Malcolm Gladwell’s Bomber Mafia

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of World War II by Malcolm Gladwell
English | 2021 | History

An exploration of how technology and best intentions come together in the heat of war

In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell interweaves the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a gang of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniac chemists at Harvard to investigate one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small group of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” wondered: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less deadly?

In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics cost Japan thousands of civilian lives but perhaps spared even more by averting a planned American invasion. turn. . In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?”

Things might have turned out differently if LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, had remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay battled for a leadership transition in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a compelling story about perseverance, innovation and the incalculable wages of war.

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