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Orwell's battle with Brittain : vicarious liability for unjust aggression
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Tadros, Victor (2014) Orwell's battle with Brittain : vicarious liability for unjust aggression. Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 42 (Number 1). pp. 42-77. doi:10.1111/papa.12025 ISSN 0048-3915.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/papa.12025
Abstract
I aim to defend the spirit of George Orwell in his battle with Vera Brittain.
In her pamphlet Seeds of Chaos, Brittain complained about the British
and US policy of “obliteration bombing” executed against the Germans
in World War II. Obliteration bombing, according to Brittain, involved
the targeting of civilians to “soften up” an area before a ground invasion.
Had the British public known that civilians were systematically targeted,
Brittain claimed, these deaths would have weighed heavily on their consciences.1
The targeting of civilians by Britain and the United States was
not restricted to the infamous bombing of Dresden.2 Civilians were targeted
in more than fifty German cities, causing widespread death and
destruction. In total, well over three hundred thousand civilians were
killed by obliteration bombing in Germany alone, not to mention the
330,000 civilians killed as a result of US targeting of civilians in Japan,
most notoriously in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Brittain offered several objections to obliteration bombing. She criticized
the retributive motivation for the attacks, and the fact that obliteration
bombing would hamper German economic postwar recovery
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Philosophy & Public Affairs | ||||
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc. | ||||
ISSN: | 0048-3915 | ||||
Official Date: | 24 April 2014 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Volume 42 | ||||
Number: | Number 1 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 42-77 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1111/papa.12025 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published |
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