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Anyone who came home from the trenches of World War I came home permanently traumatized.
任何经历过第一次世界大战战壕的人都会受到永久的创伤。
The war was mindlessly brutal.
这场战争充满了无意识的残暴。
There were battles in the First World War where hundreds of thousands of people, there was a battle in the First World War where a million men died.
一战中有很多场战争导致成千上万人死亡，还有一场战斗导致一百万人死亡。
That experience could not be repeated.
这种经历决不能重演。
On the eve of the Second World War, there's a remarkable group of pilots who thought they could reinvent warfare and make war a more humane exercise, a kind of clean war.
在第二次世界大战前夕，有一群了不起的飞行员，他们认为自己可以重塑战争，使之成为一种更人性化的运动，一种干净的战争。
But that's not what war ever is.
但战争从来都不是这样的。
It never has that kind of fairytale ending.
它从来没有那种童话般的结局。
My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
我是马尔科姆-格拉德威尔。
I am a writer, host of the podcast "Revisionist History," and the author of the new book "The Bomber Mafia."
我是一名作家，是播客 "修正历史 "的主持人，也是新书 "轰炸机黑手党 "的作者。
The story of the Bomber Mafia begins with a group of renegade pilots in central Alabama in the 1930s.
轰炸机黑手党的故事始于20世纪30年代阿拉巴马州中部的一群叛逆的飞行员。
They have become convinced that new technology, this new class of bombers, can make it possible to conduct a war where only a handful of people were killed.
他们已经确信新技术，即新级别的轰炸机可以使人类有可能开展一场只有少数人死亡的战争。
This is something that no one else in the military thought was even a remotely good idea.
军方和其他人都不认为这是个好主意。
The term, "the Bomber Mafia," was not intended to be a compliment.
"轰炸机黑手党 "这个词，并不是一个褒义词。
They would always joke that if the people back in Washington knew what they were doing, they would all be fired.
他们总是开玩笑说，如果华盛顿的人知道他们在做什么，他们都会被解雇。
The radical notion at the heart of the Bomber Mafia's dream was that if they were able to drop bombs with precision, no other part of the modern military machine would be necessary.
轰炸机黑手党目标的核心是，如果他们能够精确地投掷炸弹，现代军事机器的其他部分就没有必要存在了。
You wouldn't need a Navy.
不需要海军。
You wouldn't need Marines.
不需要海军陆战队。
You wouldn't need infantry. You wouldn't need tanks.
不需要步兵。不需要坦克。
You wouldn't need Jeeps.
不需要吉普车。
You wouldn't need anything except a select group of bombers from 20,000 feet.
除了一组从20000英尺高空之外精选的轰炸机，我们不需要任何东西。
Their approach was based on the idea that there were a handful of targets that the enemy had, which if you destroyed them, the war would be over.
他们的目标是基于这样的想法：敌人有一些目标，如果你摧毁它们，战争就会结束。
They famously did an exercise where they said, what would it take to cripple New York City?
他们做了一个著名的演习，并问，要怎样才能使纽约市瘫痪？
And their answer was 14 bombs.
答案是14颗炸弹。
Take out the power plants, the aqueducts, the bridges. No water, no power, no access to the mainland.
摧毁发电厂、输水管道和桥梁。没有水，没有电，没有通往大陆的通道。
It's over.
一切都会结束。
They felt that idea could be used against any enemy.
他们觉得这个想法可以用来对付任何敌人。
And the idea that you would have to destroy entire cities in order to subdue your enemy was something they thought ought to be a thing of the past.
为了制服敌人就得摧毁整个城市，这种想法已经太落后了。
Haywood Hansell was the leader of the Bomber Mafia, and he was a Southern romantic.
海伍德-汉塞尔是轰炸机黑手党的领导人，他是一个南方浪漫主义者。
He was the latest in a long line of Southern military men.
他是南方军人中的新成员。
He would sing show tunes to his men as he returned home from bombing missions over Europe.
他在执行完欧洲上空的轰炸任务回家时，会给部下唱表演曲。
Haywood Hansell was one of the rising stars in the Air Corps during the Second World War.
海伍德-汉塞尔是第二次世界大战期间空军部队的新星之一。
Hansell managed to convince the military leadership that they should follow his dream.
汉塞尔成功地说服了军方领导，并说他们应该追随他的这个目标。
And so he goes to Europe, and they try to conduct a bombing campaign of Germany along Bomber Mafia lines.
于是他去了欧洲，他们试图按照轰炸机黑手党的路线对德国进行轰炸。
Let's be as strategic and surgical and sparing as possible in our use of air power.
我们在使用空中轰炸时要尽可能地具有战略性和针对性，并节约资源。
It doesn't work.
但最终还是以失败告终。
Then he convinces them to try that same strategy as the air war shifts to Japan in 1944.
1944年空战转移到日本时，他又说服他们在日本尝试同样的策略。
And it doesn't work.
结果依然行不通。
He tries and tries and tries, and he ultimately fails.
他试了又试，最后还是失败了。
And he's told in no uncertain terms, "It's over."
他被坦白告知，"一切都结束了"。
He's fired.
他被解雇了。
His nemesis, a hard-bitten, unsentimental, ruthless realist named Curtis LeMay is going to replace him.
他的克星，一个名叫柯蒂斯-勒梅的现实主义者将取代他，他具有坚忍不拔、毫不留情、无情的性格。
It is at that moment that the dream of the Bomber Mafia crumbles.
正是在那一刻，轰炸机黑手党的目标崩溃了。
Hansell thought that the goal of war was to achieve a military objective with the lowest number of lives lost possible.
汉塞尔认为，战争的目标是以尽可能少的生命损失实现军事目标。
LeMay felt that that was idealistic nonsense.
勒梅觉得那是理想主义的胡言乱语。
He thought that war should be fought as brutally and unrelentingly as possible.
他认为，战争应该尽可能地残酷和无情地进行下去。
He was in every way the antithesis of Haywood Hansell and the Bomber Mafia.
他在各个方面都和海伍德-汉塞尔和轰炸机黑手党唱反调。
And that's why the final chapter of the war against Japan is the bloodiest chapter of the Second World War.
而这就是为什么抗日战争的最后一章是第二次世界大战中最血腥的一章。
Most people still don't know about what we did to Japan that summer.
大多数人仍然不知道我们在那个夏天对日本做了什么。
