Word: douhetting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...airmen's Mahan is General Giulio Douhet, an Italian artilleryman who survived War I to propound the doctrine that air power is the decisive power. The Douhet theory holds that major wars can be won, and won quickly (while ground troops are mobilized as they are on the Western Front), by unrestricted mass destruction poured on civilian populations, their communications and utilities, from thousands of airplanes carrying hundreds of tons of bombs. So far War II has seen...
Adolf Hitler's generals know what they are about. They have studied their Erich Ludendorff and their Giulio Douhet (an Italian theoretician who says that modern war must be fought with mass air attacks). They knew that their advance into Poland would be a pushover. Nevertheless their tactic was a Ludendorff infiltration, modified to suit a mechanized army. Long steel fingers reached into Poland's flesh, then clamped together and squeezed the blood out. This they did with speed which was only less amazing than their efficiency...
...weeks after hostilities began. In the last World War they tried and failed-but only after the retreat from Paris did the War settle down to one of position and exhaustion. This time Brauchitsch had previous German experience to rely on, plus the theories of the Italian Giuseppe Douhet, plus a new kind of cavalry: airplanes, fast tanks and infantry transported in armored trucks...
...Douhet believed that early control of the air is essential for quick victory. This was proved in Spain, where Germany tested many theories and where Franco took two years to get control of the air, then won hands down. By 1937, when General Brauchitsch took command at Leipzig, it was already pretty clear that to deliver a lightning blow Germany needed not only a superlative air force, but plenty of motorized strength...
...Knickerbocker reported that the British Admiralty apparently had learned of Nazi plans for a "demonstration" bombing flight of 500 German planes just to give Britons some idea of what might be in store for them later. The Admiralty was evidently convinced that German military leaders would try out the Douhet "lightning stroke air attack" theory of war and that the first stroke would be an attempt to immobilize the British Home Fleet...