![]() ![]() ![]() “They weren’t just advancing a technological argument. “The whole argument of the Bomber Mafia, their whole reason for being, was that they didn’t want to cross that line,” Gladwell writes. The minds at the Air Corps Tactical School thought there might be a different way. As he would say later, “They were all active soldiers, to my mind.” What if, instead of battering the enemy into submission, you could take out key infrastructure that would incapacitate your opponent while avoiding mass death? For Harris, civilians were viable targets if for no other reason than some of them worked in the factories that made bombs and submarines. England’s answer to this was Arthur “Bomber” Harris, whom Gladwell describes as, simply, a “psychopath.” Harris was one of the chief architects of the British tactic of “area bombing” or “morale bombing”: Reduce cities to rubble and incinerate the civilians until they submit. The London Blitz was designed to overwhelm the British and demoralize them into submission. In the opening years of World War II, aerial bombing meant total destruction. ![]()
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