There was this new theory at the dawn of air warfare called "Strategic Bombing", one of its main advocates was Giulio Dohet. The idea was that aircrafts could get behind the frontlines and bomb vital centers (civilians and production) freely. Hypothetically the morale would collapse, and lead quickly to surrendering. He even calculated that 300 tons of bombs per city over the most important cities would be enough to end a war in less than a month.

This theory couldn't be tested until late 1930's, when everyone was trying variations on the "technique", adding things like explosives, incendiary, gas... and escalating the amount of bombs needed to cause the mythical collapse. I think the record was 5 million tons of bombs over Vietnam (170 kg of bombs per capita), still the collapse didn't happen.

England and US carries the crown of the barbarism on this subject. And now the state of Israel. Check for names Frederick Lindemann, Arthur "Bomber" Harris and Sir Hugh Trenchard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehousing

> I think the record was 5 million tons of bombs over Vietnam (170 kg of bombs per capita), still the collapse didn't happen.

Unsure about the tonnage, but the parallels to current events [1] and the illusion that a bombing campaign will suffice to end a war in a matter of weeks is rather eerie to me.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war

Relevant ACOUP (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, Bret Devereaux's military history blog) post: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...