It pins responsibility for the destruction of 64 cities on one man, thereby absolving the AAF and, by extension, the American government. The Bomber Mafia is not so much a “case study in how dreams go awry,” as Gladwell claims, as a case study in how narratives of this incendiary campaign sidestep unsettling moral questions about the deliberate targeting of civilians. Gladwell, in this sense, stands to leave an indelible imprint on American public memory - weak to begin with - of the incendiary bombing campaign and its legacies. And judging by some high-profile early reviews, readers appear more than willing to uncritically accept his account. A steady string of books about these incendiary raids have appeared in print, yet this is the first in the 76 years since the end of World War II to receive significant attention from major media. Owing to his celebrity stature, Gladwell is one of the few writers in the United States able to put the firebombings of urban Japan on the map of public consciousness. The result is an account that fundamentally misrepresents the process through which the Army Air Forces (AAF) and the United States government rationalized the destruction of entire cities and their civilian inhabitants. Gladwell mistakes practicality for dogma, projecting onto his subjects a high-minded morality that was not really there. To frame the book in this simplistic binary is to misconstrue the doctrines of both precision and area bombing. Hansell was not the moral opposite of LeMay. Wittingly or not, he omits or downplays evidence that undermines the very premise of the book. Setting aside the numerous errors of fact and interpretation, Gladwell consistently cherry-picks from the historical record. As a work of history, it borders on reckless. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is engaging. The only issue is that Gladwell’s account doesn’t withstand serious scrutiny. Their meeting has all the hallmarks of a pivotal scene in a Hollywood film. Though the book takes many detours, all roads lead back to Hansell, LeMay, and their competing visions of air power - two men, face-to-face, presiding over a turning point of the Pacific War. What led up to it and what happened next - because that change of command reverberates to this day.” The Bomber Mafia, writes Gladwell, “is the story of that moment. A ruthless pragmatist and brilliant tactician, LeMay has arrived to achieve what Hansell could not: bring the war in the Pacific to an end, even if it means destroying by fire every Japanese city, large and small. Stepping off the plane moments later is Curtis LeMay, his replacement. The Bomber Mafia turns on a dramatic day in January 1945, when two protagonists “ off in the jungles of Guam.” Waiting on the tarmac as a B-29 bomber approaches for landing is Haywood Hansell, a career soldier unshakable in his faith in precision bombing, a man unwilling to bend his morals to the pressures of war. It takes some of the most oft-repeated fallacies about the shift to area bombing and wraps them in a shiny new package. In the questions it asks, the sources it uses, and the voices it amplifies, The Bomber Mafia offers an account virtually indistinguishable from the consensus position on the firebombings of urban Japan. It’s indeed hard to imagine a more conventional account of the air war against Japan. Ostensibly a meditation on the morality of bombing civilians during World War II, The Bomber Mafia is anything but revisionist. THERE’S A RICH IRONY that Malcolm Gladwell’s new book is spun off from episodes of his Revisionist History podcast.
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