Theory: 1927–1937
THE TERMINATION OF THE IMCC MISSION IN MARCH 1927 meant that Hungarian rearmament was possible, though not formally permitted. Trianon’s military restrictions remained in place, but the instrument for their implementation was removed, and the Allies’ will for enforcement greatly diminished. By securing an Italian treaty and British loans, Hungarian diplomats and financiers had gained for its political and military leaders a narrow slice of maneuvering room in which to pursue Hungary’s idée fixe, the nullification of the postwar settlement. Central to that pursuit was rebuilding Hungary’s armed forces. There was broad agreement throughout the government that the possession of a credible military establishment was a necessary if insufficient condition for revision. A disarmed Hungary would never regain the territories lost at Trianon. A reconstituted Honvéd, however, would strengthen Hungary’s hand in the region in the short term and provide the means for forced revision in the long run. Defense Minister Károly Csáky summarized this argument in a 1927 Crown Council meeting: “In foreign policy it is military strength above all that defines power…. The stronger our military forces, the more in demand will be our friendship. This is one reason why our forces cannot remain at their present standard.”1 A year earlier, in a resignation letter to Admiral Horthy (which the regent declined to accept), Count Bethlen had given similar counsel. After offering his assessment that the “foundations of financial and political consolidation have been laid,” Bethlen advised Horthy that “the next step should be to shake off military control and to build up armaments.” He closed the letter on an optimistic note: “It is my feeling that in about four or five years Trianon might be liquidated. For this time all our forces will have to be kept ready, and every preparation must be made by then.”2 While Bethlen’s predicted timeline of revision was off by nearly a decade, his call for rearmament was heeded as soon as conditions permitted.
There was no doubt that an air service would be an important part of Hungarian rearmament. Though the contribution of air power to the battles of 1919 had been limited by scarce resources, expectations for aviation’s potential contribution to warfare had grown in the 1920s, and by the end of the decade there was support for (or fear of) air power at the highest levels of Hungarian government. Brigadier General Henrik Werth, then the commandant of the War College (Hadiakadémia) and later Honvéd chief of staff, considered the air arm “modern warfare’s most powerful.”3 Retired Colonel Károly Mayer-Csejkovits, a well-known commentator on military affairs, sent to Admiral Horthy in March 1928 a memorandum titled “The strategical position of Hungary in the war of the future.” This future war, according to the colonel, would be one of “panic, disorders, and mass movements” induced by gas and incendiary attacks on civilian populations from the air. Curiously, Mayer-Csejkovits did not recommend to the regent a multilayered air defense system, but rather outlined measures that could be taken to discipline and control the population. Although there is no record that Horthy took seriously his suggestion to form a national fire-fighting corps as a substitute for compulsory military service, it is clear that the regent shared both the colonel’s appreciation for the airplane as a potent instrument of war and his dread of chemical attack. Horthy’s notes on the memo included his observation that mobilization was impossible “when Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia dispose over 1000 aircraft,” and ended with an ominous refrain: “Aircraft, gas, aircraft, gas, aircraft, gas.”4
The fear of massed formations of airplanes attacking with chemical weapons was common in Europe during the 1920s, stoked by popular depictions of future air war. Budapest had been spared aerial bombardment in the First World War, and Hungarian-language publications about air combat had to that time centered on personal accounts of wartime exploits. One Hungarian airman, László Madarász (né Hauser—“Madarász” means “birdcatcher”) did expand his memoirs into a second volume that addressed broader themes of aerial warfare, but his conclusions in Légi háború: A repülők harcászata (Air Warfare: Aviators’ Tactics) were quite conventional.5 Madarász endorsed observation as an air service’s first and most important role, contending that reconnaissance was “a war-preventing activity, though when it turns to action, it has a deciding influence.”6 He conceded that armed airplanes had become distinct instruments of war with their own characteristics that separated them from land or sea operations, but he did not advocate independent bombing campaigns.7
It is possible that the source of Horthy’s apprehension could be found in Britain, where prominent politicians in and out of government discussed the most recent developments in aviation, and “the annual Commons debate on the defense budget served as a regular catalyst for dire proclamations about the menace of air warfare.”8 Among the most influential proclamations were those issued by J. F. C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart. In his 1923 Reformation of War, Fuller envisioned repeated gas attacks against enemy cities, and Liddell Hart’s 1925 Paris, or the Future of War suggested that urban populations, when subjected to sustained aerial bombardment, would rise in revolution.9 Whether absorbed directly or at second hand, these fears are evident in the Mayer-Csejkovits memo and in Horthy’s reaction. Their concerns were widely shared after 1931, when the works of Giulio Douhet, the Italian general and champion of air power, became available in Hungarian.
Douhet had begun writing about the utility of air power in 1910, and from the beginning he had preached the value of domino dell’aria (command of the air). In his early work, Douhet objected to targeting civilians on grounds of morality and effectiveness, calling it a “useless and savage act.”10 However, by the second year of the Great War, influenced by H. G. Wells’ fiction and the reality of German planes ranging over France, Douhet began to embrace unrestricted air warfare.11 In 1915 he advocated the formation of a force of 500 bombers to strike “the most vital, most vulnerable and least protected points of the enemy’s territory.”12 After Italy entered the war, Douhet served at the front as the chief of staff of the 5th Infantry Division. There his observations turned to pointed criticism. With little concern for professional decorum, he repeatedly attacked Italian leaders for their inept employment of air power. Eventually his correspondence with members of the government came to the attention of the high command, and in September 1916 he was convicted of “issuing false news … divulging information differing from the official communiqués … diminishing the prestige and the faith in the country and of disturbing the public tranquility.”13 He served one year in prison and was released on the day the Battle of Caporetto began. After being recalled to active service in early 1918, he was named to head the Central Bureau of Aviation, which post he held until his retirement at the end of the war. The 1916 conviction was overturned in 1920, and in 1921 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.14 That same year Douhet published Il dominio dell’aria (The Command of the Air) with War Ministry approval, and he later joined Mussolini’s first cabinet as undersecretary for air.15 Douhet’s loud insistence that the air force grow at the expense of the other arms quickly alienated army and navy leaders, and they persuaded Mussolini to remove him from office.16
Command of the Air was Douhet’s best-known work, and remains “the most eloquent, elaborate, and comprehensive theory of air power in the interwar period.”17 In the two editions of Command and in the pages of Rivista Aeronautica, Douhet laid out a complete theory of war. He argued that (1) modern warfare erased the distinction between combatants and noncombatants; (2) surface forces could no longer take the offensive; (3) successful defense against a determined aerial offensive was impossible; (4) nations must therefore launch massive bombing attacks against the enemy; and 5) this required an independent air force equipped with long-range bombers.18 In his 1930 book La Guerra del’ 19__ (The War of 19__), Douhet further developed these themes, postulating a conflict between opposing sides having radically different views of air power. The German air force represented Douhetian purity; the Franco-Belgian alliance clung with outmoded allegiance to surface forces and relegated its air force to a supporting role. The folly of the old approach was apparent after the decisive three-hour air battle that left all of France and Belgium open to uncontested aerial bombardment. Long before the Franco-Belgian forces could mobilize their formidable armor divisions, the German air force had directly targeted their national wills, rendering irrelevant the massive allied advantage in ground troops. Nearly a decade before the Luftwaffe’s defeat in the Battle of Britain proved otherwise, Douhet’s contention that air attack had no effective defense was not unreasonable, and was indeed shared by many political leaders and professional airmen across Europe and America.
One of those professional airmen was Captain Ferenc Szentnémedy, who was in 1931 an instructor at the Hadiakadémia, the aviation editor of the military journal Magyar Katonai Szemle (MKSz), and his country’s foremost “apostle of Douhetism.”19 Szentnémedy was of Swabian origin, born Ferenc Willwerth in 1896 in Orsova, a predominantly German town in the Bánát.20 He entered the imperial army as a subaltern in the 5th Infantry Regiment on August 1, 1914, and remained with that unit until July 1917, when he joined the LFT’s Flik 32 as an aerial observer. Szentnémedy finished the war with Flik 35, and like many of his comrades, he fought under the Kun government in the VR before serving in the new National Army’s Flying Corps. From 1919 until 1923 Szentnémedy worked as an adjutant and earned his pilot’s rating.21 His duty performance must have been exemplary, because he was one of a dozen officers selected in 1923 to attend the Hadiakadémia, which was disguised at the time as the Budapest Regulation Review Course.22 Among the regulations presumably not reviewed in the course was Trianon’s Article 111, which prohibited military schools for purposes other than officer accession.23 After graduating and earning the right to append vezérkari szólgálatot (General Staff officer) to his rank, Captain Szentnémedy, who had also been awarded the honorific vitéz (valiant), served a tour with an infantry brigade, followed by a year as a section director on the LÜH. In 1928 he returned to the Hadiakadémia as an instructor, and there began his career as a military intellectual and air power theorist.24
Szentnémedy’s assignment coincided with a major curriculum revision at the Hadiakadémia. In the academic year beginning in the autumn of 1929, students began to study economics, law, and intelligence and espionage. They also were the first Hadiakadémia class to have a course on aviation, Aeronautics having replaced Naval Studies at the same time. Welcome as this change must have been for Hungarian airmen, there may have been some disappointment in the restricted scope of the early air operations syllabus, which represented the “field aviation” point of view espoused by László Madarász. The course emphasized reconnaissance and local air defense at the expense of bombardment, and treated aviation as only a subordinate branch of the army. Academically, aerial operation instruction was given the same weight as that covering artillery, army organization, and technological familiarization. Practical training in aeronautics was also introduced, although it too tended to reinforce a limited conception of air power: between the first and second years, each student attended a four-week aerial observer’s course at Székesfehérvár.25
These innovations occurred under the leadership of Major General (Altábornagy) Henrik Werth. Werth had been sent to examine the German war college before his appointment as the Hadiakadémia commandant, and his changes reflected current German practice, so much so that one historian, himself a Hadiakadémia graduate, considered the school under Werth “100 percent German.” “Strategic education,” he elaborated, “basically and essentially moved along a German line. Clausewitz’s military philosophy formed the frame, his work On War was the Bible, and merely quoting from it made arguments and reasoning acceptable to the general staff.”26 In this deployment of Clausewitz to shut down discussion, the Hungarians joined the hordes of Western staff officers before and since who apparently cannot resist the temptation to pluck from the Prussian’s voluminous writings a quote that seems to support precisely the position being advanced.
In any case, Hungarian exposure to On War long predated Werth’s tenure at the Hadiakadémia. The first Magyar translation was printed at the Ludovika Military Academy in 1892 and was reissued in 1917. The translator, retired colonel Baron Samu Hazai, considered On War a work of “lasting value” (örökbecsű), and wanted to make it accessible to those Hungarians who did not read German. In the preface to the second edition, Hazai suggested that Clausewitz had continued relevance, and lamented that the lessons of On War had not been taken to heart: “I think that few people read it. That is unfortunate, because if they had studied it, it would have been possible to understand better the nature of the current great world war. Now I can say what I said in the preface to the first edition: that the trouble of translating this study will be useful, especially useful in these times when for many years we will be concerned with events and studies of the great world war.”27 Certainly Szentnémedy was influenced by his reading of Hazai’s translation, and he on occasion appealed explicitly to the authority of the “great German soldier-philosopher.”28
It was Douhet, however, who had the most profound impact on Szentnémedy, and it was through the popularization of Douhet’s work that Szentnémedy himself became the most important figure in the development of Hungarian air power thought. From the first issue of MKSz in January 1931 until his last article a decade later, Szentnémedy set the terms of the discussion. That was partly due to his prolific output: through his final submission in May 1941, Szentnémedy had written more than a quarter of the 400 articles related to aviation that appeared in the journal. Because his pieces tended to be lengthy, his share of the total MKSz page count ran to nearly 40 percent. These numbers should not suggest that Szentnémedy avoided airing others’ views. He appears to have relished argument, publishing with great regularity articles that took exception to his own entries. Instead of diminishing his importance, the running debate in MKSz between Szentnémedy and his critics only heightened authority. His status as the preeminent Hungarian aviation expert was furthered by the broad range of his reporting, the majority of which consisted of analysis of foreign aerial maneuvers and technological advances. With his ability to read German, English, Italian, and Romanian, he was able to keep MKSz readers (which should have included all serving officers, since subscription to the journal was mandatory) informed on the more mundane developments in international aviation.29 His most impassioned articles, however, and the ones that generated controversy and stimulated dispute, invariably involved advocacy for the decisive role of air power in a future war.
That was the theme of his contribution to the inaugural edition of MKSz, “The Guiding Principles, Instruments, and Possibilities of Independent Air Warfare,” which was followed two issues later by his translation of The War of 19__. From March to June 1931, MKSz featured Douhet’s “hypothetical conflict among the great powers in the near future.”30 The War of 19__ was originally published in the Italian Air Ministry’s journal Rivista Aeronautica shortly after Douhet’s death in February 1930, and was his last will and testament; his final vision of total war waged through the air with the aim of destroying the enemy’s resolve. Szentnémedy found this vision quite compelling, calling it “an outstanding … work in which he demonstrates, from practical examples with undeniably convincing force, that it is the mass employment of air forces that led to the war’s conclusion.”31
This appears to be the first appearance of Douhet in the Hungarian language, although Szentnémedy assumed on the part of his reader some knowledge of the Italian general. He referred to Douhet as the “noted aviation expert” (ismert nevü repülő-szakiró) and to his having died suddenly, but he did not mention specifically any of Douhet’s earlier works.32 It is possible that Douhet had been discussed informally at the Hadiakadémia or in a presentation at the National Officers’ Club, which periodically hosted events for professional development. Despite his knowledge of Italian, Szentnémedy translated The War of 19__ from German, the source for his abridgement being a complete version published in the monthly aviation journal Die Luftwacht.33 Szentnémedy abbreviated Douhet’s 40,000-word monograph to roughly one-third, spreading approximately 13,000 words over four issues of MKSz, adding to the July issue his 5,000-word “Opinions and Thoughts.” In keeping with his characterization of Douhet’s work as “practical,” Szentnémedy chose to retain in his articles the extensive lists of aircraft types and capabilities, along with detailed timings of the successive attack waves, at the expense of the rather lengthy excerpts of imaginary doctrine and staff memoranda. This decision, while understandable in context, is unfortunate, since it is through these literary devices that Douhet expressed most clearly the competing visions of air power’s utility.
Although the fictional German air force clearly manifested Douhet’s own vision, his description of the two camps remains compelling because he treated them, and therefore his reader, with intellectual honesty. The viewpoints might be exaggerated, but they did not descend into caricature. Douhet’s Franco-Belgian prewar doctrine, portrayed as fatally flawed, was not depicted as ridiculous and indeed has internal logical consistency. It was, as one expert characterized the performance of the real Armée de l’air in World War II, “neither decadent, nor stupid, nor treasonous.”34 The fundamental assumptions were simply wrong:
Because these two powers were victorious in the World War, they were led to perfect the armaments and systems of war which gave them the victory then, systems and armaments which experience had proved satisfactory. Consequently, the war doctrine they held to, which was reflected in the organization, instruction, and education of their armed forces, did not much differ from the one which had taken shape during the World War …
This doctrine taught that the aim of war was the destruction of the enemy’s land forces; and therefore gave to the army the position of greatest importance as the most suitable and reliable instrument for accomplishing this aim …
All the experience of the World War had been brought to bear to give their land armed forces the maximum offensive power in order to destroy as quickly as possible the enemy’s land forces by a war of movement.35
Douhet’s German military planners had fought in the same war as their Franco-Belgian antagonists, but being possessed of different national goals, culture, and constraints, drew contrary conclusions. These conclusions were indeed those of Douhet himself, presented in the form of a memo from General Reuss, the fictitious Chief of the General Staff (not included in Szentnémedy’s abridgement, although presumably present in the complete Luftwacht article):
It is not in the armed forces of the enemy but in the nation itself that the will and capacity to make war is found. Warfare must therefore be waged against the people, to break their will and destroy their capacity to make war …
The aerial arm makes it feasible to strike directly at the heart of the enemy, striking at all his interior activities without land and sea armed forces …
For a decision in the air, it is only necessary to put the people themselves in an intolerable condition of life through aerial offensives …
By integrating the aerial arm with poison gas, it is possible today to employ very effective actions against the most vital and vulnerable spots of the enemy—that is, against his most important political, industrial, commercial, and other centers, in order to create among his population a lowering of moral resistance so deep as to destroy the determination of the people to continue the war.36
Szentnémedy approached the question of chemical warfare pragmatically. He translated without further discussion Douhet’s passages concerning the development of the German chemical industry and the employment of poison gas bombs along with high explosives and incendiaries.37 Given his obvious high regard for Douhet’s ideas, one can assume Szentnémedy accepted without reservation the Italian’s argument that “all nations will prepare for aero-chemical warfare, and in case of war all of them will be ready to wage aero-chemical war.”38 In the same way, Szentnémedy’s lack of comment on Douhet’s basic notion of direct aerial attack against the enemy’s will should be seen as a validation of that position. Although Szentnémedy did not offer explicit endorsement of the efficacy of strategic bombing, his effusive praise for Douhet and his characterization of Douhet’s contributions to air power offered proof of his allegiance. “It is undeniable,” Szentnémedy wrote, “that his analysis in the first place influenced domestic aviation; however we can claim this too, that the organizational development of practically all the European powers’ air forces bears the stamp of Douhet’s thought.”39
It was true that Douhet’s ideas found fertile ground in air ministries around the world, but in no country, not even his own, was his conception of air warfare adopted completely. In Italy, the flamboyant air minister Italo Balbo was closely associated with the Fascist favorite Douhet, and routinely employed Douhetian language in public and in budget battles with the army and navy, but the Regia Aeronautica (RA) did not develop along strict Douhetian lines. Balbo was also influenced by the arguments of Amadeo Mecozzi, Douhet’s main Italian opponent and a serving RA officer. Mecozzi agreed with Douhet’s insistence on aerial autonomy, but repudiated the bombing of civilian populations, calling it “war against the unarmed.”40 Instead, Mecozzi espoused a theory of three-service cooperation that he called guerra aerea concomitante (interconnected warfare).41 Balbo and the RA vacillated between the ideas of Douhet, which suited both their ideological and bureaucratic prejudices, and those of Mecozzi, which were convincing but did little to advance the RA’s agenda. The RA continued to hedge between the competing theories, and never trained or equipped itself to execute either concept sufficiently. Italian bomber aircraft did not attain the required payload, range, or armament to carry out Douhet’s unrestricted air warfare, and the brief experiment with a heavy ground attack fighter was not sustained.42
The idea of strategic bombing found its most effective crusaders in the United States and Great Britain, though in neither country did its campaigners acknowledge a debt to Douhet. In the case of Britain, it is likely that Sir Hugh Trenchard was not aware of Douhet’s work, and that Trenchard’s zeal for long-range bombing was based on his own wartime experiences and postwar British studies. The earliest mention of Douhet in the English press appears to be an unsigned article in the April 1933 issue of Royal Air Force Quarterly, and this late appearance led one historian to conclude “it seems quite clear that Douhet had no influence in the forming of British air power theory.”43 Another researcher, however, noting marked similarities between the works of Douhet and J. F. C. Fuller, claimed an indirect Douhetian influence on Royal Air Force (RAF) doctrine.44 The link between Douhet and Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, the public face of air power advocacy in America, was less ambiguous. The two men met in Europe in 1922, and that same year the Italian air attaché in Washington, DC, published an Aviation magazine article about Command of the Air. Furthermore, a translation of excerpts from Command of the Air appeared in the files of the US air service in 1923. A full translation of the work was not available until 1933.45
In Germany, Luftwaffe doctrine ultimately rejected Douhetism in spite of efforts by indigenous enthusiasts, such as Dr. Robert Knauss, to advance it. Knauss, a First World War pilot, director of Luft Hansa, and a future commandant of the Luftwaffe General Staff College, published pseudonymously a novel, Luftkrieg 1936: Die Zertrümmerung von Paris (Air War 1936: The Destruction of Paris), that echoed many of Douhet’s themes.46 In Knauss’s fictional war, the RAF played the part of Douhet’s German Air Force, and France reprised its role as France, surrendering after two weeks of RAF bombardment. As with The War of 19__, MKSz published a serialized Szentnémedy translation of the book. Knauss’s polemic had little effect on the Luftwaffe, whose 1935 Regulation 16, The Conduct of Aerial War, after acknowledging its mission to “break down the will of the enemy,” defined that will as “finding its greatest embodiment in its armed forces. Thus, [destruction of] the enemy armed forces is therefore the primary goal in war.”47 After dealing at some length with campaigns against “sources of power” that included military, transportation, and industrial targets, Regulation 16 declared “attacks against cities made for the purpose of inducing terror in the civilian population are to be avoided on principle.” Such attacks should occur only in retaliation following enemy bombardment of “defenseless and open cities,” and even then must be planned precisely because “selection of the wrong time, combined with a poor estimate of the desired effect upon the enemy, can in some circumstances result in an increase in the enemy’s will to resist, rather than a reduction of the will.” Finally, in stating “whether gas bombs can be used will be determined by international agreement and enemy behavior if he initiates a terror attack,” the Luftwaffe contradicted Douhet’s conviction that the employment of poison gas was inevitable.48
Douhet’s doctrine was introduced to France in a 1927 issue of Revue Maritime, and it was well received by French airmen who “had begun to chafe in their subordinate role” to the army.49 At the end of the First World War, the French air service had led the world, but a decade later the once formidable force had lost its position of preeminence. In addition to aging airplanes and an outdated concept of employment, there were deep institutional problems. Although France’s air force comprised 260 squadrons of over 3,000 aircraft, there was no Air Ministry or Air Staff, and every officer and airplane was under the control of a French army unit.50 By 1931, an Air Ministry had been established and the air force had gained some measure of autonomy, but the difficulties persisted. Szentnémedy, a keen and professional but distant observer, was able to point to “a succession of accidents, cancelation of aircraft types, repetitive financial crises in the aircraft industry and continuous reorganization manifested in the highest levels of the aviation ministry” as evidence that France’s qualitative advantage was fading quickly.51 Also recognizing this, and feeling constrained by “liberal disarmament ideals that characterized much of the Socialist agenda,” French air power advocates were attracted to Douhet’s prophetic vision both as a national strategy and a way to maintain the Armée de l’air’s independence.52 And although the doctrine of strategic bombing was never adopted in Paris, the French airplane industry came the closest in the interwar years to making Douhet’s “battle-plane” a reality. Beginning in 1933, the air force took possession of a new class of multirole machines called Bombardement-Combat-Reconnaissance (BCR) aircraft. The BCR aircraft, endorsed if not inspired by Douhet’s work, was a compromise between the requirements of the three services, and was meant to fulfill all of them. In fact, it failed to fulfill any: as a bomber it was too slow and carried too few bombs, as a fighter it was too heavy, and as a reconnaissance craft it was too vulnerable.53 These shortcomings were readily apparent to some French military analysts, who disparaged the BCR concept as well as the doctrine of unrestricted aerial bombardment.
In his article that concluded the series, Szentnémedy quoted extensively two of those critics who had reviewed The War of 19__ in French aviation journals. In the August and September 1930 editions of Les Ailes, Jean Herbillon praised Douhet for his success in gaining recognition for the ascendancy of air forces, but doubted whether his work was revolutionary, pointing to the writings of three senior French officers whose work contained similar elements. Herbillon wrote with an acid pen, directing sarcasm not just at Douhet, whom he considered insufficiently imaginative for a futurist (“This wonderful writer shows us with clarity those probabilities which today are already afoot”), but also at the French services’ cynicism (funds intended for a joint aerial effort would instead “go with these aims: to enrich the infantry, to increase security for the cavalry, and to build cruisers”).54 Herbillon also questioned Douhet’s reliance on daylight bombing, postulating that future technological developments would “free fliers from the disadvantages of night aviation and give them back their eyes.” In response, Szentnémedy recapitulated the challenges of night operations: the difficulties in navigating to and identifying the target, the danger of night landings, the near-certainty of aircraft damage in forced landings at night in unfamiliar terrain, and the risk of disorientation when flying into the enemy’s searchlights. Szentnémedy also cited a French colonel’s research that showed by month the paucity of suitable weather for night flying. Although he conceded that small countries might be forced to conduct night bombing operations in spite of the risks, and that night attacks could be important in maintaining “continuous effect” on the enemy, Szentnémedy reached a clear Douhetian conclusion: “There is no doubt that daylight bombing is the most effective.”55
The more narrow and practical criticisms of another Frenchman, Camille Rougeron, received a fair airing, but no effective rebuttal. Rougeron, a naval engineer, presented objections based less on Douhet’s theories and more on existing aeronautical technology and immutable geography. Implementation of the Italian’s recommended single-aircraft fleet would require that the battle-plane be equal to the demands of territorial defense as well as offensive action. Rougeron examined the two giant aircraft that best embodied the battle-plane ideal, Caproni’s PB 90 and Dornier’s Do X, and found their performance in two critical areas inadequate. Neither of these airplanes could climb high enough and fast enough to intercept conventionally sized bombers; a problem in any case, Rougeron explained, but one exacerbated for countries whose critical centers of power were located near their frontiers, such as Britain and Italy.56 Although Szentnémedy did not address this concern specifically, MKSz’s readers might well have added Hungary to that category.
In his closing paragraphs Szentnémedy added a pair of concerns of his own, of which the first was access to oil. “One of the largest problems, and one that cannot be undervalued, in the maintenance of a large combat air force, is the question of petroleum products, which would be a serious crisis for small landlocked and surrounded countries. This problem deserves a special study on its own.” Then, in a phrasing that would have set on edge the teeth of his land forces readers, Szentnémedy characterized Douhet’s fictional German Air Force as pursuing “the most extreme execution of the idea of the center of gravity (súlypont),” while the Franco-Belgian alliance “had a tendency toward frittering away, where the air forces are lost as the land forces’ auxiliary service.”57 The passing reference to Clausewitz failed to mollify the critics, one of whom, Mihály Ibrányi, like Szentnémedy a captain of the VKF, argued in the August 1931 issue of MKSz that the most decisive use of the air force would be achieved in support of ground combat. Szentnémedy’s answer revealed his devotion to the idea of air power as the ultimate arbiter in warfare: “The center of gravity is in the air, and to prevail in this regard will be to the detriment of all other equipment expenditures—everything must be devoted to the development of the air force. This will create an air force that if employed correctly in a future war, could surely, and above all quickly, bring the war to a decision.”58
There was no European war to bring to a decision in 1931, and no Hungarian air fleet in being that could have taken part in such a war. But the MKSz articles provide clear evidence that Hungarian officers were aware of the currents of contemporary continental air power thought, and also debated their relevance and wrestled with their implications. Without regard to the ultimate outcome of Szentnémedy’s enthusiasm for strategic bombing, this discourse reflects well on the officer corps’ intellectual curiosity and MKSz’s academic rigor. In penning these pieces, Captain Szentnémedy demonstrated broad knowledge and interest in European aviation developments: in a Magyar publication he promoted the ideas of an Italian general, about which he read in a German journal, and included trenchant criticism of leading French airmen. More than just a feat of linguistics and research, Szentnémedy’s articles meant that in 1931 the Hungarian officers were better acquainted with Douhet (and his detractors) than were their counterparts in the United States or Britain, whose countries did not suffer from treaty provisions and diplomatic isolation.
By 1933 Szentnémedy had published A repülés (Aviation), a seventy-eight-page monograph that included history, theory and law, as well as an appreciation of Hungary’s post-Trianon aeronautical situation. The fervor evidenced in Szentnémedy’s MKSz articles was somewhat diminished, due perhaps to opposition from his colleagues (including then-captain Géza Vörös, who in 1941 became chief of the air staff), a lack of fresh Douhet writings, or simply his taking a more philosophical approach in this longer and broader work. In Aviation Szentnémedy acknowledged that the theory of independent air warfare remained untested, that its “finished or final form had not yet been shown,” and that “many questions remain unclear.”59 Despite the less dogmatic trappings, Szentnémedy was in 1933 still a committed disciple of Douhet. The fifth chapter of Aviation contained a case for strategic bombing that began with a discussion of the nature of war. In this section Szentnémedy explicitly tied Clausewitz to Douhet: “According to Clausewitz, the great German soldier-philosopher, war, as policy’s most energetic instrument, has as its final objective that the enemy be forced to our own will, with the use of every tool to overcome him. That would require the creation of such conditions that the enemy population would find unbearable, and which would force them to sue for peace.”60 Until the advent of the aircraft, Szentnémedy contended, land forces had to defeat directly the opposing army, or naval forces had to attack the enemy indirectly by blockade. In either case, the enemy populace, largely distant from the front lines, would not feel the full effects of war. The airplane “brought war of this nature to an end, because it allowed man to free himself from the earth.” Thus freed, man could employ the aircraft as an instrument of war and attack the enemy at any place along his front, the effective range of this new weapon having “no practical limits.” “It can hold at risk of death every citizen, without regard to sex, age, social position; the palaces, factories, industries, railways can be objects for attack just as well as military lines—perhaps even better. In short, air forces change completely the nature of war as it has been known and strengthen the notion that war will be a battle of peoples and not just a battle of armed forces.”61
Szentnémedy also repeated Douhet’s counterintuitive idea that unrestricted air warfare (korlátlan légi háború) would be more humane than previous wars.62 Douhet considered it “the quickest and most economical way of ending the war, entailing the minimum loss of blood and wealth on both sides.”63 In his MKSz abridgement, Szentnémedy described General Reuss’s plan as “the most simple, cheapest and quickest solution,” and in the 1933 work he emphasized the importance of terror in undermining the enemy’s will to resist: “Panics, which in dense populations can develop into mass hysteria and revolution, can bring about an end to the enemy nation’s resistance, and quickly end the war. Therefore there will be fewer victims. The more terrible the air war, the more humane it will be.”64
From the possible reactions of foreign peoples, Szentnémedy moved to consideration of the particular vulnerabilities of his own country. Following Camille Rougeron’s example, he examined the potential effects of aerial attack from geographic and economic points of view, and concluded that increased urbanization magnified a nation’s vulnerability.
Naturally this sensitivity [to attack by air] is greater for cities, and increases with their number. Therefore the number and size of its cities can indicate a country’s aerial vulnerability. The degree that a country is endangered depends on the economic significance of the targeted area and its relationship to the entire state. If the country is chiefly agricultural with widely scattered settlements, then the attacks will have very little success and the attackers will fritter away their assets without considerable effect. It is a different situation, however, if a small agricultural country has its entire industrial organization consolidated in a single city (e.g., Budapest). In this case a resounding effect is probable, because the state’s entire industrial production could become paralyzed at practically the same time.65
After a comparison of the population density of ten European countries (Hungary was the fifth-most densely populated, at ninety-two people per square kilometer), Szentnémedy warned that Germany and Hungary risked “suicide” if they failed to take seriously their need for comprehensive air defense. Breaking with the Douhetian ideal of the sufficiency of the battle-plane, Szentnémedy included fighter aircraft as part of the required tools of air defense. Those fighters would be especially critical to a Hungary deprived of its traditional borders, Szentnémedy argued in his conclusion: “In the end, it can be settled that our rump country has no such point that our neighbors’ bombers could not easily reach.” This had come about because Hungary, which “lives in a hostile atmosphere,” was “disarmed and completely defenseless in the air.” Such a condition could not long be maintained, but “fortunately the hearts, thoughts, and intellectual energies cannot be tied down.” Aviation ended with a strong assertion of its subject’s primacy: “We must not forget the basis for the entire world’s aerial armament and organization: aviation is the guardian of a modern state’s power, the strong pillar of its economy, and is essential to its cultural and commercial needs.”66
With the exception of a slightly tempered tone in some sections and an implicit rejection of Douhet’s conception of the battle-plane as a viable craft for air defense, Aviation deviated little from the views Szentnémedy expressed two years earlier in the MKSz version of The War of 19__. Certainly there was no softening of the core Douhetian belief that air power was a war-winning—not just a war-fighting—instrument. After calling air forces fundamentally offensive and ground forces essentially defensive, Szentnémedy declared that victory could only be achieved through offensive activity and that “the ground forces’ role should be restricted to defense of the home territory, while the war is decided in the air.”67
That same conviction was apparent in Szentnémedy’s decision to translate Knauss’s work Air War 1936 for publication in Hungary, first as an abridged serial in the September–November 1934 issues of MKSz, and then in a 1935 monograph brought out by the Hadiakadémia press. Elements of Knauss’s book read like extracts from Douhet, with Knauss’s Air Commodore Brackley standing in for Douhet’s General Reuss. Brackley was an air power prophet who realized that the days of chivalrous fighter combat were over, and that a new form of warfare had been born. He formulated its tenets:
1. The main purpose of the air arm is to break the enemy’s will to war by bombing raids on his country and population.
2. If large quantities of bombs are to be dropped accurately on targets far from the home aerodrome, very big airplanes will be needed to carry heavy loads over a wide action radius …
3. Such bombing machines can and must defend themselves against attacks by enemy aircraft …
4. Maximum technological achievement can only be attained by apportioning all duties to highly qualified specialists. But such division of labor and specialization is only possible in a large machine carrying numerous crew.
5. Only large machines of this type, proceeding in close groups, are capable of carrying out aerial tactics which are impossible in a single-seater scouting machine where one man has to do everything simultaneously …
6. Bombing raids must take place in daylight when accurate aim is possible. Only by day, moreover, are squadron flights in close order possible.68
Not only were the assumptions of Douhet and Knauss about air warfare strikingly similar, so were their conclusions about how such unrestricted air war would play out. Both believed in the fundamental fragility of a society under attack. In each account the panicked inhabitants of Paris pressed their leaders for peace, although Knauss cast a more jaundiced eye on the French than did Douhet: his Parisians, enraged at the failure of the French air force to stop the British raiders, pulled innocent French aviators from taxis and bludgeoned them to death. “In this night the last vestiges of law and order vanished,” Knauss wrote. “Man fought against man, driven by the sheer urge of self-preservation.”69 Knauss also showed a greater appreciation of air power’s effectiveness against fielded forces, as he described the complete destruction of the French landing party after a devastating low-altitude attack that cost Brackley his life.70
The 1935 publication of Szentnémedy’s translation, Légiháború 1938-ban: Páris szétrombolása, represented the high-water mark of Szentnémedy’s promotion of Douhetism. Through his three major works on the topic he had presented a remarkably consistent view of the role and utility of air power in warfare. That view was fundamentally the one espoused by Giulio Douhet himself, and represented in the United States by Billy Mitchell and in Great Britain by Hugh Trenchard. At its heart was the belief that a large and independent air force equipped with heavy long-range bombers could, with an unrestricted aerial campaign directed at the enemy’s center of gravity, bring a war to a quick and decisive end. Szentnémedy had absorbed and incorporated some of the criticism of Douhet, with the result that his own version of strategic bombing theory was less deterministic and his vision of air power more expansive. Without casting off his trust in the ultimate decisiveness of the unrestricted aerial offensive, he broadened his understanding of the offensive to include some of the tactical operations he had previously characterized as “frittering away.”
One of these was the idea of l’aviazone d’assalto (assault aviation) advanced by Amadeo Mecozzi, Douhet’s countryman and critic.71 Szentnémedy considered Mecozzi’s concept, which was a refinement of his earlier guerra aerea concomitante, to be one of the three primary strains of air power theory, along with strategic bombing and the French tactic of l’aviation d’arrêt (halting aviation).72 Mecozzi’s vision of air force employment was in direct opposition to Douhet’s: instead of masses of bombers attacking population centers from high altitude, he advocated multiple formations of fighter-sized airplanes, capable of striking small targets at low altitude in cooperation with ground forces. Szentnémedy first pointed out what he saw as the technological contradictions inherent in assault aviation. Airplanes intended to conduct low-altitude attacks in small formations must be fast, maneuverable, and hardy in order to withstand ground fire, and those characteristics greatly reduced bomb capacity. Overall, Szentnémedy thought its success unlikely. “It is madness to deploy fast machines at low altitudes, where the infantry and artillery fire is concentrated.” His second objection was organizational. However much Mecozzi might argue for bureaucratic autonomy, an air force that conducted chiefly tactical missions was at risk of being subsumed by the army. “Although Colonel Mecozzi claims that the attack aviation is not a cooperative arm with other branches, it is to be feared that his idea will lead to the independent air force in large part falling under the ground force command.” Some French commentators shared this fear, claiming that assault aviation really represented a return to First World War employment concepts and would make the air service again an auxiliary arm. Unless Mecozzi could prove otherwise, “the entire assault aviation theory can be considered just an extremist idea (tulzott gondolatnak).”73 Szentnémedy was more receptive to Mecozzi’s insistence on a fleet composed of a single aircraft type. Douhet had also agitated for a single-type fleet, but his multiplace, multiengine long-range battle-planes would have had little in common with the single-seat, single-engine low-level attackers Mecozzi had in mind.
Assault aviation was grounded in Mecozzi’s extensive flying experience. Originally enlisted in the engineer corps, he earned his wings in 1915, a battlefield commission in 1917, and ended the war with six air-to-air victories. After the war he served in the Italian aviation mission in Paris, and in 1929 took command of the 7th Land Fighter Group.74 His firsthand knowledge of flight contrasted with Douhet’s limited practical exposure, and it was this, in the words of RA historians, that “set the fighter pilot against the Regio Esercito General Staff Colonel.”75 Mecozzi slowly gained support within the RA, which accelerated the organizing and training of assault units and the development of the Breda Breda Ba.65, a heavy attack aircraft conceived along Mecozzian lines. Szentnémedy sensed the shift in the RA’s orientation: “It looks like the Italians have converted to ‘assault aviation’ and the new way of employment.”76
Szentnémedy had not converted, but he had begun to think more seriously about strategic bombing from the point of view of the country under attack. When he first considered the topic in May 1932, Szentnémedy denied the importance of air defense. He took a Douhetian line in favor of the attack, contradicting Clausewitz’s claim that defense was the stronger form of war.77 Szentnémedy allowed that an “everlasting natural law” provided for countermeasures to all innovations in the conduct of war, but observed that air defense capability “limped along” behind aircraft development. “This therefore demonstrates its greatest weakness, without regard to the fact that air defense naturally, like all defense, stands from the first at a certain disadvantage against the attack.”78 Recent air defense exercises in France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia showed some success in areas such as blackout procedures and military-civilian cooperation, but highlighted shortcomings in air raid alarm effectiveness. Szentnémedy noted a general lack of enthusiasm on the part of the cities’ inhabitants, a particular problem in Königsberg. While he dutifully reported the lessons derived by the various exercise directors, Szentnémedy rendered a larger judgment of his own:
We can establish as a final conclusion that defense in air warfare is an extremely expensive proposition, and is such a thankless job for the responsible leaders that only negative outcomes can be reached. Air defense is pure defense in a real sense. Either it does not attack the opponent, a lucky outcome for them, or it just moves the war and its victims somewhere else; or in the case that the attack is successful, the fight continues above our heads and stirs anger in the people, because the air defense proved a fiasco. While still in peacetime we have to use all methods (print, radio, film) to quash the formation of mass panic, which, according to experience, can breed revolutionary movements in the cities affected by war, which also must be thwarted.79
Szentnémedy here anticipated civilian rage directed at ineffectual air defenders, a fear that was later manifested in its most murderous form in Knauss’s Air War 1936.
Szentnémedy presented a new perspective in “Is defense against unrestricted air war possible?,” published in two parts in the summer 1935 issues of MKSz. While Szentnémedy still held “active” air defense (e.g., the attempt to defeat an attacking force with fighters and AAA) was doomed to failure, he had come to believe a program of “passive” air defense could mitigate the worst effects of bombing. The first passive measure was dispersal: “Extensive large cities with their solid mass will always represent favorable and attractive targets. If, however, these targets are divided and dispersed in suitable measures, this immediately offers certain protection.”80 This protection was especially important for rump Hungary, Szentnémedy reasoned, because of the country’s vulnerability to the air forces of the Little Entente. A map titled “Hungary’s Indefensibility from the Air” tied that vulnerability to Trianon, showing that the entire country lay within range of Czechoslovak, Romanian, and Yugoslav bombers launched from airfields in territory lost under the treaty.81
The second passive measure was civil defense. Szentnémedy surveyed civil defense initiatives in other European countries and urged Hungary to emulate them. He judged the Soviet Union to be the most advanced in its preparations, having constructed in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov underground cinemas capable of sheltering masses during an aerial bombardment. In London and Paris the underground railways could perform the same function. The caverns in Kent received particular attention, since the British press had reported a plan to shield up to 100,000 people there in the event of sustained attack. Szentnémedy suggested that the cave system under Buda Castle, which had protected the populace during the Ottoman siege in the seventeenth century, could be used in the same way.82 Subterranean shelter would provide the most protection against the effects of blast and fire, but it should be avoided in the case of chemical attacks, because the heavier-than-air poison would settle in the tunnels. The best plan in a gas attack, then, would be “to reach the rooftop or highest floor, where the air is clear.” This last bit of advice came from a series of drawings in the article’s second half, which depicts sixteen “wrong and right” responses to air raids reprinted from the German magazine Kriegskunst in Wort und Bild. The pictures reinforce Szentnémedy’s earlier point about dispersal, albeit on a human rather than industrial scale. In them, people are instructed to clear the streets, go to cellars, avoid congregating, shelter their horses, seek cover in agricultural ditches and train tunnels, stay away from windows, remain calm, black out lights, move upwind, and wipe chemicals from their clothes with a handkerchief.83 The specificity of the instructions and the cartoon-like illustrations were unusual for MKSz, but presaged the style later adopted by Riadó!, the magazine of the Hungarian Air Defense League intended to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
This article elicited a sharp response from vitéz Gustáv Hellebronth, a retired Honvéd lieutenant general, who in the August 1935 issue of MKSz disputed Szentnémedy’s basic premises. Whether from courtesy or contempt, Hellebronth managed to condemn Szentnémedy without ever mentioning his name or even the title of his offending article. Picking up on the editor’s penchant for arguing from the authority of international experts, Hellebronth aimed his broadside at “alien ideas”:
There are those who fear that the “unrestricted air war” propagated by foreigners will lead irretrievably to the destruction of civilization. Others, however, trust that the worst danger can be avoided through “civil defense.”
Those who believe in “unrestricted air war,” on foreign authority, refer in the first place to Marshal Foch, who said, “The civilian population has to be attacked so that the opposing people can be crushed at their root.”84
But, Hellebronth continued, the First World War had demonstrated just how difficult it was to break down a nation’s resistance. It could possibly be done after “years of grinding work,” but it is unlikely to occur as the result of a transitory aerial bombardment. “Countless examples show that fleeting destruction, whether caused by nature or enemy forces, can be repaired swiftly.” Hellebronth was convinced that “quickly played-out air operations” would not have a lasting or decisive effect on civilian populations, and at the same time he felt sure that emergency programs would make little difference in the event. “Civil air defense is certainly a beautiful and humane thought, but in reality, unfortunately, impractical.”85 Just as no law or measure could prevent mass terror during a terrible natural catastrophe, no preparation could ensure discipline during a surprise air attack. Hellebronth also opposed civil defense on economic grounds, noting Hungary’s mounting deficit, and he insisted that the limited military budget be spent on weapons rather than gas masks. He even doubted that many people would mind, suggesting that overtaxed citizens “already bled dry would rather die than pay (especially if death is not too near and not too certain).” Having rejected a key component of Douhetian theory—the essential fragility of modern society—Hellebronth contended that the opposing army was the proper target for aerial bombardment. He wrote, in a passage that echoed Luftwaffe doctrine, “The air force’s main mission and concern are not the peaceful citizens, but rather the quick destruction of the opposing air and ground forces and resources. This is the only road leading to victory.”86
The answer to Hellebronth came in December 1935, but not from Szentnémedy. It was instead a passionate denunciation penned by vitéz Lajos Németh, whose use of the first-person plural suggests that he represented corporate convictions. Németh referred to Hellebronth as the “illustrious author” whose article dismissed the efficacy of strategic bombing. “It is possible,” Németh conceded, “to have differing opinions about unrestricted air warfare, but it is beyond doubt that the air arm will have a decisive role in a future war.”87 It was less reasonable to question the wisdom of civil air defense, the implementation of which was nearly universal, especially in light of the recent Italian bombing in Abyssinia. Németh countered Hellebronth’s assertion that defense against a surprise attack was impossible: “It is indeed possible! We are not defenseless if we prepare conscientiously and thoroughly.” He also pointed to a generation gap as a reason for the wide variance in their thinking on the matter: “As old a soldier as he is, he forgets that our military discipline does not in the last instance rest on the results of education and breeding. Laws, propaganda, courses of study, leagues, additional air defense blackouts, and exercises (which unfortunately we still have not held in Hungary) all are necessary so that a broad cross-section of the population can recognize the dangers of aerial attack as well as the possibilities for defense, and at the same time we can train them for air defense discipline!”88 Although Hellebronth was in fact old—he was three years old when the Dual Monarchy emerged from the Compromise of 1867—ideological orientation may be a better explanation. Németh’s confidence in the power of collective action to overcome difficulties was characteristic of a progressive statism that infused political movements on both the right and left at the time, whereas Hellebronth’s pessimism in the same matter suggests a conservative turn of mind. Certainly Németh and later Szentnémedy thought him a hidebound reactionary.
Hellebronth considered himself an objective observer who in his earlier article simply endeavored to look at the “boiling-over questions” from a “higher viewpoint and broader scope.”89 He sought a useful general theory of aviation, unlike the “followers of foreign fantasies” who advocated independent air operations. As part of that theory, Hellebronth outlined three areas in which military airplanes had “outstanding advantages” over the traditional branches of the army. Aircraft were much faster than cavalry, which meant they could range farther in reconnaissance, take the place of cavalry in the attack, and better pursue the fleeing enemy after the battle. Bombers rivaled artillery for effect and had a longer reach, and aircraft machine guns could be devastating to opposing infantry. He also acknowledged the growing capability of airborne transport. Against this stood aviation’s fatal disadvantage: the utter inability of airplanes to secure and occupy terrain. This deficiency “predestined air forces to the surprise initiation of war,” after which they would assist the slower-mobilizing land forces. “Air forces therefore have two roles to fulfill: as an independent force at the opening of the war to conduct raids, and then to fight alongside the army as a separate branch.”90 In tying the air force to the land war, Hellebronth repudiated the basis for strategic bombing. He did so, he claimed, on solid historical grounds. It was well established that in the Great War civilian collapse preceded military defeat. Indeed, the idea of society’s breakdown was at the heart of strategic bombing theory. Why then, Hellebronth asked, wasn’t bombing the cause of that civilian collapse? In order for unrestricted air war to be a serious strategic theory, its proponents must show that air power is capable of crippling the people’s will to resist. In spite of the experience of the First World War, the Japanese bombing of Shanghai, and Italian operations in Abyssinia, there was no proof that aerial attacks could in fact achieve that effect. Hellebronth again compared bombardment to a natural disaster (a theme he would return to in the third installment). “From every example … it seems that the passing effects of the danger and destruction—caused by nature or opposing forces—immediately blow over.”91 Some of Hellebronth’s blows must have begun to land, because Szentnémedy took the extraordinary step of appending an editorial disclaimer to the end of this article. It was, according to Szentnémedy, “an original thought” and “skillfully presented,” but the theory of “restricted air warfare” was not supported by experience, and this should therefore be “the end of the argument.”92
The argument would go two more rounds, however. Szentnémedy published his own lengthy riposte five months later; not, he claimed, in order to answer directly the previous article or to sustain the dispute, but rather “to show to laymen, on the basis of the extraordinarily rich foreign literature, the current concepts, conditions, possibilities and functions” of air warfare.93 These ideas were “crystal clear” to the experts, and showed the “indisputable influence of air war’s possibilities.” Predictably, the first expert consulted was Douhet, whose concept Szentnémedy presented in a 500-word précis. It was important to begin with Douhet, he wrote, because the late Italian general’s concept of unrestricted air warfare was evident in the organization, training, and equipping of the great powers’ air forces. He later offered as concrete evidence the ratio of “offensive versus defensive” airplanes in a selection of European countries. In the First World War, according to Szentnémedy, the proportion of bombers to fighters was roughly 1:9, whereas the current ratio in Britain was 2:1, in France 1:1.5, in Italy 1:2, in Czechoslovakia 1:3.5, and in the Soviet Union 1:4. “These numbers show, however much it is denied and concealed, that today everywhere Douhet’s ideas are followed.”94 This passage gives further weight to Szentnémedy’s revealing comment earlier in the article concerning the far-reaching influence of Douhet: “It is no use, however, to preach ‘unrestricted air warfare’ everywhere and at all costs, because it is the fundamental assumption. We now want to examine the current conditions.”95 These statements show that Szentnémedy held to the central precepts of Douhetism as late as 1937. He had enlarged his conception of air power beyond the limits set down by Douhet, but he had not abandoned the Italian’s core concepts.
This expansive view of air power was displayed when Szentnémedy addressed Hellebronth’s objection regarding the inability of air forces to take and hold territory. Szentnémedy admitted that it was not possible at the moment, but he then mentioned the promising developments in airborne infantry, a topic that had been raised in the pages of MKSz in March, May, and July 1936, and one that Szentnémedy himself would take up the following year.96 He pointed to recent maneuvers in which the Soviets delivered by air three infantry battalions behind the opponent’s lines, demonstrating the potential of “vertical envelopment.” Szentnémedy found the roots for this innovative use of airplanes in Douhet and Clausewitz. “Attaining tactical air superiority, which in time will lead to command of the air, makes the strategic effect felt in the vast majority of cases; and it is possible that with the range, extraordinary speed, and ability to reach quickly the center of gravity, the air force has fashioned such an instrument for the supreme leadership that is worth every other force or enterprise.”97
Regarding the use of air forces on the battlefield, Szentnémedy offered a partial concession. It was possible, of course, to intervene temporarily in the army’s battle, but there would be few targets of value for airmen, and such operations generally meant “foolish sacrifice.”98 He conceded nothing on the bombing of civilians. “If we seek the fastest decision,” he wrote, “we have to attack the weakest point.” The historical record was clear: “By shattering the people’s morale it is indeed possible to reach a decision in war.” Abyssinia could not represent a defeat of the Douhetian idea of unrestricted air warfare, because the RA was not tasked with conducting such an operation there. The bulk of Italian airplanes remained in the Mediterranean in case of a European conflict, but air power nonetheless contributed mightily to the Abyssinian campaign. Szentnémedy quoted Italian experts who estimated that the victory achieved there in seven months would have taken two to three years without the RA’s contribution.99
Hellebronth’s reply, the last piece in this long-running exchange, appeared in November 1937. This time the editorial disclaimer, Szentnémedy’s final word on the matter, appeared at the beginning: “The editor does not fully agree with this article and publishes it as point of interest, because in contrast to this article, the editor considers the moral and material effects of aerial attacks important.”100 After taking Szentnémedy to task for the condescending tone of his November 1936 item, Hellebronth took up again his earlier comparison of air attacks to natural disasters. He demanded the Douhetians explain why bombardment was fundamentally more destructive of morale than artillery barrages, floods, volcanoes, or earthquakes. He referred once more to the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake that killed more than 100,000 Japanese citizens and devastated the capital Tokyo, but did not result in widespread popular unrest. Then Hellebronth offered another inconvenient example: Madrid, a capital on the front lines of a civil war subjected to both aerial and artillery bombardment, where life went on without a mass exodus. “These real examples testify to the capability of people to resist, and they show that people can bear great danger for short durations, as long as they can get their breath, without suffering societal breakdown.” In the First World War, Habsburg civilians were subjected to “propaganda glittering with the hope of dissolution” and suffered “ceaseless torment due to privation,” yet nonetheless persevered for years. On what grounds, then, did Douhet expect that just “a few minutes of isolated attacks would lead to the collapse of an entire country?”101
Szentnémedy had ignored this line of attack in his November 1936 article, and he never offered a satisfactory answer to Hellebronth’s query. The absence of a society-disintegrating mechanism was Douhet’s greatest conceptual weakness. He and his disciples simply asserted that large-scale aerial bombardment of population centers would necessarily cause such panic and chaos as to induce near-immediate surrender. That this had never happened did not moderate their conviction; it only strengthened their self-image as visionaries and caused them to regard skeptics as hopelessly backward, like the misguided Franco-Belgian airmen in The War of 1919 __. In fact, the lack of historical precedent was critical to survival of the theory: a thing never properly attempted cannot be considered to have failed. In this regard adherents of Douhet are no different from those of Marx. Any supposed flaw in the great man’s theory must be properly attributed to insufficiently zealous execution. It was therefore extremely unlikely that a Douhetian would find any argument from history persuasive, but to the open-minded, Hellebronth’s approach could be very effective. Technical objections—bombers are too small or slow, aiming is too erratic, explosive yield is too little—could be overcome or swept aside by the promise of future development (which in many cases was fulfilled). Hellebronth, by comparing the supposed effects of aerial attacks to the demonstrated results of long-term shelling or natural disasters, undermined Douhet’s theory at its very foundation. When confronted with the central question of how airplanes wrought more emotional damage than artillery or earthquakes, Szentnémedy was silent.
That was rarely the case. For a decade Szentnémedy wrote extensively and well on all aspects of military aviation, and encouraged others to do the same. Under his leadership MKSz served as the Honvéd’s sounding board for air power doctrine, a place where new ideas could be circulated, debated, amended, or discarded. In spite of his own remarkable productivity and activism on behalf of the independent aerial offensive, there is no sign that Szentnémedy stifled dissent. His editorial liberality and permissiveness make the disclaimers attached to Hellebronth’s pieces all the more striking. Because of the importance of the topic and the intensity of the authors’ views, that exchange was more spirited than others, but in terms of the seriousness with which it was conducted it was broadly representative. The high participation rate also speaks well of the journal’s intellectual integrity. Over 150 authors contributed to the journal, including the esteemed airman István Petróczy and future Arrow Cross (Nyilaskeresztes Párt) leader Ferenc Szálasi.102 Most authors submitted only a single item, which resulted in a wide range of air power issues being addressed. To take a single example, the July 1935 edition containing the second article on air defense that initiated the Hellebronth-Németh-Szentnémedy imbroglio featured pieces on new Italian fighters, the use of wood in aircraft production, and squadron flight formations. The blend of tactics, technology, and theory was not repeated in every issue, but it was far from uncommon. With nearly 1.5 million words having been expended in MKSz’s Aviation Bulletin, it seems certain that any deficiencies in the Hungarian air service could not have arisen from a lack of contemplation.
From too much contemplation, perhaps. Or rather, from an unhealthy ratio of contemplation to practical application, caused by external factors largely outside the flying corps’ control. One reason Szentnémedy devoted so much ink to covering foreign aviation maneuvers (approximately seventeen pages per year) was that for most of the 1930s Hungary was unable to conduct its own flight exercises. Some military flight activity had been performed even during the period of IMCC oversight, and opportunities expanded after the Allies ended the inspection regime, but they remained strictly limited in scope. In contrast, Italian pilots crossed oceans in mass formations that came to be known in English as Balbos, after the air minister who led them. Eventually the same RA fliers earned combat experience in East Africa and Spain, where they fought alongside Germans and against Soviets. British crews policed the empire from the air, Japanese pilots honed their skills in China, and airmen of the Little Entente were free to observe, participate in, and conduct aerial maneuvers as they wished. Not so the Hungarians. They were free only to read, write, and argue about air power. All else—the hard work of transforming doctrine into capability—had to be done in secret. The next chapter describes the difficulties Hungarian airmen faced in expanding and modernizing their air arm under adverse political, economic, and legal conditions.
NOTES
1. Quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, pp. 10–11.
2. Szinai and Szűcs, Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy, p. 42. Bethlen’s resignation letter was triggered by the outrage in foreign capitals, particularly Paris, following the revelation of government involvement in a scheme to counterfeit large quantities of French francs.
3. Quoted in MKHL, 1938–1945, p. 14.
4. Szinai and Szűcs, Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy, pp. 45–49.
5. Hauser: Vesztényi, “A magyar katonai repülés” (HL Tgy 2.787), p. I/24.
6. Madarász, Légi háború, p. 51.
7. Ibid., p. 3.
8. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 104.
9. Ibid.
10. Quoted in Hippler, “Democracy and War,” p. 171.
11. Ibid.
12. Quoted in Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet,” pp. 4–5.
13. Ibid.
14. “General Giulio Douhet,” Royal Air Force Quarterly 7 (1936), p. 148.
15. Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet,” p. 8.
16. Gooch, Mussolini and His Generals, p. 59.
17. Corum, Luftwaffe, p. 89. In “Giulio Douhet and the Origins of Airpower Theory” Meilinger notes that the 1921 version of Command of the Air elicited a “muted” response, while the second edition published in 1927, with an even greater emphasis on independent air forces received a “noisy” reception. He attributes the difference to earlier war weariness and the increased militarism of Fascist Italy.
18. MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue,” p. 630.
19. Holló, A Galambtól a Griffmadárig, p. 55.
20. Willwerth 1896: Szakály, A magyar katonai felső vezetés, pp. 128–129; Orsova: 1890 census data from Wikipedia, s.v. “Orsova” [in Hungarian], accessed Nov. 14, 2013. http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orsova. Improbably, Orsova (1890 population: 3,564) produced another prominent military airman: Luftwaffe General der Flieger Stefan Frölich, who served in the Austrian national air service after the dissolution of the empire.
21. Szakály, A magyar katonai felső vezetés, pp. 128–129.
22. Kálmán, A magyar vezérkari tisztek kiképzése, p. 11.
23. See “Treaty of Trianon, Part V.”
24. Szakály, A magyar katonai felső vezetés, pp. 128–129.
25. Kálmán, A magyar vezérkari tisztek kiképzése, pp. 44, 39.
26. Ibid., pp. 27, 13, 28.
27. See Hazai’s “Előszó” (Preface) to Clausewitz, A Háborúról, pp. 1–2.
28. See below, pp 18–19. Szentnémedy, A repülés, p. 27.
29. Language skill: Szakály, A magyar katonai felső vezetés, pp. 128–129; MKSz mandatory: Hetés, “Gondolatok a magyar hadtörténet-felfogás alakulásáról,” p. 329.
30. Douhet, Command of the Air, p. 294.
31. Szentnémedy, “Vélemények és eszmék,” p. 102.
32. Szentnémedy, “Az 19.. évi háboru” (no. 3 [1931]), p. 29.
33. Ibid.
34. Cain, “Neither Decadent, nor Stupid, nor Treasonous,” p. 1.
35. Douhet, Command of the Air, p. 298.
36. Ibid., pp. 305–306.
37. Szentnémedy, “Az 19.. évi háboru” (no. 3 [1931]), p. 33; and (no. 4 [1931]), p. 102.
38. Douhet, Command of the Air, p. 309.
39. Szentnémedy, “Vélemények és eszmék,” p. 102.
40. Quoted in Corum, “Airpower Thought in Continental Europe,” p. 161.
41. Gooch, Mussolini and His Generals, p. 105.
42. Knox, Hitler’s Italian Allies, p. 64; and Corum, “Airpower Thought in Continental Europe,” p. 161.
43. 1933 Royal Air Force Quarterly: Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet,” p. 32; no influence: Higham, Military Intellectuals in Britain, p. 258.
44. B. Greenhous, quoted in Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet,” p. 40n.
45. Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet,” p. 33.
46. Szentnémedy published his translation as Légiháború 1938-ban: Páris szétrombolása. He pushed the date of Knauss’s war back two years, presumably to account for the lag in translation. The first English translation was published in 1932 under the title War in the Air (see note 68).
47. Quoted in Corum and Muller, Luftwaffe’s Way of War, pp. 118–120.
48. Ibid., pp. 133–142.
49. Corum, “Airpower Thought in Continental Europe,” p. 153.
50. Young, “Strategic Dream,” p. 59.
51. Szentnémedy, “Vélemények és eszmék,” p. 103.
52. Cain, Forgotten Air Force, p. 35.
53. Ibid.
54. Szentnémedy, “Vélemények és eszmék,” p. 105.
55. Ibid., pp. 106–116.
56. Ibid., p. 109.
57. Ibid., p. 116.
58. Quoted in Holló, A Galambtól a Griffmadárig, p. 56.
59. Szentnémedy, A repülés, p. 27.
60. Ibid., p. 28.
61. Ibid.
62. Douhet was not alone in this view. B. H. Liddell Hart advanced it in Paris: or, The Future of War (1925), and the Russian-American aircraft designer and theorist Alexander de Seversky held it well into the Second World War. See his “Strategy of Air Power More Humane than Blood-Bath of Surface Warfare” in Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 13, 1943, p. 1. See also Meilinger, “Alexander P. de Seversky and American Airpower.” The geneticist J. B. S. Haldane promoted gas (without regard to its delivery system) as the most humane weapon in his Callinicus.
63. Douhet, Command of the Air, p. 362.
64. Szentnémedy, A repülés, p. 29.
65. Ibid., p. 37.
66. Ibid., pp. 37–40.
67. Ibid., p. 29.
68. Knauss, War in the Air, p. 67.
69. Ibid., pp. 85, 171.
70. Ibid., p. 248.
71. Mecozzi popularized the term in his 1933 book L’Aviazione d’Assalto.
72. Szentnémedy, “Új hadmüveleti irányelvek a légiháborúra,” p. 121.
73. Ibid., p. 122.
74. Sganga et al., “Douhet’s Antagonist,” p. 6.
75. Botti and Cervelli, quoted in ibid., p. 7.
76. Szentnémedy, “Új hadmüveleti irányelvek,” p. 135.
77. Clausewitz, On War, pp. 84, 358.
78. Szentnémedy, “A honi légvédelem problémái,” p. 108.
79. Ibid., pp. 122–123.
80. Szentnémedy, “Van-e védelem a korlátlan légiháború ellen?,” p. 96; passive and active defense: p. 106.
81. Ibid., p. 100.
82. Ibid., pp. 102–103.
83. Ibid., pp. 95–100.
84. Hellebronth, “A légiháború és a védekezés módjai,” p. 100.
85. Ibid., p. 101.
86. Ibid.
87. Németh, “Polgári légvédelem,” p. 97.
88. Ibid., p. 98.
89. Hellebronth, “A légiháború és a védekezés módjai,” p. 117.
90. Ibid., p. 118.
91. Ibid., p. 119.
92. Ibid., p. 122.
93. Szentnémedy, “A légiháború és a védekezés módjai,” p. 105.
94. Ibid., p. 115.
95. Ibid., p. 109.
96. Bobok, “Vállalkozás ejtőernyőkkel az ellenség hátában”; Tóth, “Szállitó repülés” and “Csapaszállitások repülőgéppel és ejtőernyős kirakások”; Szentnémedy, “A függőleges átkarolás kérdéséhez” and “Az ejtőernyő ujabb katonai jelentősége.”
97. Szentnémedy, “A légiháború és a védekezés módjai,” p. 116.
98. Ibid., p. 117.
99. Ibid., p. 118.
100. Hellebronth, “A légiháború és a védekezés módjai,” p. 96.
101. Ibid., p. 98.
102. Petróczy, “A lengyel lég és gázvédelmi liga tevékenysége” and “Hogyan szervezte meg németország a polgári légvédelmet”; Szálasy, “A légi erők befolyása a hadászatra.” Arrow Cross was the national socialist party aligned with Nazi Germany that held power in Hungary from October 1944 until March 1945.