Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places

ABSTRACT Aerial bombardment in World War II brought devastation to innumerable settlements in the European and Pacific theaters of war. A distinctive development, however, was the area bombing of cities remote from the battle zones, particularly in Germany and Japan, where Allied bombing raids razed more than 750 km2 of central built-up areas and involved nearly every city. Some 1.5 million civilian residents of those countries were killed in this way and more than 2 million were seriously injured. To the millions uprooted from their homes by official evacuation were added more than 16 million made homeless by bomb destruction. This paper examines these events as a process of place annihilation and immolation: the combined destruction of resident civilians, residential communities, their neighborhoods, and major features of the urban environment and civil ecology. The destruction of urban support systems, the nature of civilian injuries and death, the areal differentiation of damages, and the problem of their meaning for the interpretations of place are examined as essential features of this annihilation of urban places. Finally, some suggestions and questions are set down as to the significance of these events for both urban studies and the threat of area bombing in its projected form of thermonuclear devastation. Key Words: urban studiesplacecivil ecologyair powerstrategic bombingWorld War IIGermanyJapanthermonuclear war threats