ABSTRACT
World War II was unique, not just quantitatively, but in technological quality as well. The strategic bombing technology (planes, bombs, organization) that manufactured the firestorms of Dresden and Tokyo, as destructive as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is one example. But most significant was the development of nuclear weapons and computers. The atomic bomb changed the parameters of lethality forever. Computers not only made the A-bomb industry possible, they also changed ballistics and logistics and have made over command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I). In some aspects World War II was a postmodern war, especially as concerns these two weapons and the whole system of strategic bombing. But fundamentally World War II was a modern war because it continued modern war’s quest for totality, up to and including Hiroshima.
