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The dark legacy of Nuremberg: Inhumane air warfare, judicial desuetudo and the demise of the principle of distinction in International Humanitarian Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2023
Abstract
On its seventy-fifth anniversary last year, the Nuremberg war crime trials moved again into the spotlight of public attention. To the present day, Nuremberg is mainly portrayed as the birth of international criminal law being the first tribunal that held individuals accountable for war crimes committed during the Second World War. As we argue in this article, there is an often-overseen dark legacy of Nuremberg as it represents an unused opportunity to establish accountability for inhumane military practices, especially in air warfare, being of tragic influence for the postwar development of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a whole. Going beyond the existing criticism already voiced on Nuremberg’s shortcomings, we hold that the Tribunal’s reluctance to prosecute bombing practices sowed the seeds for the decay of IHL by creating institutionalized silences, especially for massive violations of the principle of distinction. The tribunal thereby sidelined pre-war IHL and infected the development of post-war IHL by retroactively legitimating the bombing practices of the Axis powers and at least indirectly of the Allies. We argue that the failure to prosecute ‘total war’-practices and reestablish former restrictive legal structures regarding aerial bombardment has fundamentally eroded the pre-war meaning of the principle of distinction leading to its downfall in the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention of 1977. We describe these developments as a form of judicial desuetudo, meaning the abrogation of a rule through its subsequent non-enforcement by an international court during and after massive law violations because of perceived or real political constraints.
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References
1 Hereinafter referred to as ‘the Nuremberg Trials’ in relation to the International Military Tribunals (IMTs). When reference is made to the US Military Tribunals at Nuremberg (NMTs) or other ‘zonal’ tribunals which were set up by the Allies in their respective occupation zones in post-war Germany, it is specifically indicated.
2 R. H. Jackson, Report of Robert H. Jackson, United States Representatives to the International Conference on Military Trials (1945), viii, sharing a widespread view held by many of Nuremberg’s judges, for example T. Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1993), 226.
3 See, for example, N. Ehrenfreund, The Nuremberg Legacy: How the Nazi War Crime Trials Changed the Course of History (2007); K. H. Heller, The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (2011); more differentiated: D. Blumenthal and T. McCormack (eds.), The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (2008).
4 C. Jochnick and R. Normand, ‘The Legitimation of Violence: A Critical History of the Laws of War’, (1994) 35 HILJ 49; K. Sellars, Crimes Against Peace’ and International Law (2013); with a sophisticated reading of the foundational debates in this field of international criminal law: G. J. Simpson, Law, War and Crime: War Crimes, Trials and the Reinvention of International Law (2007); recently on this criticism: W. A. Schabas, ‘Nuremberg’s Critics’, (2021) 32 Irish Studies in International Affairs 183.
5 Critically on intellectual traditions in the field of international humanitarian law: K. Nabulsi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law (2005); recently on the role of the United States: S. Moyne, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (2021).
6 As a more recent example: O. Hathaway and S. Shapiro, The Internationalists and Their Plan to Outlaw War (2017).
7 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal - Annex to the Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis, 82 UNTS 279 (1945), Art. 6; 1946 Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1589 TIAS 20, Art. 5.
8 T. Taylor, Nuremberg Trials: War Crimes and International Law (1949), 117.
9 See especially the famous Dissenting Opinion of Justice Pal, Member from India of 12 November 1948 (International Military Tribunal for the Far East), UNWCC Annexes 18037 (1948); see also Dissenting Opinion of Justice Röling, Member for the Netherlands (International Military Tribunal for the Far East, on the crime of aggression in Tokyo), UNWCC Annexes 18034 (1948); R. Cryer, ‘Röling in Tokyo: A Dignified Dissenter’, (2010) 8 Journal of International Criminal Justice 1109.
10 Cf. L. Egbert and P. Joosten (eds.), Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof, Band XXII: Verhandlungsniederschriften 18. April 1946 - 2. Mai 1946 (1947), 524.
11 J. Fuchs and F. Lattanzi, ‘International Military Tribunals’, in R. Wolfrum and A. Peters (eds.), Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (2011), at 67.
12 J. von Bernstorff, L’essor et la chute de droit international humanitaire: Une brève histoire de la codification de la protection des civils en temps de guerre (1899–1977) (2023), Ch. 2.
13 See, on the intellectual history of the immunity of civilians, R. S. Hartigan, Civilian Victims in War: A Political History (2010).
14 F. Rey, ‘Violations du Droit International commises par les Allemands en France dans la Guerre de 1939’, in M. Sibert (ed.), Revue Générale de Droit International Public (1946), 1, at 8.
15 1899 Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, Art. 25. Art. 25 succeeded Art. 15 of the Brussels Draft from 1874: ‘Fortified places are only to be besieged. Open towns, agglomerations of dwellings, or villages which are not defended can neither be attacked nor bombarded’, Project of an International Declaration concerning the Laws and Customs of War, in D. Schindler and J. Toman (eds.), The Laws of Armed Conflicts (1988), at 25.
16 Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (ed.), Conférence Internationale de la Paix. La Haye 18 Mai - 29 Juillet 1899, Actes et Documents, première partie (1899), 40; cf. P. Fauchille, ‘Le bombardemen árien’, (1917) 24 RGDIP 56, at 59, fn. 1.
17 During the fourth meeting of the third committee, cited in J. Scott (ed.), The Proceedings of The Hague Peace Conferences - The Conference of 1907 (1920), 551 et seq.
18 J. Spaight, Aircraft in War (1914), 15–16, citing the British Manual on Land Warfare: ‘not occupied by troops or otherwise in a position to offer armed resistance’; see Fauchille, supra note 16, at 62.
19 The Institut de Droit International, for example, in its Manuel des lois de la guerre maritime of 1913, explicitly referred to an actual defence situation by replacing the formulation ‘qui ne sont pas défendus’ by ‘qui ne se défendent pas’, Institut de Droit International, Manuel des lois de la guerre maritime dans les rapports entre belligérants (1913), at Art. 25, available at www.idi-iil.org/app/uploads/2017/06/1913_oxf_02_fr.pdf.
20 J. Garner, ‘La réglementation internationale de la guerre aérienne’, (1923) 30 RGDIP 372, 379: ‘Défendue en matière aérienne que s’il est défendu par des canons spécialement construits pour le tir vertical et si les défendeurs en font usage.’ (‘Defended from the air only if it is defended by cannons specially built for vertical fire and if those are used by the defendants.’)
21 Cf. E. Spetzler, Luftkrieg und Menschlichkeit (1957), 35; J. Spaight, War Rights on Land (1911), 158.
22 Draft Note for Signature, Nr. 29865, Confidential Print, 09.07.1914, FO 372/572, file 751, no. 14144, cited in I. Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War (2014), 283.
23 ‘Harmless citizens as well as private and public property … which are not used for military purposes or are not of strategic importance … must be spared as far as possible’: See Fauchille, supra note 16, at 73. There were nevertheless scholars like Spaight seeing it differently: J. Spaight, Air Power and War Rights (1924), 225.
24 This was also emphasized by the Belgian Delegate Beernaert during the Second Hague Conference: ‘It is forbidden to harm in any way populations who take no part in the military operations; and even between combatants all unnecessary infliction of injury is forbidden. These rules were the basis of the work of the First Hague Conference, and thenceforth from a part of positive international law … The principles … are the basis of Article 25 of the treaty.’: J. Scott, The Proceedings of The Hague Peace Conferences - The Conference of 1907 (1920), 543.
25 See Hague Rules, supra note 15, Art. 25, in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 31: ‘The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited’ (emphasis added).
26 ‘The contracting Powers agree, for a term of five years, to forbid the discharge of projectiles and explosives from balloons or by other new methods of similar nature’, in Schindler and Toman, ibid., at 309.
27 Except for dirigible and non-dirigible balloons or airships, cf. W. Royse, Aerial Bombardment and the International Regulation of Warfare (1928), 57.
28 Cf. ibid., at 61.
29 ‘The contracting Powers agree to prohibit, for a period extending to the close of the Third Peace Conference, the discharge of projectiles and explosives from balloons or by other new methods of a similar nature. The present Declaration is only binding on the contracting Powers in case of war between two or more of them. It shall cease to be binding from the time when, in a war between the contracting Powers, one of the belligerents is joined by a non-contracting power’, in J. Scott, The Two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 (1915), 21.
30 Cf. E. Mensching, Luftkrieg und Recht (2022), 168.
31 See Spaight, supra note 18, at 18; J. Kriege, ‘Die völkerrechtliche Beurteilung des Luftkriegs im Weltkriege (Gutachten des Sachverständigen Wirklichen Geheimen Rates)’, in J. Bell (ed.), Völkerrecht im Weltkriege - Bd. IV (1927), 83, at 97; more restrictive: Fauchille, supra note 16, at 69; J. Garner, International Law and the World War - Vol. I (1920), 469.
32 A. Meyer, Völkerrechtlicher Schutz der friedlichen Personen und Sachen gegen Luftangriffe - Das geltende Kriegsrecht (1935), 135.
33 J. Edmonds and L. Oppenheim, Land Warfare. An Exposition of the Laws and Usages of War on Land for the Guidance of Officers of His Majesty’s Army (1914), 33; A. Mérignhac and E. Lémonon, Le droit des gens et la guerre de 1914-1918 (1921), 629: ‘il décide très nettement pour toutes que le bombardement de localités non défendues constitue un acte contraire à la loi de la guerre, qu’il soit réalisé par la voie terrestre ou aérienne’ (‘it decides clearly for all that the bombing of undefended localities constitutes an act contrary to the law of war, whether carried out by land or by air’).
34 Adumbrating excessive bombing practices in the Second World War, cf. M. Messerschmidt, ‘Kriegstechnologie und Humanitäres Völkerrecht in der Zeit der Weltkriege‘, (1987) 1 Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 88.
35 See Royse, supra note 27, at 193.
36 L. Rolland, ‘Les Pratiques de la guerre aérienne dans le conflit de 1914 et le droit des gens’, (1916) 23 RGDIP, at 554; cf. Spaight, supra note 23, at 211; cf. Mérignhac and Lémonon, supra note 33, at 646–7.
37 Critical on this development: J. Moore, International Law and Some Current Illusions (1924), ix, x.
38 On this problematic legacy in the nineteenth century European international legal discourse see von Bernstorff, supra note 12.
39 J. Spaight, ‘Non-Combatants and Air Attack’, (1938) 9 Air Law Review 372, at 375.
40 ‘But it could not be denied that there were certain rules and principles governing air warfare and that these were valid irrespective of the willingness of belligerents’, F. Kalshoven, Belligerent Reprisals (1971), 169; cf. H. Hanke, ‘Die Bombardierung Dresdens und die Entwicklung des Kriegsvölkerrechts’, in A. Schmidt-Recla (ed.), Sachsen im Spiegel des Rechts: ius commune propriumque (2001), 283; K. Kunzmann, Die Fortentwicklung des Kriegsrechts auf den Gebieten des Schutzes der Verwundeten und der Beschiessung von Wohnorten (1960), 187.
41 H. Hanke, ‘The 1923 Hague Rules of Air Warfare - A Contribution to the Development of International Law Protecting Civilians from Air Attack’, (1993) 33 International Review of the Red Cross 292.
42 See Moore, supra note 37, at 200.
43 1923 Hague Rules of Air Warfare, Art. 24(1), in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 207; French version in Commission de Juristes Chargée d’étudier et de fair rapport sur la révision des lois de la guerre, La guerre aérienne. Révision des lois de la guerre. La Haye 1922-1923 (1930), 242.
44 On the reasons for the non-codification see Mensching, supra note 30, at 258.
45 H. Parks, ‘Air War and the Law of War’, (1990) 32 Air Force Law Review, at 35: ‘The 1923 Hague Air Rules suffered an ignominious death, doomed from the outset by language that established rules for black-and-white situations in a combat environment permeated by shades of grey.’
46 See Hanke, supra note 41, at 36: ‘the Hague Rules of Air Warfare played a decisive part in the emergence of binding customary international law in the pre-war period’. See Kunzmann, supra note 40, at 187; A. Meyer, Völkerrechtlicher Schutz der friedlichen Personen und Sachen gegen Luftangriffe - Das geltende Kriegsrecht (1935), 8.
47 ‘The rule of the military objective was accepted, expressly or by implication, as the kernel of the international law on the subject’, in Spaight, supra note 23, at 259.
48 For example: International Law Association, Report of the 31st Conference held at the Palace of Justice, Buenos Aires. 24th - 30th August, 1922 (1923), at 211.
49 See Hanke, supra note 41, at 36.
50 ‘There are at any rate, three rules of international law or three principles of international which are as applicable to warfare from the air as they are to war at sea or on land. In the first place, it is against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks upon civilian populations. That is undoubtedly a violation of international law. In the second place, targets which are aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be capable of identification. In the third place, reasonable care must be taken in attacking these military objectives so that by carelessness a civilian population in the neighbourhood is not bombed’: Speech before the House of Commons, 21 June 1938, House of Commons Debates, Vol. 337, Col. 938, cited in Spaight, supra note 23, at 257.
51 Resolution of the League of Nations Assembly, Protection of Civilian Populations Against Bombing From the Air in Case of War (1938), in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 221.
52 U.S. Department of State, United States and Italy 1936-1946 (1946), 6.
53 In Spaight, supra note 23, at 260.
54 ‘This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5.45 A.M. we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs. Whoever fight with poison gas will be fought with poison gas. Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same’, Address by Adolf Hitler, 1 September 1939, available at www.fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/HITLER1.htm.
55 Cited in Spaight, supra note 23, at 259.
56 Instructions Governing Naval and Air Bombardment in the Opening Stages of the War (1939), PRO AIR 8/283, in H. Hanke, Luftkrieg und Zivilbevölkerung (1991), 303.
57 Anweisung zur Führung des Luftkrieges (1939), BA/MA RW 5/v.336, in Hanke, ibid., at 297.
58 ‘I feel sure that this instruction will not last very long, but we obviously cannot be the first to take the gloves off’: PRO AIR 41/5 (1945), D-8, cited in J. Spaight, International Law of the Air 1939-1945 (1945).
59 In a conference in October 1939, he told his leadership that he would promise officially to stay within the framework of international regulations and would not use any banned warfare agents and weapons. In reality, however, he would not take any further precautions and also attack open cities: in H. Groscurth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938-1940 (1970), 385.
60 On these different stages of bombing crescendo see Mensching, supra note 30, at 324.
61 S. Garrett, ‘Air Power and Non-Combatant Immunity: The Road to Dresden’, in I. Primoratz (ed.), Civilian Immunity in War (2010), 180.
62 C. Webster and N. Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939–1945, Vol. IV (1961), 144.
63 Memorandum of the Air Staff from 12.02.1943, in M. Hastings, Bomber Command (1999), 170.
64 H. Boog, ‘Luftwaffe und unterschiedsloser Bombenkrieg bis 1942’, in H. Boog (ed.), Luftkriegführung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Ein Internationaler Vergleich (1993), 460.
65 See Jochnick and Normand, supra note 4, at 87.
66 See Egbert and Joosten, supra note 10, at 314.
67 Cf. Kunzmann, supra note 40, at 216.
68 J. Stone, Legal Controls of International Conflict: A Treatise on the Dynamics of Disputes and War-Law (1954), 609: ‘significant that … no war crimes charges were brought as to the illegal conduct of air warfare’.
69 E. Markusen and D. Kopf, ‘Was it Genocidal?’, in J. Primoratz (ed.), Terror from the Sky: The Bombing of German Cities in World War II (2010), 167; M. Selden, ‘A Forgotten Holocaust: U.S. Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities, and the American Way of War from the Pacific War to Iraq’, in T. Tanaka and M. Young (eds.), Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History (2010), 79; S. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War II: The British Bombing of German Cities (1997), 199.
70 T. Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (1970), 100.
71 Cited in R. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (1983), 68.
72 T. Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army on the Nuernberg War Crimes Trials under Control Council Law No. 10 (1977), 65; cf. Parks, supra note 45, at 37.
73 D. Luban, ‘Military Necessity and the Cultures of Military Law’, (2013) 26 LJIL 341; M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), 144.
74 ‘When a commander of a besieged place expels the noncombatants, in order to lessen the number of those who consume his stock of provisions, it is lawful, though an extreme measure, to drive them back, so as to hasten on the surrender’, in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 6.
75 US Military Tribunal Nuremberg, High Command Trial, The United States of America vs. Wilhelm von Leeb et. al., Judgment of 27 October 1948 (1949), 562.
76 See Luban, supra note 73, at 343.
77 ‘(T)he most important official treatment of tu quoque is that of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in its decision on Admirals Donitz and Raeder’: S. Yee, ‘The Quoque-Argument as a Defence to International Crimes, Prosecution or Punishment’, (2004) 3 Chinese Journal of International Law 88.
78 The Trial of German Major War Criminals. Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg, Germany (22 August 1946 to 1 October 1946), Judgment of 1 October 1946, para. 509, available at www.legal-tools.org/doc/45f18e/pdf/.
79 Cf. B. Röling, ‘The Law of War and the National Jurisdiction since 1945’, in Académie de Droit International (ed.), Recueil des Cours (1960), 391.
80 In Egbert and Joosten, supra note 10, at 43, 200, 380.
81 S. Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (2011), 240: ‘(P)rotected from criticism for what they had already done … away with the legal hindrances for the future nuclear use … no legal international right of protection for Soviets.’
82 See Jochnick and Normand, supra note 4, at 89.
83 See also the argument of the members of the International Law Commission (ILC) rejecting a study on the laws of war in the course of its first conference in 1949: ‘The Commission considered whether the laws of war should be selected as a topic for codification. It was suggested that, war having been outlawed, the regulation of its conduct had ceased to be relevant … The majority of the Commission declared itself opposed to the study of the problem at the present stage … It was considered that if the Commission, at the very beginning of its work, were to undertake this study, public opinion might interpret its actions as showing lack of confidence in the efficiency of the means at the disposal of the U.N. for maintaining peace’, United Nations, Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1949 - Summary Records and Documents of the First Session including the report of the Commission to the General Assembly (1956), 281.
84 See Hanke, supra note 40, at 283.
85 J. Kunz, ‘The Chaotic Status of the Laws of War and the Urgent Necessity for Their Revision’, (1951) 45 AJIL 37, at 43.
86 J. Pictet, ‘The New Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims’, (1951) 45 AJIL 462.
87 See also the recent critical engagement regarding the process of the travaux préparatoires of the Geneva Conventions in general: B. Van Dijk, Preparing for War: The Making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (2022).
88 For example, ICRC, Report on the Work of the Preliminary Conference of National Red Cross Societies for the study of the Conventions and of various Problems relative to the Red Cross (Geneva, July 26 - August 3, 1946) (1947).
89 Cf. G. Best, War and Law since 1945 (1994), 103. See Van Dijk, supra note 87, at 197–251.
90 See Parks, supra note 45, at 56.
91 ICRC, XVIIth International Red Cross Conference - Draft Revised or New Conventions for the Protection of War Victims established by the International Committee of the Red Cross with the Assistance of Government Experts, National Red Cross Societies and other Humanitarian Associations (1948).
92 The Swiss Federal Council invited the governments of 70 states, of which 63 participated, 59 with voting rights and four as observers; see Pictet, supra note 86, at 467.
93 Cf. R. Yingling and R. Ginnane, ‘The Geneva Conventions of 1949’, (1952) 46 AJIL 393.
94 The Romanian delegation stated: ‘The Conference would fail in its task if those populations were not adequately protected. Why hesitate to modify the rules of war, when the security of the civilian populations was at stake’, ‘Committee III, Establishment of a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War’, in Federal Political Department Berne, Final Record of the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949, Vol. II A (1949), at 717.
95 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 75 UNTS 287, Art. 4; in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 502.
96 See Yingling and Ginnane, supra note 93, at 413: ‘an obvious attempt to obtain the unconditional ban on the use of atomic weapons’.
97 ‘The High Contracting Parties specifically agree that each of them is prohibited from taking any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishment, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.’
98 See Committee III, Establishment of a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, supra note 94, at 764.
99 ‘34th Plenary Meetings’, in Federal Political Department Berne, Final Record of the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949, Vol. II B, 500; see Best, supra note 89, at 112.
100 See Committee III, Establishment of a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, supra note 94, at 719; ibid., at 508.
101 See Fourth Geneva Convention, supra note 95, Arts. 15, 28, in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 506, 511.
102 Ibid., at 506.
103 See Best, supra note 89, at 106.
104 See ‘34th Plenary Meetings’, supra note 99, at 504.
105 See Best, supra note 89, at 106.
106 ‘Airgram from the US delegation to the State Department from 17.05.1949’, in ibid., at 111.
107 See Committee III, Establishment of a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, supra note 94, at 716.
108 United Nations General Assembly, Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy, UN Doc. A/RES/1(I) (1946): it had the task ‘to make specific proposals … (c) for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction’.
109 See Best, supra note 89, at 115: ‘The most conspicuous sufferers from bombing, Germany and Japan, were unable to put their case, while the bombing specialists, the USA and the UK, had every reason for preventing the case’.
110 Cf. A. Gillespie, A History of the Laws of War: Volume 2. The Customs and Laws of War with Regards to Civilians in Times of Conflict (2011), at 36; see Lindqvist, supra note 81, at 282.
111 See Lindqvist, ibid., at 256.
112 See Roseway, in Best, supra note 89, at 111.
113 Ibid.; cf. Gillespie, supra note 110, at 36.
114 See US Representative Clattenburg, ‘Committee III, Establishment of a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War’, supra note 94, at 716, who stated: ‘The present Conference was neither a disarmament conference nor a conference to re-write the Hague Convention.’
115 Cf. Best, supra note 89, at 115.
116 Cf. Ibid., at 159.
117 See Lindqvist, supra note 81, at 256.
118 Cf. Pictet, supra note 86, at 470.
119 J. Kunz, ‘Plus de lois de la guerre?’, in M. Sibert (ed.), Revue générale de droit international public (1934), 22.
120 J. Kunz, ‘The Chaotic Status of the Laws of War and the Urgent Necessity for Their Revision’, (1951) 45 AJIL 37, at 40, a legal answer to the rise of the phenomenon of ‘total war’ was still missing in his view, referring to B. H. Liddell Hart, The Revolution in Warfare (1947).
121 H. Lauterpacht, ‘The Problem of the Revision of the Law of War’, (1952) 29 BYIL 360.
122 Ibid., at 364.
123 G. Schwarzenberger, ‘Das Luftkriegsrecht und der Trend zum totalen Krieg‘, (1959) JfIR 8, 257.
124 ‘(T)he bombing of the civilian population, when incidental to attack upon legitimate military objectives, however widely conceived, may still be within the borderline of legality’, H. Lauterpacht, ‘The Problem of the Revision of the Law of War’, (1952) 29 BYIL 360, at 369.
125 ‘(S)o long as the assumption is allowed to subsist that there is a law of war, the prohibition of the weapon of terror not incidental to lawful operations must be regarded as an absolute rule of law’, ibid.
126 See Stone, supra note 68, at 631.
127 ‘Air power entered the post-war period free of all limitations save those imposed by its own technology’, C. Phillips, ‘Air Warfare and Law’, (1953) 21 George Washington Law Review 311, at 334.
128 F. von der Heydte, Völkerrecht II (1960), 249; A. Verdross, Völkerrecht (1964), 479.
129 Cf. A. Randelzhofer, ‘Flächenbombardement und Völkerrecht’, in H. Kipp, F. Mayer and A. Steinkamm (eds.), Um Recht und Freiheit: Festschrift für Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte zur Vollendung des 70. Lebensjahres (1977), 471, at 481.
130 1977 Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims in Non-International Armed Conflict, in A. Roberts and R. Guelff (eds.), Documents on the Laws of War (1982), 387, 447; M. Bothe, K. Partsch and W. Solf (eds.), New Rules for Victims of Armed Conflicts: Commentary on the Two 1977 Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (1982), 16, 604.
131 XIXth International Conference of the Red Cross, Final Record Concerning the Draft Rules for the Limitation of the Dangers Incurred by the Civilian Population in Time of War (1959, in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 251.
132 Statement by an ICRC official quoted in H. Levie, Protection of War Victims: Protocol 1 to the 1949 Geneva conventions - Volume I (1980), xiii.
133 D. Schindler, ‘International Humanitarian Law: Its Remarkable Development and Its Persistent Violation’, (2003) 5 Journal of the History of International Law 165, at 171.
134 Art. 46 (1) of the ICRC Draft Additional Protocol, printed in H. Levie, Protection of War Victims: Protocol 1 to the 1949 Geneva conventions, Vol. III (1980), 123.
135 Ibid., at 123, Art. 46(3): ‘The employment of means of combat, and any methods which strike or affect indiscriminately the civilian population and combatants, or civilian objects and military objectives, are prohibited. In particular it is forbidden: (a) to attack without distinction, as on single objective, by bombardment or any other method, a zone containing several military objectives, which are situated in populated areas, and are at some distance from each other…’.
136 Ibid., at 123.
137 On this arguably decisive methodological difference between bright-line rules and proportionality reasoning elsewhere see J. von Bernstorff, ‘Is IHL a Sham? A Reply to Eyal Benvenisti and Doreen Lustig’, (2020) 31 EJIL 709.
138 Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the GDR proposing deletion of paragraph b), minutes in Levie, supra note 132, at 128.
139 Proposal supported by Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait, Libyan Arab Republic, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, United Arab Emirates, ibid., at 127, 129.
140 H. Levie, Protection of War Victims: Protocol 1 to the 1949 Geneva conventions, Vol. III (1980), 128.
141 See the comments of H. Blix (Sweden) and A. Eide (Norway), ibid., at 136.
142 ICRC-statement, ibid., at 126.
143 See von Bernstorff, supra note 137, at 717.
144 See Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), supra note 130, in Schindler and Toman, supra note 15, at 711.
145 See Mensching, supra note 30, at 466.
146 See, on the redrafting-process, Y. Sandoz, C. Swinarski and B. Zimmermann (eds.), Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (1987), 623.
147 See, for the negotiations on Art. 51 of AP I, Levie, supra note 132, at 163; on the different coalitions see Bothe, Partsch and Solf, supra note 130, at 7; Best, supra note 89, at 342.
148 See Bothe, Partsch and Solf, ibid., at 311.
149 On discursive re-adjustments of international legal norms over time in hegemonic ‘re-adjustment circles’ see von Bernstorff, supra note 12.