The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell. His famous 2004 TED Talk about pasta sauce placed Malcolm onto the world’s new internet stage.
I also enjoy his podcast series Revisionist History. As a matter of fact The Bomber Mafia is an outcome of podcast Season 5, Episode 4. So Malcolm has delivered a rather unique book.
This is not a feel good story. Malcolm reveals the horror of war and the understanding that precision bombing dealt a harsh blow to Germany, while firebombing Japanese cities caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
The story begins with a short history of aerial bombing in World War I. Then Malcolm introduces Major General Haywood S. Hansell.
So Hansell and the mafia of Air Force leaders developed America’s high-altitude precision bombing strategy in World War II. His strategy was to limit civilian casualties as the pacific campaign was beginning to ramp up.
However, Hansell was replaced by Major General Curtis LeMay. Instead, LeMay altered the US Air Force tactic to a low altitude, fire bombing campaigns across Japan.
Did LeMay sell his soul?
Malcolm certainly structures this powerful storyline around Luke 4:2, the temptation of Christ by the devil:
And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.
Luke 4:2
LeMay led a devastating bombing campaign, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. In fact, after a single firebombing of Tokyo, between 100,00 to 130,000 civilians burned to death. Yet all the firebombing did not impact Japan’s industrial capacity to wage war.
Malcolm does not directly address vengeance. Yet, this plays an overwhelming role in the war in the Pacific. McNamara, in his Morris interview states in fact, that it is accurate to understand war criminals are not only on the losing side. LeMay indicated his actions indeed would make him a war criminal in the documentary. Did LeMay walk away from his faith? Perhaps he did.
On the other hand, a story on LeMay’s decision to fly a decoy mission into Germany tells a side of LeMay not well known. Allied intelligence located a key factory critical to manufacturing war materials. LeMay sent a decoy mission to gain the attention of German fighters, while a key strategic attack was destined for Regensburg. While the strategic mission is effective in crippling the German war effort, the decoy mission claim the lives of 240 US airmen.
Lessons from Robert McNamara
Errol Morris delivers a visual understanding of LeMay’s firebombing in his documentary The Fog of War. Morris interviews former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Robert served in the US Air Force during World War II, providing LeMay analytical data to support strategic objectives including firebombing Japan. It is certainly striking to see your hometown pop up in an infographic regarding the destruction of Japanese cities:
90% of civilians across 67 Japanese cities were killed as a result of LeMay’s firebombing. The impact across our American society to the death and destruction cannot be understood until Morris displays area/population equivalents from the bombing:
- 99.0% Chattanooga / Toyama
- 64.9% Madison / Nagaoka
- 58.0% Cleveland / Yokohama
- 55.1% Kenosha / Kumagaya
- 51.0% New York City / Tokyo
- 55.0% Baltimore / Kobe
- 40.0% Los Angeles / Nagoya
- 41.9% Toledo / Kure
- 35.1% Chicago / Osaka
At the same time, US Army Jeep manufacturing was in my hometown. However I cannot imagine half of the city destroyed. At the time, Chicago with a population at 4.9 million was the 8th largest city in the world. Image over one-third of Chicago bombed and burned.
Remember the famous quote attributed to LeMay? In his 1968 memoir he suggested that rather than negotiating with North Vietnam, the US Air Force should “bomb them back to the stone age.” In fact, history is not kind to LeMay’s strategy in Vietnam. LeMay certainly did not comprehend North Vietnam (sans Hanoi) was truly an agrarian society. We could not bomb them backwards….they were already there.
I have read each of his books The Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and finally Talking to Strangers. So fortunate to see him speak at a 2014 book event in Milwaukee.
In conclusion, Malcolm is certainly a gifted storyteller. The 76th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing was this week. This book is providing a deeper look at the horror of war.
CBS Sunday Morning | Malcolm Gladwell on “The Bomber Mafia”
Pushkin Industries | Malcolm Gladwell | “The Bomber Mafia” Audiobook Trailer
Amanpour and Company | Malcolm Gladwell and “The Bomber Mafia”
Pushkin Industries | The Bomber Mafia | Revisionist History