The Bombing War, 1908-2023

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Jan Rueger
• Assessment: coursework of 1000 words (20%) and a 4000-word essay (80%)

Strategic bombing, conducted with devastating effect during the Second World War, has attracted attention both in scholarship and public debate. Historians have re-assessed the justification for and effectiveness of aerial warfare. Philosophers have discussed its morality. Politicians have commemorated the bombing of cities and civilians in strikingly different ways. In this module we offer you the opportunity to explore these different aspects in a comparative and transnational context, combining military, political, social and cultural history.

Indicative syllabus

• Introduction: prophesying aerial warfare
• Experiments
• ‘The Blitz’
• Learning from Nazi Germany
• Propaganda and total war
• Civilians and ‘morale’
• From conventional to nuclear bombing
• The post-war debate about the bombing war
• Commemoration and reconciliation
• Conclusion: the legacy of the bombing war

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand the debates about the bombing war which have proved contentious not only, but particularly, in Britain and Germany
• discuss the methodological implications of studying the bombing war
• explain the bombing war in a comparative and transnational perspective
• outline the relationship between memory and history
• explain how and why the participants conceptualised and conducted strategic bombing campaigns.