This article will use past issues of the International Review of the Red Cross to examine how the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the Movement) has engaged with the issue of civilian protection over the course of its history. Although founded to organize humanitarian relief and legal protection for wounded and sick combatants, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the wider Movement have increasingly incorporated civilian war victims into their remit since their establishment. Yet, as this article will highlight, this process has not been straightforward. Focussing on the critical period between the two World Wars, the article will use the Review to illustrate why the Red Cross began engaging with the “civilianization” of conflicts in response to the threat of new technologies like gas and aerial bombardment. Using articles from the Review to highlight the key challenges faced by the Movement in protecting civilians over this period, it will also consider the gaps in the Red Cross's initial conceptions of who “the civilian” was, why belligerents attacked them, and what was the best means of protecting them.

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and the author of more than twenty-five books on the age of the World Wars and European dictatorship, including The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Airpower has been used in armed conflicts since World War I. Aircraft have been deployed in support of the army on the ground and the navy on the surface. However, the twentieth century, with two World Wars, has also seen aerial bombardment of cities that fell outside the traditional use of airpower. During World War II, as part of the ideology of “total war”, cities were deliberately selected as targets of such attacks with the purpose of undermining the morale of the enemy's population and “winning the war”. Nowadays, although the deliberate bombing of entire cities is prohibited, it is still believed that aerial bombardment can produce certain political dividends for belligerents. In this interview, Richard Overy provides a historical perspective on the evolution of aerial bombardment since the World Wars, and puts in context the use of airpower in contemporary armed conflicts.

International Law — Sources of — Analogy of Rules of International Law in pari materia — Hague Conventions of 1907 concerning Warfare on Land and Sea — Applicability to Aerial Warfare.

Aerial Bombardment — Application to Aerial Bombardment of the Rules Concerning Bombardment by Land Forces and Bombardment by Naval Forces — Distinction between Bombardment for the Purpose of Occupation and Bombardment for the Purpose of Destruction — Chemical Warfare — Respect for Life and Property of Non-Combatants — Bombardment of Bucharest.

Aerial Bombardment — Analogy with Land Bombardment — Article 26 of the Hague Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land — Bombardment of Salonica by German Air Forces prior to the Entrance of Greece into War — Greek Territory as a Region of War — Military Operations against Occupied Neutral Territory.