Katie Brown — a doctoral candidate at the University of Akron — will analyse the rhetoric employed in British arguments for and against strategic bombing.

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In a 1932 House of Commons debate, the Lord President of the Council Stanley Baldwin uttered his now infamous warning that “the bomber will always get through.” More notably, he went on to argue that “[t]he only defence is an offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”

Baldwin’s statements, while originating as a call for disarmament, quickly became a rallying cry for both the “militarists” in Great Britain—individuals who supported the continued supply of British defences—and the “pacifists”—those who fought for aerial restrictions and the outlawry of war.

Why then was it so important for Baldwin, and those who would later parrot his phrasing, to focus specifically on the murdering of women and children to justify disarmament?

Traditionally, British society had gendered pacifism and calls for disarmament as feminine. Yet, Baldwin was a prominent male politician evoking a standard masculine, patriarchal martial ideal of protecting the state and the weaker women and children as justification for pacifist ideology.

While militarists in the interwar years also commonly evoked the chivalric tenant to justify war, it became increasingly common for pacifists, both male and  female, to call for the end of global war in order to protect women and children.

What then accounted for the change in the pacifist argument, this masculinization of peace? Did Britons’ concern for “the fairer sex” reach to other, non-British nations?

This paper applies a gendered lens to analyse and deconstruct the rhetoric surrounding the disputes, and in turn provides a nuanced interpretation of British arguments for and against strategic bombing to answer these questions.

The End of Gentlemanly Warfare? Gendered Language and Great Britain’s Evolving Arguments for Strategic Bombing, 1930-1945