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Each season of Unobscured digs deep into one of history's darkest and most misunderstood moments, and sheds light on the true story beneath the myth. Explore the Salem witch trials (S1), the Spiritualist Movement (S2), Jack the Ripper (S3), and Grigori Rasputin (S4) through the narrative storytelling of Aaron Mahnke, along with prominent historian interviews.
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S2E3: Giulio Douhet: Targeting Civilians from the Air, with Colonel Dr Stephen Renner
Manage episode 345829672 series 3383104
By Royal United Services Institute. Discovered by Player FM and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Player FM, and audio is streamed directly from their servers. Hit the Subscribe button to track updates in Player FM, or paste the feed URL into other podcast apps.
Following World War I, air power promised a revolutionary transformation of war, and Italian General Giulio Douhet (1869-1930) was its first prophet.
After the carnage of the First World War, strategists throughout Europe sought to devise new strategies and technologies that would prevent a repetition of the drawn-out trench warfare on the Western Front. Air power would be harnessed to this aim, and Douhet opined that “the purpose of an Independent air force is to inflict upon the enemy the greatest possible damage in the shortest possible time.” Only that this time the victims of such air attacks would be mainly civilians, but Douhet – and for that matter, JFC Fuller, Liddell Hart and others – expected such a war to be much shorter. They would be horribly mistaken, as the subsequent world war proved.
Colonel Dr Stephen Renner, who holds the Chair of the Strategy Department of the US Air War College in Maxwell, Alabama joins Beatrice and Paul for this episode. He . A student of Sir Hew Strachan’s, he holds his DPhil from the University of Oxford. His career has encompassed being a pilot in the US Air Force and commanding a fighter wing.
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