[jordanb]

Like most Malcom Gladwell works this is confused and sloppy.

The "bomber mafia" (they didn't call themselves this) were prewar strategists who thought you could destroy an enemy's ability to fight by hitting his strategic and tactical assets with bombers.

Basically they thought that bombers would be to the next war what artillery was in WWI.

What ended up happening is level bombing wasn't very precise, it was often hard to identify the correct targets, and modern mechanized war machines were more resilient than expected so bombers ended up not being as decisive as expected.

"Area bombing" or "carpet bombing" and the strategy to "dehouse and demoralize the population" were tactics developed during the war when the earlier tactics weren't working.

[jleyank]

They also thought that citizen's morale would break when a few bombs landed. WW II proved that it's more resilient, or perhaps resignation is stronger than giving up?

[seabass-labrax]

Maybe the Americans were still remembering the first World War, in which the Germans already had low morale by the time the USA joined the conflict. The USA joined in the thick of WWII when the Germans/Axis were doing considerably better. A prevailing (but ahistorical) view among Germans after WWI was that they had surrendered prematurely in 1918, so that might have also led to a cultural disdain towards surrender.