I'm not trying to argue that war is *actually* any more terrible now, or that more civilians die? War has always been terrible.
But the tactics that people based the waging of wars on were about lines of battle, and the idea that things behind the lines were safe, and things between the lines were in danger. At various points in the war there might not be much behind the lines other than, like, one fortified settlement, and you might be burning and killing behind your own lines because hey, why not. And the vast majority of the people exposed to war probably had no concept of safety or really anything but 'war sucks'.
But the people making the decisions about war were making their decisions based on a concept of war that was about lines of battle, and everything behind the lines being safe as long as they could defend those lines. The lines were not necessarily national borders, sometimes it was as simple as 'this actual line of soldiers and/or terrified peasants, for the duration of this three-hour battle', but you were still defending the territory behind a line. So the old dudes making decisions (and, to a greater or lesser extent, shaping public opinion for people not directly experiencing the war) were operating on a very basic idea of war that said that as long as you held a line, you could protect the people behind the line.
I mean, war sucks, so usually everybody ended up having terrible things happen to them anyway, and most of the time somebody couldn't hold the line and towns got sacked, or somebody made the decision to put most of the civilians in front of the line, but the theory was that if you held the line, then everyone behind the line was protected. (Also, IIRC, the really high death numbers for the wars around the Reformation usually include disease and famine, which changed for other technological reasons.)
That's what air war changed - it didn't change the chances of getting civilians killed and it didn't make war worse and I don't even know that it materially changed the experience of war for the people getting screwed over by war. But for the sort of people who had a theoretical concept of military strategy, and had a sense of security built on the idea that as long as our soldiers can hold the line, our people will be safe, air war has overturned that completely, and that's what made people panic.
I'm not saying they were right - I don't actually think they were right - but realizing that panic was what was motivating a lot of decision-makers and opinion-shapers has made a lot of things make more sense to me about the last hundred years of history.
(I'm also not saying nukes aren't scary. I think nukes are scarier than missiles. If only because if you get killed by a missile it will presumably be the enemy's, whereas nukes are frankly too damn dangerous to have anywhere, and also I don't trust decision-makers not to be stupid, and stupidity with nukes kills everybody. But in terms of military tactics, an H-bomb without air/space war capacity is pretty useless? It's something you have to be able to get pretty deep into enemy territory before you can actually use it. Nobody will be using h-bombs on the front lines of a land war. I suppose you could use mini-nukes on the front lines, but by the time they're scaled down that far we have other kinds of weaponry that are just as scary. So as a military leader, you need the bombers and missiles before you can even think about using nukes.
Which presumably explains why, for example, the world-at-large is worried but not panicky about North Korea having nuclear weapons: nobody really believes they have the air war capacity to be able to bomb anyone but their own citizens. If you live near enough to North Korea for short-range weapons you're worried but you were probably already worried, because they could already get you pretty good with conventional bombs.)
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But the tactics that people based the waging of wars on were about lines of battle, and the idea that things behind the lines were safe, and things between the lines were in danger. At various points in the war there might not be much behind the lines other than, like, one fortified settlement, and you might be burning and killing behind your own lines because hey, why not. And the vast majority of the people exposed to war probably had no concept of safety or really anything but 'war sucks'.
But the people making the decisions about war were making their decisions based on a concept of war that was about lines of battle, and everything behind the lines being safe as long as they could defend those lines. The lines were not necessarily national borders, sometimes it was as simple as 'this actual line of soldiers and/or terrified peasants, for the duration of this three-hour battle', but you were still defending the territory behind a line. So the old dudes making decisions (and, to a greater or lesser extent, shaping public opinion for people not directly experiencing the war) were operating on a very basic idea of war that said that as long as you held a line, you could protect the people behind the line.
I mean, war sucks, so usually everybody ended up having terrible things happen to them anyway, and most of the time somebody couldn't hold the line and towns got sacked, or somebody made the decision to put most of the civilians in front of the line, but the theory was that if you held the line, then everyone behind the line was protected. (Also, IIRC, the really high death numbers for the wars around the Reformation usually include disease and famine, which changed for other technological reasons.)
That's what air war changed - it didn't change the chances of getting civilians killed and it didn't make war worse and I don't even know that it materially changed the experience of war for the people getting screwed over by war. But for the sort of people who had a theoretical concept of military strategy, and had a sense of security built on the idea that as long as our soldiers can hold the line, our people will be safe, air war has overturned that completely, and that's what made people panic.
I'm not saying they were right - I don't actually think they were right - but realizing that panic was what was motivating a lot of decision-makers and opinion-shapers has made a lot of things make more sense to me about the last hundred years of history.
(I'm also not saying nukes aren't scary. I think nukes are scarier than missiles. If only because if you get killed by a missile it will presumably be the enemy's, whereas nukes are frankly too damn dangerous to have anywhere, and also I don't trust decision-makers not to be stupid, and stupidity with nukes kills everybody. But in terms of military tactics, an H-bomb without air/space war capacity is pretty useless? It's something you have to be able to get pretty deep into enemy territory before you can actually use it. Nobody will be using h-bombs on the front lines of a land war. I suppose you could use mini-nukes on the front lines, but by the time they're scaled down that far we have other kinds of weaponry that are just as scary. So as a military leader, you need the bombers and missiles before you can even think about using nukes.
Which presumably explains why, for example, the world-at-large is worried but not panicky about North Korea having nuclear weapons: nobody really believes they have the air war capacity to be able to bomb anyone but their own citizens. If you live near enough to North Korea for short-range weapons you're worried but you were probably already worried, because they could already get you pretty good with conventional bombs.)