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Air & Space Power Journal - Chronicles Online Journal
False Gospel for Airpower Strategy?
A Fresh Look at Giulio Douhet’s “Command of the Air”
Is Italian General Giulio Douhet’s
airpower theory still relevant after eighty years? Further, did Douhet himself
consider his theory relevant beyond Fascist Italy in the post-Great War period?
As with most theorists of war, Douhet is far more often cited than studied.
Thus, the context of his theory and thoughts may be somewhat surprising for
those who invoke the name of Douhet for polemical purposes in an American
context utterly foreign to his own assumptions. Indeed, according to his
self-imposed limitations, the United States was Douhet’s preferred illustration
of a nation for whom his theory did not apply. As with any theory, his was
hardly isolated from the time and circumstances of its formulation. Douhet’s
thought was so powerfully and deliberately influenced by the peculiar conditions
of interwar Italy that failure to analyze this context cannot but produce a
grossly distorted understanding of his airpower theory and legacy.
The complete context of Douhet’s thinking
was rather complex. In exploring this context, it is first helpful to analyze
his philosophical worldview within the theoretical context of the two greatest
nineteenth-century theorists of war: General Carl von Clausewitz and General
Antione Henri de Jomini. It then becomes possible to distinguish the various
explicit assumptions and implicit presuppositions throughout Douhet’s works that
define, and limit, its applicability. The incommunicable nightmare of the Great
War looms as a ubiquitous shadow over his historical context while the spirited
polemical atmosphere of interwar Italy illuminates his motivations. One of
Douhet’s greatest virtues (though certainly his most overlooked virtue) was the
intellectual honesty to limit the scope of his claims far more than he is
generally given credit for. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Douhet never
asserted his theory either to have been universal or comprehensive. Rather, he
openly acknowledged his focus upon one particular audience: post-World War I
Italians. Finally, this calls for a close look at the importance of Italy’s
particular geographical context within Douhet’s theory.
Along the way, it is enlightening to
consider the popular treatment of Douhet’s context by some of his interpreters.
This is not to deny any relevance beyond interwar Italy, but merely to place the
burden of proof where it belongs. It is improper to assume a priori a level of
applicability for any theory far in excess of what the author himself asserts.
Rather, one ought first to assume the local applicability imputed by Douhet and
then seek valid justification for a broader interpretation. In this regard, it
is curious that the publishers of a recent edition of Douhet’s Command of the
Air chose to depict an American F-15 Eagle on the cover, perhaps as a
thinly-veiled hint of the applicability of the book’s contents to twenty-first
century U.S. airpower.1 Hopefully this contextual reevaluation of Douhet’s
strategic airpower theory will offer some new perspectives not just on a dead
Italian theorist, but also on contemporary views of airpower as part of a
still-lively American polemic.
The most foundational element of Douhet’s theoretical context was his
philosophical worldview. Douhet’s thought was permeated with a pervasive
technological rationalism. He viewed war, even its human elements, in purely
mechanical terms. Reflective of the slaughter of 1914-1918, he believed that war
“makes whole peoples hurl themselves against one another, forgetting for a time
that they all wear the aspect of human beings.”2 Douhet’s theory matched this
“inhuman” view of war.3 For Douhet, human will was swallowed up in war’s totality
and man became indistinguishable from machine. Airpower was the ultimate symbol
of this new war-image, pitting “populations directly against populations,
nations directly against nations,”4 causing them to “come to blows and seize each
other’s throats.”5 This inhuman conception of war permitted Douhet’s rationalism
free reign in his mechanistic theory. Six times in Command of the Air he
referenced the “mathematical certainty” of his conclusions,6 four times calling
them “axiomatic.”7 Using “iron-clad logic”8 as his guide, Douhet asserted that “to
come to any other conclusion would be to deny reason itself.”9 “The problem,” he
once insisted, “does not admit of partial solutions. It is right or it is not
right.”10 Clausewitz once warned, “a dry pedantry of figures will forsake you;”11 Douhet clearly thought otherwise.
Douhet’s rationalism was utterly antithetical to Clausewitz, for whom “in the
whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.”12 In
cards, probability is key, not algebra. The dual focus of gambling at cards is
uncertainty and psychology. Yet neither of these have a place in Douhet’s
theory; as Barry Watts observed, “there is little, if any, room in Douhet’s
thinking for the enemy as an active agent whose plans or actions should be taken
into account.”13 Indeed, much of Clausewitz’s criticism is aimed against the type
of mathematical rationalism Douhet embraced. Clausewitz warned that while theory
can be “a guide” and “a frame of reference,” one must never “construct an
algebraic formula for use on the battlefield.”14 Yet, Douhet defiantly attributed
to his theory the algebraic certainty that “two and two make four… This is not
theoretical or extremist; it is arithmetic, pure and simple.”15 Compared to Clausewitz, however, Douhet’s philosophy was both theoretical and extremist,
allowing him to make assertions that were anathema to Clausewitz; e.g., “this is
the inflexible principle I advocate, allowing no exceptions.”16 While Clausewitz
viewed war as inconceivably complex, Douhet held that “war is simple, like good
sense.”17
By contrast, Douhet’s rationalism paralleled, though far exceeded, that of Baron
de Jomini. While Clausewitz viewed war as gambling, Douhet and Jomini viewed war
as a science; indeed, this is still a quite popular American view of war. Jomini
wrote, “it is beyond question that war is a distinct science of itself.”18
Likewise, Douhet frequently wrote of “the science of making war.”19 Yet, Douhet’s
radical philosophy left a vast gulf between his and Jomini’s thinking. Jomini,
tending more toward practicality, recognized that “war, far from being an exact
science, is a terrible and impassioned drama... dependent for its results upon a
number of moral and physical complications.”20 Douhet, however, often demonstrated
his ideas using simplistic equations.21 He even went so far as to directly compare
his theory to those of physicists Maxwell, Hertz, and Marconi.22 Even his modest
concession that the “real power of an aerial force depends… on such a large
number of coefficients that none of them can be reduced to zero”23 reveals an
algebraic worldview confined by what he described as “the straight jacket of
reason.”24 Yet, was his straight jacket quite as reasonable, or as realistic, as
he believed? As Michael Sherry observed, “as historian [Douhet] appreciated the
psychological complexity of war, but as prophet he discarded it.”25
With respect to technology and history, however, Douhet radically diverged from
Jomini. A central theme of Jomini’s theory was the historical consistency of the
“immutable principles of strategy”26 achieved through technological
indeterminism.
For Jomini, the essential principles of war were contingent upon unchanging laws
of logic and geometry while the effects of technological changes were ultimately
superficial to his theory. While technology had radically changed tactics and
organization across history, strategy “will remain unaltered, with its
principles the same as under the Scipios and Caesars, Frederick and Napoleon,
since they are independent of the arms and the organization of the troops.”27
For Jomini, theoretical certainty required independence from technology, allowing
him to assert that “the immutable principles of war cannot be violated with
impunity.”28 In this respect, Jomini’s theory contrasted starkly with Clausewitz’s
emphasis on uncertainty, chance, and friction that caused the Prussian general
to proclaim that “talent and genius operate outside the rules.”29
With Clausewitz and Jomini illustrating opposite ends of the spectrum of
certainty in war, Douhet claimed a curiously inconsistent position. He
emphasized change and rejected historically based, immutable principles to a
greater extent than Clausewitz ever did while still, somehow, asserting even
greater rationalistic certainty than Jomini. The same technological determinism
that Jomini rejected as antithetical to his theory, Douhet claimed as absolutely
essential. Pursuant with a lifelong fascination for science and technology,
Douhet began his military career as an artillery officer,30 graduating first in
his class from the Academy for Artillery and Military Engineering and later
graduating with distinction from the Polytechnic Institute of Turin.31 In 1902,
prior to any involvement with aviation, Douhet exhibited his progressive views
by advocating complete army mechanization.32 Characteristically, in his 1921
edition of Command of the Air, he viewed technology as the most defining factor
in war: “the form of any war… depends upon the technical means of war
available.”33 Yet, as accomplished aeronautical engineer Edward Warner concluded,
“although Douhet had been a technician and a scientist, he showed but little
knowledge of the problems of aeronautical engineering.”34 Douhet revered
technology with a facile interest that at once extolled and exaggerated its
influence and yet failed to grasp its complexities.
Consequently, for Douhet, strategic principles were as mutably volatile as
technology itself. As Bernard Brodie summarized, Douhet’s “essential, correct,
and enduring contribution lay in his turning upside down the old, trite military
axiom, derived from Jomini that ‘methods change but principles are unchanging.’”35
For Douhet, “such a maxim was plain nonsense.”36 Sharing Jomini’s rationalism but
rejecting his underlying philosophy of historical consistency, Douhet asserted
certainty, and consequently denied Clausewitzian friction, to a far greater
extent than Jomini himself ever did.37 Within his own philosophical context of
ultimate mutability based on continuous scientific advancement, Douhet
paradoxically asserted with complete confidence that future technology “cannot
but add weight to the conclusion drawn here.”38 Such a statement from a man living
in a universe of ultimate change reveals a conspicuous lack of theoretical rigor
coupled with a radically simplistic view of technology. This contradiction
pervaded every aspect of his theory, from his rejection of history to his denial
of friction in war.
Though a surprisingly keen and talented historical analyst himself, Douhet
nevertheless viewed history as “a chain... to which life is tied and carried
backwards.”39 The history of the art of war, he concluded, “cannot teach us
anything.”40 Douhet’s rationalism, in contradiction to Jomini’s, was essentially
ahistorical in nature. In a September 1914 article called “Futurism,” Douhet
wrote, “the door of the past is closed while that of the future is wide open in
front of us.”41 His war experience only intensified this philosophy. He described
the interwar period, in characteristically mathematical terms, as lying on “a
particular point in the curve of the evolution of war” after which “the curve
drops off abruptly in a new direction, breaking off all continuity with the
past.”42 Thus, the very bridge that Jomini crossed to achieve rationalistic
certainty, Douhet burned. Douhet’s technological determinism destroyed any
historical foundation for asserting his claims as anything but idle speculation.
This inconsistency characterized Douhet’s thinking through his final work, The
War of 19-, published shortly after his death in 1930. To the end, he seems
never to have viewed his rationalism and technological determinism as mutually
destructive. Clausewitz had emphasized mutability and uncertainty in war, Jomini
emphasized immutability and certainty, while Douhet, lacking the intellectual
rigor of either, saw no contradiction in simultaneously asserting both ultimate
mutability and ultimate certainty in war.
Douhet’s philosophical worldview sheds
light on American perspectives on airpower. Indeed, his underlying
presuppositions seem to have even greater parallels in American thought than
does his theory itself; it is a dubious heritage. The traditional interpretation
of Douhet, exemplified by Brodie, is that he erred only in being too progressive
for his time: “Douhet’s philosophy, however farsighted, had proved critically
deficient… Then the atomic bomb came and changed everything.”43 The common belief
that technology has vindicated Douhet camouflages his underlying theoretical
flaws and limitations. Yet the belief is widespread, as summarized by one U.S.
Air Force officer’s opinion that “each technical advance, from early bombsights
to more powerful aircraft to the atomic bomb, brought airpower closer to the
Douhetian ideal.”44 Such faith in technology as the savior of a “Douhetian ideal”
(if one can even speak us such an ideal) follows blindly in his
techno-mechanistic beliefs. Colonel Phillip Meilinger also exhibited a Douhetian
historical bias: “Given the newness of their weapon, airmen were not so
fortunate in being able to look backward for a rich lode of experience they
could mine, and thus they had to invent – largely and literally from thin air –
a new theory of warfare that involved new strategies as well as new methods of
war.”45 Though soothing to the collective institutional ego, such historical
nihilism springs largely from precarious Douhetian presuppositions.
It seems, then, that Douhet’s primary
contribution to U.S. thinking may be deeper and subtler than his actual
conclusions on strategic airpower theory. David MacIsaac appropriately lamented
that “the effects of technology and the actions of practitioners have from the
beginning played greater roles than have ideas… One might conclude, with some
distress, that technology itself may be today’s primary air power theorist; that
invention may, for the moment, be the mother of application.”46 With equal
distress, Colonel Barry Watts observed the inroads of Douhetian philosophy in
“the U.S. Air Force’s tireless pursuit of ever more advanced technology” flowing
from “its ahistorical character.” Thus, “the inclination of many in the Air
Force officer corps to reject the relevance of history goes far to explain the
Service’s fixation ‘on technology as the key to the future’. If the past is
viewed as unworthy of serious study,” Watts wondered, “then what else is there
for a ‘high-tech’ institution beyond pursuing technology?”47 In this light, Brodie’s observation that Douhet’s “philosophy is less challenged today than
ever before”48 ironically conveys a deep and distressing truth altogether
different from his intended meaning. Douhet’s philosophy is rarely even
discussed, much less analyzed or challenged. It has silently replaced the more
self-consistent philosophies of Clausewitz and Jomini in American airpower
theory.
Douhet’s historical context in the wake of
World War I also powerfully influenced his thinking. He assumed that land
warfare technology could only intensify the static conditions of trench warfare,
despite the advent of tanks and in contradiction to his own prewar advocacy of
mechanized warfare. “The truth” regarding land combat, he emphasized in Command
of the Air, “is that every development or improvement in firearms favors the
defensive.”49 Even while committed to rejecting the influence of history on
military theory, he was himself enslaved to an outdated and stagnant historical
perception of land warfare. In light of his philosophical contradiction
regarding change and certainty, his absolute confidence in this assumption is,
again, utterly astounding. Land warfare was certain, he believed, to retain its
“static character” because “the causes of that character still exist and will be
more important in the future than they are now.”50 As late as 1929, just as the
Germans (under the shadow of von Seeckt) were pioneering blitzkrieg, Douhet
asserted in The War of 19- that “on land the war will present much the same
characteristics as the World War, because no substantial changes have taken
place in armament or organization of land forces.”51 In Douhet’s mind,
Clausewitz’s offensive-defensive dialectic was dead. How quickly and completely
Hitler’s Wehrmacht would prove him wrong.
Surprisingly, his views on airpower and aviation technology were almost as
stagnant as his views of land warfare. Just as he denied technology favoring the
offensive on land, he refused to countenance any defensive aeronautical
advances. Rather, he viewed the particular technological conditions of his
historical context as absolute, concluding that “the airplane is the offensive
weapon par excellence.”52 His insightful critique of the prevailing attitudes of
1914 apply perfectly to his own thinking on airpower: “The idea that the
defensive, though never decisive, might be of help in gaining time and mustering
strength, was completely disregarded, and the thing was carried so far that some
armies did not even mention the word defense in their manuals of tactical
instruction.”53 That emerging technology such as radar and high performance
fighters undermined Douhet’s assumptions is, perhaps, understandable.54 That his ahistorical theory made the same errors of historical stagnancy that he found so
repulsive in the French command of 1914 is not. That his fictitious War of 19-
bore uncanny resemblance to the defensive assumptions that produced the Maginot
Line mentality is even less so. Douhet, like the French generals of 1914 and
1940, was fixated upon the last war.
A final aspect of his historical context, in light of the Great War, was his
captivation with its suddenness and totality. “What interests us most of all,”
he wrote in The War of 19-, “is that war broke out suddenly, with no appreciable
period of incubation.”55 In fact, its abrupt start was merely an exaggeration of
August 1914. By contrast, World War II approached so gradually and, for some, so
predictably that Churchill wanted to call it “The Unnecessary War.”56 World War II
was, as Douhet predicted, largely “total in character and scope” such that “the
entire population and all the resources of a nation” were “sucked into the maw
of war.” Yet, even this still failed to exhibit the totality of Douhet’s
assumptions. As MacIsaac observed, Douhet’s chief assumption of unrestrained
poison gas never occurred, thus absolving Douhet of some criticism for the war’s
failure to vindicate his conclusions.57 Yet, it also highlights his failure to
accurately predict the war’s character.
The polemical context of interwar Italy’s
heady atmosphere also influenced Douhet.58 His perspective was largely an
extension of the “intense modernist fascination” with technology that pervaded
the “avant-garde culture” of his formative years.59 In 1919, attracted in part by
their modernist views on technology, Douhet became an ardent Fascist.60 It was a
period of dynamic debate, in Italy as elsewhere, on how to prevent another
continental bloodletting. Douhet immersed himself in this “inflamed rhetorical
climate… in which facile slogans all too often took the place of deeds.”61 With
his profoundly intelligent and engaging mind, he remained “closely attuned to
the dominant themes of his intellectual milieu.”62 The image of Douhet as prophet
is, if accurate at all, certainly incomplete; he was also a poet, painter,
playwright, novelist, and satirist.63 Douhet expert Claudio Segre described him as
“more of a polemicist than a systematic and scholarly thinker.”64 In this climate,
there was little room for detached objectivity, and Douhet “seldom hesitated
about indulging his imagination and his taste for rhetoric and for
‘guesstimates.’”65
While many interpreters have questioned
Douhet’s “originality”66 or the extent to which he was “a pioneering theorist”67
in
a universal sense, the very question obscures the context of Douhet’s theory,
original or otherwise, as an integral part of a distinct national conversation.
Despite similarities with other countries’ airpower pioneers, Douhet’s ideas
were at once an original contribution to and a product of a unique polemic; both
reflective of and reactionary to the turbulent discourse on 1920’s Italian
military reform. To interpret Douhet in isolation of this polemical context is
akin to hearing only one side of a conversation while ignoring the identity or
ideas of the other participants. In 1927, for example, Douhet admitted in the
preface to his second edition of Command of the Air that he had carefully
abridged many of the ideas in his 1921 edition in the interest of accomplishing
something “practical and useful for my country.”68 Thus, he overtly tailored his
writings to his audience in a way that separates them from the more broadly
applicable writings of Clausewitz and Jomini.
Due to these polemical origins, Douhet’s
theory was neither comprehensive nor universal, nor did he claim it to be.69 Of
his first edition of Command of the Air, he wrote that his “purpose then was
simply to break ground for the acceptance and execution of a minimum program
which would have constituted a point of departure for further progress.”70 Thus,
many of Douhet’s inconsistencies over time make sense in light of his
circumstances. Of auxiliary aviation, for example, he had previously “admitted
its right to existence so as not to upset too violently those whose minds found
it too great a leap to abolish the auxiliary air force.”71 These polemics tended
to skew the debate in certain directions as evidenced in his Recapitulation,
originally published in Rivista Aeronautica in 1929, in which he summarized his
responses to several specific critiques of his opponents.
Douhet’s unequal attention to some issues
and notable paucity of rigor in others is largely attributable to the unique
features of Italy’s polemical terrain. Many of his sanguine assumptions, for
example, on the destructive capability of bombs on urban area targets seem to
have gone largely unchallenged while his opposition to aircraft carriers, an
issue of more immediate concern to his opponents, generated considerable
back-pressure in professional journals.72 In this respect, Douhet’s arguments
curiously paralleled those conservative elements of the Italian Navy’s
surface-fleet proponents, such as Naval Minister Admiral Sechi, who opposed
aircraft carriers as beyond Italy’s limited financial means.73 In another
revealing instance, carrier proponent Admiral Giuseppe Fioravanzo pointedly
attacked Douhet’s neglect of friction in his theory, arguing that “as time goes
on, the aerial forces which were so strong and numerous at the beginning of the
war might even become weaker little by little from the wear and tear of war,
until they reached a state of inferiority.”74 While in most cases, Douhet
responded with cogent rebuttals, in this case Fioravanzo had targeted one of
Douhet’s vital theoretical weaknesses. Douhet uncharacteristically dismissed
Fioravanzo’s well-placed argument with some unconvincing hand waving.75 As
polemical forces were never evenly distributed, then, Douhet was never forced to
be uniformly rigorous in his responses.
Another significant player in the
polemical arena was General Amedeo Mecozzi. He advocated a combined-arms
conception of air warfare in which operational and tactical air doctrine was
employed to support land and naval forces.76 Italo Balbo pragmatically
incorporated the most practical aspects of both Douhet’s and Mecozzi’s
conclusions in Italy’s young Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica.77 “Neither of these
theories can be altogether discarded,” Balbo once told an English newspaper, “I
think there is virtue in both.”78 Interestingly, Balbo clearly understood Douhet’s
theories to be limited in scope and thus “could not be applied in all
circumstances,” even within the context of Italian airpower: “Naturally, not all
of Douhet’s affirmations are to be taken literally.”79 Ultimately, the Mecozzi-Douhet debate remained unresolved.80 The debate over carrier aviation,
however, ended in Douhet’s favor; yet, it was for reasons of power politics
rather than airpower theory that Mussolini amputated the navy’s air arm.81
Possibly the clearest assessment of Douhet’s polemical context, then, is simply
that Italy shaped Douhet far more than Douhet shaped Italy.
Douhet’s most overt contextual limitation was his focus on Italy’s “unique
geographic situation.”82 Warner observed that “Douhet wrote as an Italian, and he
tested his theories by applying them to Italy,” noting Italy’s protective Alpine
barrier and short flying distances from potential enemies.83 Segre also concluded
that Italy “was at the center of Douhet’s thoughts. Its strategic and economic
problems, especially during World War I, deeply influenced his thinking.”84
Accordingly, Douhet’s writings were not “general theories” but “specific
solutions to his country’s military problems.”85 In the end, Douhet had “Italy’s
salvation specifically in mind.”86 This view is buttressed by Douhet’s own “wish”
that “people could understand that I am thinking primarily of our own situation.
When I say that the aerial field of action will be decisive, I refer to Italy.”87
This contextual issue has generated some controversy. Bernard Brodie, heavily
referencing Douhet in his theory on thermonuclear warfare, eschewed the “legend
that his primary if not exclusive interest in advocating his ideas was the
defense of Italy.”88 Brodie concluded that “Douhet’s mind and ideas were much too
big to suffer confinement to a single country’s military problems, particularly
those of a second-class power like Italy.”89 The evidence from Douhet’s own
writings, however, indicates that on this point Brodie was grossly mistaken. The
assertion that Douhet saw Italy as a “second-class power” represents the
wholesale imposition of a postwar American, perhaps even a touch patronizing,
perspective that could not have been further from Douhet’s thought process.
Quite to the contrary, Douhet the Fascist strongly embraced Mussolini’s view of
Italy as a modern reincarnation of ancient Rome.90 In fact, “Douhet’s mind and
ideas” were far too grandiose and patriotic to think of Italy as anything but a
burgeoning world power with “an imperial destiny” employing aviation as the tool
“with which to carve out her future.”90
That Douhet was primarily concerned with Italy’s “peculiar conditions” is clear.92
For example, his aforementioned view of static, defensive land warfare was not
only shaped by the Great War, but also by the most dominant feature in Italian
land warfare: that “Alpine barrier” that “gives us the power to bar the door of
our house.”93 From this viewpoint, it was not unreasonable to conclude that
“whoever our enemy may be, we will encounter him in the high mountains near the
frontier; and in the mountains our army will have to wage a long and bitter
fight.”94 Thus, while Italy’s geographic isolation largely resembled that of the
British Isles, it was utterly unlike the German or Russian positions. It
resembled even less the geographical context of American global power
projection.
Italy’s peninsular geography was also significant as a “bridge across the
Mediterranean.”95 For Douhet, the Mediterranean basin, not continental Europe, was
Italy’s natural growth region, just as it had been for the Roman Empire. Yet, he
also realized that Italy was “shut up in the Mediterranean Sea” and thus
advised, “as to any aspirations toward making the oceans ours, let us forget
them.”96 Douhet’s theory did not apply in the expansive Atlantic context.97 Due to
the Mediterranean’s small size, however, all naval vessels would be within
striking range of land-based aircraft. Thus, “as long as the enemy Air Force is
intact, the fleet operating in the Mediterranean could always be attacked by it…
An Independent Air Force can fly in any direction over this great sea, against
naval bases, cruising fleets, commercial ports, and lines of communication.”98 His
ideas were overtly limited to “preventing anyone from sailing in the
Mediterranean without our consent.”99 Such a limited navy would have no need of
aircraft carriers since “if we are in a position to dominate our own sky, we
will automatically be in a position to dominate the Mediterranean sky as well.”100
Keeping “in view our own particular situation, lying athwart the Mediterranean
Sea,”101 Douhet overtly rejected the applicability of his theory to “an English,
American, or Japanese naval force operating in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.”102 A
cogent passage from Douhet’s pen shatters Brodie’s argument of a universal
theory:
Naturally, my first thought is of our own situation and the eventuality of a
possible conflict between Italy and some one of her possible enemies. I admit
that the theories I expound have that in the background, and therefore should
not be considered applicable to all countries. In all probability, if I were
specifically considering a conflict between Japan and the United States, I would
not arrive at the same conclusions. To offer a general recipe for victory,
applicable to all nations, would be downright presumption of my part. My
intention is simply to point out the best and most efficient way for our country
to prepare for a probable future war.103
Nonetheless, Douhet did occasionally apply his theory to other countries which,
at least superficially, seems to contradict his self-imposed geographical
limitations. Bernard Brodie supported his universalistic Douhetian
interpretation with the observation that the belligerents of The War of 19-
were
France, Belgium, and Germany, “with Italy playing no part at all.”104 Elsewhere, Douhet applied his theory in speculating on the character of an air war between
Paris and London. Upon careful examination, however, these examples actually
confirm his distinctly Italian viewpoint. Consciously or otherwise, his foreign
examples consistently reflect a notably Italian geo-strategic bias. In the
Anglo-French war, the English Channel performed the same function of isolating
the belligerents as the Alps did for Italy. Further, his citation of British
Prime Minister Baldwin remarking in 1924 that “the history of our insularity has
ended, because with the advent of the airplane we are no longer an island”105
applies as well to Italy as to Britain. In The War of 19, Douhet had the
Germans fortify the Rhine region and the narrow Belgian frontier, creating a
“static form of war.”106 Within these static confines, he wrote, the “frontiers of
the great powers are not long enough to allow full deployment to the huge modern
armies,” thus producing a “continuous front.” This artificial geographic
isolation again reflected Italy’s situation. It is significant that these
scenarios were inapplicable to a German war of maneuver against Russia or
Poland, or in reality against France as the Germans proved in 1940. Further,
even in his Franco-German scenario, Douhet conveniently ignored the definitive
bane of German strategy: the threat of a two-front war. For this, his theory
offered no answers; but then, as his message was intended for Italians and not
Germans, French, Russians, or Poles, there was no need to let strategic
realities get in the way of his main point. Thus, even his foreign examples
illustrate how Italy’s geographic context pervaded his theoretical writings.
Intriguingly, subsequent interpreters have generally paid little attention to
Douhet’s complete theoretical, historical, polemical, and geographical contexts.
With few exceptions, the general trend has been to assume his theory’s
increasing validity over time and universal applicability beyond Italy; the
latter being a distortion that Douhet himself would have choked on. Even in
1943, prior to the atomic era, Warner wrote that the case for Douhet’s validity
was stronger than it had been a decade or two prior and “it is altogether
probable that the passage of another decade will make it stronger still.”107 “On
general principle,” Warner continued, “time works with Douhet.”108 After 1945, most
airpower advocates in the U.S. argued that the atomic bomb had rejuvenated Douhet’s theory.109 The advent of thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles
further strengthened this feeling that “Douhet has come into his own.”110
Most airpower analysts have ignored Douhet’s biases and presuppositions. The
overwhelming majority agree with Brodie that “the framework of strategic thought
he created is peculiarly pertinent to any general war in the nuclear age.”111 More
recently, Air Force General Charles Link indicated that Douhet’s theory was “not
in error but merely postponed” and was vindicated by Desert Storm.112 As Earl Tilford accurately observed, the “general theme” echoed by “senior USAF
officials… along with civilian airpower enthusiasts” was that the performance of
U.S. airpower in Desert Storm, especially that of the Air Force, “had made a
reality of the prophecies of Italian theorist Giulio Douhet.”113 The shadow of Douhet over Desert Storm became a soapbox for many such as Edward Luttwak who
claimed that U.S. airpower had “finally recovered the lost qualities” of
Douhet’s airpower theory and restored “the promise of ‘victory through air
power’… after a 70-year detour.”114 Though popular, this understanding of Douhet’s
theory is simplistic, inaccurate, and profoundly anachronistic. The burden of
proof rests upon those who invoke Douhet’s name thus to demonstrate how his
theory and ideas transcended his own context. While this may be possible, very
few have recognized the need to do so.115
Douhet’s legacy belongs in the history books rather than in the marketplace of
twenty-first century strategic thought. He was a man of his time: creative,
intelligent, literary, innovative, artistic, observant, and most of all,
politically active. It is greatly to his credit that he never made more out of
his theory than it warranted. Unfortunately, later generations of over-zealous
disciples in a foreign land across the Atlantic have largely failed to live up
to this high standard. It is unfortunate, then, that Douhet has been so often
criticized for failing to fulfill prophecies he never made. Touting his
universal applicability exchanges Douhet the myth for Douhet the man. If this
seems a harsh judgement, perhaps one should heed Douhet’s own words: “Hannibal
is dead, Napoleon is dead, Moltke is dead; tomorrow we shall be dead too; let us
respect the past, but let us create the future.”116 Out of respect, then, it is
high time to accept him for who he was: a fertile mind complete with his own
thoughts, biases, limitations, and contradictions. We should study, respect, and
understand his important place in history, but move out from under his shadow
and create our own future.117 As Douhet said of those that went before him, “Let us
leave once and for all those poor dead in peace.” A good start would be to
refrain from raising his flag upon hills he never knew.
Notes
1. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari
(New York: Coward-McCann, 1942; reprint, Washington D.C.: Air Force History and
Museums Program, 1998), book cover.
2. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 145.
3. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 185.
4. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 195.
5. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 195.
6. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 11, 26, 36, 91, 92, 129.
7. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 95, 96, 103, 104.
8. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 100; for other examples of Douhet’s rigid
rationalism, see also 26, 119, 130, and 146.
9. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 25.
10. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 26.
11. Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War, ed. and trans. Hans W. Gatzke
(Harrisburg: Military Service Publishing Company, 1942; reprint, New York: Dover
Publications, 2003), 12.
12. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 97; see also 707.
13. Barry D. Watts, The Foundations of U.S. Air Doctrine: The Problem of
Friction in War (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1984), 7.
14. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 163.
15. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 243.
16. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 193; see also p. 112, where Douhet asserts
that his theory “is fundamental and admits no exceptions, implications, or
reservations.”
17. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 147.
18.Antoine Henri de Jomini, The Art of War (London: Greenhill Books, 1996), 56. Jomini also made frequent reference to “military science” and “the science of
war”, see Jomini, The Art of War, 17, 57.
19. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 62, 196, 205.
20. Jomini, The Art of War, 360.
21. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 16-17, 243, 255.
22.Douhet, The Command of the Air, 187.
23. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 138.
24. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 294.
25. Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of
Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 27-28.
26. Jomini, The Art of War, 331.
27. Jomini, The Art of War, 48.
28. Jomini, The Art of War, 127.
29. von Clausewitz, On War, 162.
30. Claudio G. Segre, “Douhet in Italy: Prophet Without Honor?” Aerospace
Historian, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer/June 1979), 70.
31. Azar Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet,
and Other Modernists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 53.
32. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 54.
33. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 6.
34. Edward Warner, “Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air Warfare” in
Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler,
ed. Edward Mead Earle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), 492.
35. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1959), 22.
36. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 78.
37. Douhet’s neglect of friction is a central tenet of Barry Watts, The
Foundations of U.S. Air Doctrine.
38. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 113.
39. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 58.
40. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 256; see also pp. 26-27 wherein Douhet
asserts that “clinging to the past will teach us nothing useful for the future,
for that future will be radically different from anything that has gone before.
The future must be approached from a new angle.”
41. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 57.
42. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 29.
43. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 150.
44. Silvanus T. Gilbert III, “What Will Douhet Think of Next? An Analysis of the
Impact of Stealth Technology on the Evolution of Strategic Bombing Doctrine,”
(School of Advanced Airpower Studies thesis, Air University, 1992), 43.
45. Phillip S. Meilinger, “Air Targeting Strategies: An Overview” in Air Power
Confronts an Unstable World, ed. Hallion (London: Brassey’s, 1997), 53.
46. David MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue: The Air Power Theorists” in
Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 647.
47. Barry D. Watts, “Doctrine, Technology, and Air Warfare” in Air Power
Confronts an Unstable World, ed. Richard P. Hallion (Washington: Brassey’s,
1997), 22.
48. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 106.
49. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 11. [emphasis in original]
50. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 175.
51. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 307.
52. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 15.
53. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 160.
54. John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999), 77.
55. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 296.
56. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 5, 6.
57. MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 630.
58. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 73.
59. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 52.
60. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 53.
61. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 79.
62. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 53.
63. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 53; and Segre, “Douhet in Italy”
Aerospace Historian, 71.
64. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 71.
65.Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 73-74.
66. MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 631.
67. Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, 77.
68. Douhet, The Command of the Air, xi.
69. In contrast to Brodie’s assertion that it was a “relatively
comprehensive philosophy”; Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 72.
70. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 93.
71. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 94-95.
72. Marco Rimanelli, Italy Between Europe and the Mediterranean: Diplomacy and
Naval Strategy from Unification to NATO, 1800s-2000, Publications of the
Studies in Modern European History, ed. Frank J. Coppa, vol. 21 (New York: Peter
Lang Publishing, 1997), 502-503.
73. Rimanelli, Italy Between Europe and the Mediterranean, 505-506.
74. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 221.
75. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 221.
76. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 76.
77. Claudio G. Segre, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1987), 154.
78. Segre, Italo Balbo, 154.
79. Segre, Italo Balbo, 154, 155.
80. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 79.
81. Rimanelli, Italy Between Europe and the Mediterranean, 514.
82. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 141.
83. Warner, “Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air Warfare” in Makers
of Modern Strategy, 499.
84. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 70.
85. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 70.
86. Segre, “Douhet in Italy” Aerospace Historian, 79.
87. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 259.
88. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 81.
89. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 82.
90. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 81-82.
91. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 141.
92. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 289.
93. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 139.
94. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 135.
95. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 207.
96. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 286.
97. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 284.
98. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 219.
99. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 283. [emphasis in original]
100. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 141.
101. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 219.
102. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 219.
103. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 252-253. [emphasis added]
104. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 82.
105. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 185.
106. Douhet, The Command of the Air, 307-308.
107. Warner, “Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air Warfare” in Makers
of Modern Strategy, 497.
108. Warner, “Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air Warfare” in Makers
of Modern Strategy, 496-497.
109. Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the
United States Air Force: 1907-1960, vol. 1 (Maxwell AFB: Air University
Press, 1989), 239.
110. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 402.
111. Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 106.
112. Charles D. Link, “The Role of the US Air Force in the Employment of Air
Power” in The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath of the Gulf War,
Richard H. Shultz, Jr. And Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., eds. (Maxwell AFB: Air
University Press, 1992), 85.
113. Earl H. Tilford Jr., The Eagle in the Desert: Looking Back on U.S.
Involvement in the Persian Gulf War, William Head and Earl H. Tilford Jr.,
eds. (Westport: Praeger, 1996), 107.
114. Edward Luttwak quoted by Caroline F. Ziemke, “A New Covenant?: The Apostles
of Douhet and the Persian Gulf War” in The Eagle in the Desert: Looking Back
on U.S. Involvement in the Persian Gulf War, William Head and Earl H.
Tilford Jr., eds. (Westport: Praeger, 1996), 291.
115. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 52-53.
116. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 58.
117. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, 58.
Contributor
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Michael D. Pixley
BS Aerospace Engineering, University of
Michigan; M.A. Military Science: Air Power, American Military
University) is the lead operations research and performance
analyst for the AIM-9X Sidewinder short range air-to-air missile
program at Raytheon Missile Systems Co. He lives in Tucson,
Arizona with his wife and new baby. His professional expertise
lies in the field of air power concepts of operations and weapon
system technology. As a flight test engineer from 1997-2000, he
served as flight crew on a U.S. Navy ballistic missile defense
airborne captive carry flight test program. Following this, he did
live warhead-to-missile assembly and test on the SM-3 missile. In
2000, he became an operations research analyst specializing in
land combat, then air combat /air dominance where he has served
on the AIM-9X Sidewinder program for four years. Mr. Pixley
recently published an article in Military History magazine (Feb.
2005) about President Eisenhower’s successful Cold War “Wedge
Strategy” to employ nuclear diplomacy in the Taiwan Straits to
divide the national interests of the Soviet Union from Communist
China. Mr. Pixley’s academic interests focus on the history of
airpower strategy as it relates to conventional strategic theory,
counterinsurgency doctrine, and irregular warfare.
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The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University. Home |
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