Edit]Germany and the Soviet Union of the 1930s

The 1930s saw the rise of totalitarian regimes in Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany. Both regimes employed terror on an enormous scale.^[86] However, and unlike some of the Jacobins who ruled France during its Reign of Terror, the regimes never applied the words ‘terror’ or 'terrorist' to the ruthless actions of their police, nor to the NKVD in the Soviet Union or the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, but only to those who opposed the two dictatorships. Historian R. J. Overy writes, "What is now defined as ruthless state terror was viewed by Hitler and Stalin as state protection against the enemies of the people."^[87] Effectively establishing and reinforcing obedience to regime and national ideology, both regimes used surveillance, imprisonment (often in Soviet gulags or German labor or concentration camps), torture, and executions against enemies of the state real and imagined.^[88]

[edit]World War II

[edit]The resistance movement in Europe

Some of the tactics of the guerilla, partisan, and resistance movements organised and supplied by the Allies during World War II, according to historian M.R.D. Foot, can be considered terrorist.^[89][90]Colin Gubbins, a key leader within the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), made sure the organization drew much of its inspiration from the IRA.^[73][74] On the eve of D-Day, the SOE organised with the French resistance the complete destruction of the rail^[91] and communication infrastructure of western France^[92] perhaps the largest coordinated attack of its kind in history^{[citation needed]}. Allied supreme commander Dwight Eisenhower later wrote that "the disruption of enemy rail communications, the harassing of German road moves and the continual and increasing strain placed on German security services throughout occupied Europe by the organised forces of Resistance, played a very considerable part in our complete and final victory."^[93]

[edit]Aerial bombardment and civilians

Casualties of a mass panic during a Japanese air raid in Chongqing

Some scholars consider the deliberate bombardment of civilian populations a form of state terror,^{[94][95][96][97][98]} and, during the military conflicts leading up to World War II and the war itself, bombing of enemy civilian populations in order to terrorize and break morale was first employed.^[99][100] For example, aerial bombardment(the bombs often packed with mustard gas) was a major aspect of Italy's 1935 war against Ethiopia, as Italian forces were ordered by Benito Mussolini to "systematically conduct a politics of terror and extermination of the rebels and the complicit population."^[101]

Beginning early in the 1930s and with greatest intensity between 1938 and 1943, the Japanese used incendiary bombs against Chinese cities such as Shanghai,Wuhan and Chonging.^[100][102] Lord Cranborne, the British Under-Secretary of State For Foreign Affairs, commented on a 1937 bombing: "The military objective, where it exists, seems to take a completely second place. The main object seems to be to inspire terror by the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians..." ^[103] In Europe in 1937, the bombardment of Guernica (April 26, 1937), carried out by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, caused widespread destruction and civilian deaths in the Basque town. According to the BBC, the goal of General Francisco Franco, commander of the nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, was "to terrorize the people in the Basque region. . ."

In May 1940, during World War II itself, the Luftwaffe forced Netherlands’ surrender by bombing Rotterdam and threatening to do the same to Utrecht.^{[104][105][106]} In a bombing campaign against Britain called "the Blitz" (September 1940, to May 1941), Germany carried out intensive bombardment of British cities such as London and war industry centers such as Coventry. Britain, perhaps in response, adopted a bombing policy against German cities euphemistically called area bombardment, one of whose objectives was to ‘de-house’ and demoralize German civilians.^[107] The Dresden bombing (February 13–15, 1945) was an instance of area bombardment that left the city in ruins and claimed up to 40,000 lives.^[108] In its air attacks on Japan, U.S. forces used a mix of incendiaries and high explosives to burn to the ground large sections of Japanese cities.^[109] A military aide to General Douglas MacArthur called one incendiary attack on Tokyo "one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history."^[110]

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 815