The Bomber Mafia The Bomber Mafia

The Bomber Mafia

A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

    • 4.2 • 907 Ratings
    • $11.99
    • $11.99

Publisher Description

Dive into this “truly compelling” (Good Morning America) New York Times bestseller that explores how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war—from the creator and host of the podcast Revisionist History.
In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine 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 band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?  
 
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 in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?”
 
Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.

GENRE
History
RELEASED
2021
April 27
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
288
Pages
PUBLISHER
Little, Brown and Company
SELLER
Hachette Digital, Inc.
SIZE
19.7
MB

Customer Reviews

Egurlie ,

Finished Quickly

This is what I considered a quick read. I flew through this book lol. However, I also went through this book so quickly because I’m fascinated with military history. Great read nonetheless.

747whaledriver ,

Apology, or justification? Re-writing history for pacificists

Discussions or publications analyzing the conduct of the Second World War is not readily or easily done, yet reality was ignored in this book in order to demonize those who were charged with conducting strikes against the enemy.

The Japanese martial mindset is not understood by many, tradition and rules established for centuries before white men ever walked on North America. It was and, to a degree, still is a culture dedicated combat and self-sacrifice.

Americans today think of war in terms of surgical air strikes, and invasion by heavily-armed teams of skilled professionals. In contrast, the Japanese Army and Navy were millions of men trained from the age of 6 to sacrifice themselves for the Emperor. Unlike today’s “woke” wimps, these soldiers and sailors were trained for combat, to die without thought of their personal needs or desires. It’s the Japanese national culture.

This was the army that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, women, and children in every city in China they invaded. Millions perished in this manner at the brutal hands of Tojo’s troops.

Even while American bombers were attacking military targets, civilians were being trained to resist Allied invaders through suicide attacks. In essence, the entire civilian populace had been inducted involuntarily to join the final military resistance. This, while the populace was being told that Japan was winning the war.

One other point missed: Japanese arms, ammunition, and the goods associated with supporting the military were produced not in huge centralized facilities, but in the Ted
home-based machine shops spread throughout Japan: almost 80% of their wartime production came not from large manufacturing sites but from decentralized sources.

Here is what the author refuses to say: Japan’s entire population were dedicated to armed, suicidal resistance of the invasion certain to come, in a nation whose martial culture is inculcated in male children from their sixth birthday, where decentralized manufacturing of war supplies constituted nearly 80% of military stores. There were few innocent civilians, and in the eyes of the Japanese warlords, they were all expendable.

How do you end that?

cBIS84 ,

Not worth it …

More like a long magazine article, and lost interest quickly to the point I never finished. I wish I could get my money back …

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More Books by Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers Outliers
2008
David and Goliath David and Goliath
2013
The Tipping Point The Tipping Point
2006
Blink Blink
2007
Talking to Strangers Talking to Strangers
2019
What the Dog Saw What the Dog Saw
2009

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