With 2014 being the centennial of WWI, aka the War to end all Wars, I wanted to cover a lesser-known Italian general whose influence remains when it comes to strategy. Sadly, I learned about Giulio from The Science of Battlestar Galactica‘s chapter covering nuclear weapons.
I’ll explain later on how he is associated with what became my continual personal nightmare in the Eighties.
Giulio was born a couple years after Italy became the nation we know today. He enrolled in their version of West Point (America’s Army academy) and trained to be an artillery officer. Rather standard in the late 19th Century, cannons were decisive factors in numerous battles for centuries. Afterwards he studied engineering at Polytech Turin where he learned how newer technologies like aircraft and gas-powered cars/trucks could affect the outcome on the battlefield. He got an opportunity to see what planes offered when Italy went to war with Turkey over control of Libya around 1911. This experience made him a major proponent to expand the role airplanes played. Another suggestion was to give this new “air force” its own command structure because he felt that the Italian army and navy failed to utilize planes effectively due to jealousy. The general didn’t contain his opinion to himself neither, he wrote a book titled Rules for the Use of Airplanes in War. Higher-ups punished Giulio by transferring him to the infantry.
If you recall your history well, Italy stayed neutral with the outbreak of WWI. They broke their agreement to aid Germany since they said going to war on Austro-Hungary’s side against Serbia wasn’t in the deal. By 1915 the UK, France and Russia succeeded in enlisting Italy’s participation on their side with promises of Austrian turf some Italians felt they were cheated out of during the unification wars. The horrific campaign fought mostly in the Italian-Austrian Alps was rather inconclusive courtesy of the terrain. Giulio figured the stalemate was solvable by utilizing bombers on the enemy forces. His superiors didn’t agree. So the general went around the commanders by making the request to the civilian government. This failed even worse…he earned a court-martial and prison time. I think Giulio’s bosses were angry over him calling them incompetent in writing.
The Italian army must’ve gotten desperate and released the general one year later. He earned an exoneration on the charges several years after WWI ended.
Peace didn’t stop Giulio’s proselytizing over the superiority of aircraft in future conflicts. Many other militaries, including his own considered his theories to be crap. A few saw the merits to what he wrote in his second book The Command of the Air; the father of the US Air Force General Billy Mitchell, possibly Hugh Trenchard (the father of the RAF) and some German guy named Hermann Göring (father of the luftwaffe). I think H.G. Wells read the books since dropping poison gas from planes was a big element in the movie The Shape of Things to Come.
He died in 1930, nine years before WWII began. His arguments for bombers ending conflicts quickly was debunked rather quickly as the Battle of Britain proved. All sides also developed effective anti-aircraft weapons to prevent bombers from being accurate so carpet/terror bombing became the norm. He said a couple hundred tons of ordnance on a major city would determine the winner. The Allied side in WWII dropped 2.5 million tons with little luck in making the Nazis surrender.
Not everything he wrote was discredited. Maintaining control of the airspace remains in American doctrine as demonstrated against Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. It works if the opponent has an air force to fight with, guerrillas running around in mountains, you’re back to what WWII proved. Replace the conventional bombs with nuclear bombs, Giulio was closer to predicting the future. Those weapons create the ongoing damage, namely ongoing fires, and resource depletion (loss of manufacturing and population) he proposed as being vital to victory.
I can only hope his descendants have become proponents of peace. They can only take solace in most people thinking of Machiavelli first when you ask them to name a scary Italian mastermind who influences bad guys to this day.