In service to Gladwell’s obsessions
In ‘The Bomber Mafia’, Malcolm Gladwell takes a look at the technological innovation and ideological contestation at the heart of one of the most significant acts of war in modern times.
“This is a story I’ve been wanting to tell … the kind of story I’ve been wanting to tell for a very long time,” author and New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell tells Maverick Life during a Zoom call to discuss his latest book, The Bomber Mafia, published in April 2021.
Unlike his other bestselling titles, such as The Tipping Point and Outliers, The Bomber Mafia is not a deep dive into popular social psychology, nor does it offer up the kinds of questions and answers that readers may find applicable in understanding the events in their own lives or communities. In fact, even the way it came about is unusual for Gladwell, starting off as material from his podcast, Revisionist History, then later expanded into an audio book, and finally committed to print as a book.
The book follows the actions of the “Bomber Mafia”, the unofficial name given to a small group of American military officers who advocated for the role of precision-bomber aircraft in war. They believed in the potential of precision bombing as a more “humane” way to win wars, rather than indiscriminately bombing areas, resulting in large-scale civilian deaths.
Specifically, Gladwell narrates the events leading up to the March 1945 napalm firebombing of 67 Japanese cities by the US, killing a reported 100,000 Japanese people in a matter of six hours.
In his author’s note, he writes: “I realise, when I look at the things I’ve written about or explored over the years, that I’m drawn again and again to obsessives. I like them.
“I like the idea that someone could push away all the concerns and details that make up everyday life and just zero in on one thing – the thing that fits the contours of his or her imagination. Obsessives lead us astray sometimes. Can’t see the bigger picture. Serve not just the world’s but also their own narrow interests. But I don’t think we get progress or innovation or joy or beauty without obsessives.”
Stories of war and military aviation are something of an obsession for Gladwell, who says he has “rows and rows of books” on bombing and on airplanes.
In his telling of this part of World War 2 history, two characters take on central roles.
There’s Haywood S Hansell Jr, who was made commander of the XXI Bomber Command in 1944. Being a member of the Bomber Mafia and a fierce proponent of precision attacks, he was tasked with using these precision tactics to destroy Japan’s military capabilities, making way for a land invasion. But due to difficulties outlined in the book, including climate conditions and technological drawbacks, the attacks were unsuccessful.
Hansell was replaced by Curtis LeMay, the book’s other central character, in January 1945. Convinced that Hansell and Co’s high-altitude precision bombing was ineffective, LeMay would go on to command the low-altitude area bombing that would kill 100,000 Japanese people.
The men’s different approaches, and Gladwell’s take on them, informs much of the book’s tension – be it between the characters, the old and the new, or the positive potential of technological innovation versus its potential to be used for destructive ends.
Indeed, the question, of the ends to which technological innovation could lead us, is one that Gladwell brings up early on in the book.
He writes: “Some new idea or innovation comes along, and it is obvious to all that it will upend our world… There’s an expectation that because of this new invention, things will get better, more efficient, safer, richer, faster. Which they do, in some respects. But then things also, invariably, go sideways.
“At one moment, social media is being hailed as something that will allow ordinary citizens to upend tyranny. And then in the next moment, social media is feared as the platform that will allow citizens to tyrannize one another… How is it that, sometimes, for any number of unexpected and random reasons, technology slips away from its intended path?”
It is clear in the book, however, that he considers the ideas developed by Hansell and the Bomber Mafia as key innovations that have led the world to warring with far fewer casualties than before.
“If we’d fought the war in Iraq in the way we fought in the Second World War, there would literally be no buildings left standing, civilian casualties would have been 10 times what they were; they were pretty terrible, but they would have been far worse if we were using the techniques of the Second World War.
“I think what Hansell was doing was saying that military leaders have a responsibility to redirect their energies to find more humane ways of fighting.”
That is not to say that the book strictly portrays LeMay as a bloodthirsty villain. Gladwell seems to argue that the swift firebombing campaign that killed tens of thousands of civilians led to a quicker end to the war. And, in the book’s closing sentence, he concludes: “Curtis LeMay won the battle. Haywood Hansell won the war.”
Gladwell elaborates that the Bomber Mafia’s idea was that the future of warfare lay with precision. It was a way to solve one of the war’s central problems, which was that to defeat your enemy, you had to kill hundreds of thousands of your enemies, including innocent civilians, and you had to destroy entire cities or level entire civilisations. “That is an admirable legacy… we can thank Hansell and the rest of the Bomber Mafia for urging us to go down that road.”
Gladwell maintains some reservations about the repercussions of the innovations that made precision warfare possible. He wonders if technology has not made it easier for governments to go to war, knowing that they need not worry about the “bad PR” that comes with large-scale civilian deaths.
“Technological advances do not resolve the broader strategic problems associated with waging war. They don’t make our leaders smarter. They don’t make the decisions we make wiser. They don’t make the choices we face easier. In fact, in some ways, they complicate matters, because the political barriers to go into war now are very low.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you could be waging war using drones and precision weapons on a continuous basis. You could argue that during the Obama administration the war never stopped,” he observes.
And if there is a cautionary note to be found in this exploration of Gladwell’s obsession with 20th-century wars and their technology, it is, as he says, that the “introduction of technology is never as clean and predictable as we would hope”.
Contemplating the future of war, and which of the technology that is being developed might shape it, he points to gene-editing technology, such as CRISPR.
Says Gladwell: “The possibility for biological warfare in the future will be enabled on the back of CRISPR gene-editing techniques, which have enormous potential for curing diseases, but also have potential for creating viruses that can destroy a huge swathe of humanity.”
Technological innovators, he says, assume that because they can clearly see the consequences of a technology, the rest of the world will be as eager and as rational as they are. “And that’s just not true.”