Giulio Douhet, a now almost forgotten Italian army general, once reigned as the foremost theorist of what came to be called “victory through air power.” Others, notably our own Colonel Billy Mitchell, would gain notoriety as proponents of the primacy of aerial bombardment as the decisive element in modern warfare, but Douhet’s 1921 treatise Il dominio dell’aria, or The Command of the Air, exerted an outsized influence on air power advocates throughout the first half of the 20th century, and it continues to be debated today.
Writing in the aftermath of WWI, at a time when the ability of an air force to deliver explosive ordnance was measured in dozens rather than thousands of tons, Douhet looked beyond the limitations of existing aircraft to a time when fleets of heavy bombers could fill the sky. He postulated that these waves of bombers would overwhelm any defenses — he was contemptuous of the entire concept of air defense.
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