In my long experience at the IBCC Digital Archive, I have frequently observed a noticeable difference in the way users tend to approach primary sources on the bombing war in Europe.
People who relate to specific Bomber Command personnel frequently start from a name and then explore all possible leads to places that they were stationed at, aircraft flown or serviced, notable operations etc. Contrariwise, people from places that were at the receiving end of the bombing war normally begin with an event: their primary concern is to establish who was involved, who gave the order, and the military justification of an action that frequently caused the death of an innocent relation, wanton destruction, or any combination thereof.
The latter is normally frustrated. No answer is more unsatisfying than hearing that a knot of people, a car, a bus, a cart, a local train, a tramway just happened to be in sight, therefore becoming a mere target of opportunity. The revelation is normally met with disappointment and discomfort: nothing is harder than the combination of lack of clear agency (death comes from an unknown and sometimes unseen perpetrator) and lack of discernible purpose, especially when it appears to be utterly senseless, and therefore completely unthinkable.
Sebastiano Parisi sets about to redress this anomaly in his recent book Gangsters dell’aria: Storie di piloti da caccia americani su Milano e Torino 1944-1945 (Air Gangsters: Stories or American Fighter Pilots on Milan and Turin 1944-1945). Tellingly, the book is part of an aptly named series Chi mi ha bombardato? (Who bombed me?)
The foci of the research are four incidents: the Piazzale Loreto bombing in Milano, the strafing of a tram at Orbassano, the attacks on a train at Bollate and on a bus at Badile, with a cumulative death toll of more than 250 civilians. Parisi describes the context in which these events took place and brings to life the human side of the event by skilfully combing a range of primary sources from the Allied side. He provides background information not only on the units that carried out these operations but also pieces together the biographies of the pilots. This is what sets the book apart from the mainstream of military history: what emerges is a tapestry of experiences captured as formal portraits, relaxed snapshots, photos of wives and fiancées, documents about life milestones, pets, homes and suchlike. While sketching profiles of men belonging to what is informally known as ‘the greatest generation’, the author takes great care in avoiding any kind of moral judgement: supplemented with minimal interpretation, sources are allowed to speak for themselves. This choice is intensively compelling. Personnel are not brutes inhabiting a different ethical universe, but totally ordinary human beings sucked into the brutal logic of a relentless total war.
The most interesting passages in the book are those in which the author tries to address a question that survivors asked themselves many times over: did they really know they were deliberately targeting civilians? If the answer is yes, they committed a war crime and must be punished accordingly – if the answer is no, they are at least culpably of neglect of even wilful ignorance. The documents shed light to a complex universe at the intersection of disciplinary power, personal ambition, the persuasion of fighting a just war, as well as the rules governing the use of violence in an armed conflict.
The book reads well, is well-researched and it will equally appeal to the Second World War buff and the local history enthusiast. Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gangsters-dellaria-americani-1944-1945-bombardato/dp/B0DSV5732X
Alessandro Pesaro
University of Lincoln