From Restraint to Ruin – The Birth of the Bombing WarAt the dawn of World War II in 1939, a fragile consensus existed among the warring powers. Spurred by an appeal from President Roosevelt, leaders like Neville Chamberlain and even Hitler gave public undertakings to abstain from the horror of aerial attacks on civilians. There was a genuine, if naïve, belief that the looming conflict could be “humanised,” and that the bomber would be restricted to purely military targets.But how did this initia
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