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Ladataan... The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War (2021)Tekijä: Malcolm Gladwell
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Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. NF This was my one and only book by Malcolm Gladwell and I am pretty disappointed. I have read quite a bit on WWII and military history. While I appreciate the snippets of audio from the era in question, there are factual inaccuracies in the book. I'm not familiar with Gladwell's work but this being in the history genre, I was hoping this would be a book on the bombing campaign in the Japanese Theater of WWII free of the author's opinions. I was wrong. Gladwell traces the history of precision bombing, the idea and the practice, from the initial introduction of airplanes into the military up to the appalling firebomb attack on Tokyo of March 1945. Two parallel theories, aspirations really coexist, and although Gladwell seeks to distinguish (and dramatise) them and their advocates (“believers“), it’s evident that strategies in practice could draw from both ideas: was bombing to be a way of limiting war by using technology so surgically and precisely as to disable the enemy with minimal “extra” casualties, or, was its purpose, the opposite in some ways, widening the war by inflicting such devastating damage as to, hopefully, bring the war to a swift end, and so in *that* sense, limit the war? The history, the personalities, and the tone of affable discovery are all nicely delivered, as is Gladwell’s trademark. And yet this breezily short book still left lots of questions hanging for this reader - of the historical events, but also of ethics. How necessary was the extended firebombing campaign acrossJapan that followed the Tokyo raid, were all those repeat attacks needed to achieve the surrender that ended the war? And has the recent UN treaty banning such incendiary weapons (thrown in here as a footnote on the final page) now resolved the questions of legitimacy? ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
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"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 had a different view. This 'Bomber Mafia' asked: What if precision bombing could, just by taking out critical choke points -- industrial or transportation hubs -- cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In his podcast, Revisionist History, Gladwell re-examines moments from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time. In The Bomber Mafia, he steps back from the bombing of Tokyo, the deadliest night of the war, and asks, "Was it worth it?" The attack 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 more by averting a planned US invasion. Things might have gone differently had LeMay's predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. As a key member of the Bomber Mafia, Haywood's theories of precision bombing had been foiled by bad weather, enemy jet fighters, and human error. 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." -- Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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Google Books — Ladataan... LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)940.54History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- Military History Of World War IIKongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo:
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