enlightenment hopes • A war in which technology changes rapidly • Trenches, stalemate—leads to bigger, deadlier guns, poison gas, tanks and planes • Total War: Home front mobilization, power of modern propaganda, strict censorship of the press to ensure one nation’s interpretations of the war and of “the enemy”

  6. The Second World War: The View from East Asia • Japan’s Invasion of China: • Japan as imperialist power in East Asia • Invasion and war with China 1931-1945 • Civilian targets: the Nanjing Massacre, campaign of terror in the Chinese countryside • The Pacific War • Battle for supremacy of the Pacific between Japanese and American Empires • Race war, Resource war • Civilian targets: U.S. Bombing campaigns

  7. Japanese Invasion of China • Starts in the early 1930s, formal war of invasion launched in 1937 • By 1945—20 million Chinese civilians dead, along with 2-3 million military deaths • Major atrocities committed by Japanese military against Chinese civilians: • the Nanjing massacre-December 1937 • ‘3-All’s campaign’—Kill all, burn all, loot all= mass death and pillage in the Chinese countryside

  8. U.S. Strategic Bombing of Japan • Architect of the bombing campaign: General Curtis “Bombs Away” Lemay • Incendiary bombing of Tokyo: March 9-10, kills 80,000-100,000 civilians, 51 square miles of Tokyo destroyed • Dozens of Japanese cities systematically bombed • Nuclear bombs dropped on cities of Hiroshima and Nagasak—87 percent of the urban targets are residential areas as part of the bombing campaign

  9. General Curits Lemay: ‘Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.’ 

  10. “Ultimately, war is still an art, and like all artistic endeavours, human imagination will continue to drive inventive forms and executions of its subject. In a sense, the most basic of the principles of war is the need to constantly challenge, re-evaluate, and modernize all of them. The job is never done.” • ---Brigadier General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., U.S. Air Force, 2006

More Related