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Overview
Produced during the Second World War, this board game was designed as a competition between two or more players where each player in turn fires six wooden shells at targets using a wooden gun with a spring, The targets, incorporated into the lower half of the box, include individuals such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and cities such as Kiel and Cologne.
The game reflects and encourages antagonistic feelings towards the Axis powers. It invites players to act out violent scenes of war in their own homes, and demonstrates the extent to which the war infiltrated the daily lives of civilians, young and old. It acts as a form of propaganda, as the targets are depicted as if they’ve already been beaten. The cities are burning, the factories are in smoke, and Hitler and Mussolini look distressed and uncertain. The success of the Allies is assured, but the game decides which player is most skilled at waging war against their common enemy.
While not a war game in the traditional sense, Bombardment does reflect the growing popularity of war games for the home in the twentieth century. When the First World War broke out in 1914 many of the world’s powers were using complex board games to put their military strategies to the test, and it was from blood-soaked military applications that the idea of playing war games for fun emerged. Early war games for the home were quite simple - often just a map and a set of rules - but later war games involved miniature tanks, soldiers, and other pretend warfare paraphernalia. Risk, launched in 1959, was one of the most popular board games of all time.
Further Reading
- Donovan, Tristan. 2017. It’s All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.