“The Souls of Soldiers”: Civilians under Fire in First World War France

Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmospheres of empire

“…Yet, while the aerial experiences of Fascist Italy have directly informed Western conceptions of war in the air, their relevance applies to a much wider set of cases and struggles. During the World Wars, states’ capacity to wage total war in the air structured moral and civilisational hierarchies in the West: while German bombing of urban areas exposed European inferiority, it was also deemed abhorrent and barbarian (Grayzel, 2006: 595), paradoxically justifying the Allies’ use of similar methods as a display of civilised power (Schaffer, 1988: 37). Imperial Japan’s development of new tools of biological warfare in the 1930s–1940s – including forms of bombing aimed at spreading plague-infected fleas or bacterial compounds across Asian colonies (Barenblatt, 2004) – reveals the centrality of more-than-human, aerially-mediated relations to the production of racial difference and imperial dominance.…”

“…Haldane and J.F.C. Fuller in Britain, Emile Driant in France, and Rudolf Martin in Germany had postulated the conquest of the air – achieved through aeroplanes and gas – as central to future warfare (Edgerton, 2013 [1991]: 67–74; Fritzsche, 1992: 38–42; Gat, 1998: 10, 33–34; Grayzel, 2006: 592; Haldane, 1925). Deeply tied to nationalist ideas of modernity and civilisation, support for aero-chemical war often resisted pacifist criticism and translated into both adulation of fascism and imperial ambition (Edgerton, 2013 [1991]: 33–34, 62, 91; Fritzsche, 1992: 2–5, 36; Haapamäki, 2014: 29–34; Omissi, 1990: 28).…”

“…Complementarily, the writings of air-minded theorists in Italy reflected the European awareness and fears of the destructive power of aerial war. The German development of an airship fleet and the experience of World War I made the British public and army increasingly anxious about their vulnerability to aerial attacks (Gollin, 1989: chapters 2, 11; Holman, 2016), and the prospect of German gas bombings crushed even the proverbial French sturdiness (Grayzel, 2006: 607–608). The anticipation of air war – including discussions of evacuation plans, shelters and distribution of gas masks and vital supplies – soon became central to civilian life and a top priority among inter-war European governments (Fritzsche, 1992: 203–219; Grayzel, 2012: chapter 5; Haapamäki, 2014: chapter 2).…”

When war came home: air-raid shock in World War I

“…46-8). 1 Similarly, focusing on air raids in France in World War I, Grayzel (2006) used narratives of physical injury and death but did not expand on psychological casualties of the air raids. She concluded that civilians in France coped relatively well with the new threat and that the expansion of German warfare did not lead to the intended intimidation of the civilian population, but only enhanced the outrage over German cruelty and immorality.…”

“…However, the theatre of war reached far beyond the battlefields of France and Flanders. For the first time in history, the idea that the home front and the war front were naturally separated was challenged by the technological changes that accompanied World War I, particularly the use of Zeppelins and planes to attack civilian populations (Grayzel, 2006: 590). The changes also threatened to blur the traditional distinction between soldier and civilian and awakened a ‘new sense of vulnerability’ (Robb, 2015: 22).…”