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Finally, a definitive biography of General Curtis LeMay

"... a fine, candid book ..." --R. James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

"... an excellent biography." --James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense

"Warren Kozak has captured brilliantly the essence of one of America’s greatest generals and combat commanders." --Lt. General Thomas McInerney, retired, former assistant vice chief of staff of the United States Air Force

About the Book

"The finest military strategist this nation has ever produced." – Robert S. McNamara

"The smartest man I ever met." -- Judge Ralph Nutter

"My least favorite human being." -- Ted Sorensen

To see a map of European Theater of War, click here.

To see a map of Pacific Theater of War, click here.

He never fit the image of the American flyboy -- dashing, handsome, suave. He was, instead, dark, brooding and forbidding. He rarely smiled, he spoke even less and when he did, his few words seemed to come out in a snarl. Women who were seated next to him said he could sit through an entire dinner and not utter a single syllable. He was surly, tactless and with a lifeless, moist cigar constantly locked between his teeth he became a walking stereotype of the brutal, inhuman militarist. Most people found him frightening.

Warren Kozak with Jamie LeMay Lodge in California, May 2008.

Curtis Emerson LeMay was the youngest general in modern American history and its longest serving. He would rise to the very top of a profession that required social grace, old boy connections and lineage, yet he possessed none of these. There is absolutely nothing in his background that should have produced it, but he emerged out of complete obscurity to become perhaps the most innovative military commander in the history of the United States, and to this day, the most controversial.

There was nothing subtle about LeMay - he killed more civilians than any other man in U.S. history -- over 350,000 men, women and children. No one else even comes close -- not Grant or Sherman and not Patton. But in doing so, LeMay saved millions of lives on both sides by helping to end the war without an invasion of the Japanese homeland. He was also the only general in World War II who led his men into battle, insisting on flying the lead bomber on the most dangerous missions.

LeMay was a mass of inconsistencies ... while he was cold and surly and seemingly tough as nails, he was also plagued by self-doubt. He sent men to their deaths but worried that he was too soft and cared about them too much to become a successful commander. He tried, against all odds, to make pin-point bombing work in the early stages of strategic bombing in order to kill fewer civilians, but he went on to slaughter hundreds of thousands by burning entire cities to the ground with napalm. At the end of his career, he destroyed any semblance of his reputation by running with George Wallace in one of the most racially charged campaigns of modern times, yet there is nothing in his actions or deeds that shows any prejudice whatsoever. He helped integrate the Air Force in the late 1940s ahead of the Army and Navy, he stamped out bigotry whenever he encountered it and he was personally disgusted by Wallace’s comments.

Curtis LeMay believed that a country should think long and hard before it makes the fateful decision to go to war. But once that decision is made (and in the case of the U.S. by Congress), then a nation should use every weapon in its arsenal to win the conflict as quickly as possible. If it is not willing to do that, then it shouldn’t go to war in the first place. LeMay did not believe in proportional response. He believed in disproportional response. Long before the use of overwhelming force was the Schwarzkopf or Powell doctrine, it was the LeMay doctrine.

LeMay’s impact went far beyond World War II. He was directly involved in almost every major event of the mid-20th Century. He was the head of the Air Force in Europe at the start of the Berlin Airlift. He created the Strategic Air Command (SAC) -- the potent nuclear arm of the United States during the Cold War. And he was on the Joint Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the start of the Viet Nam War

Warren Kozak has put together the first extensive biography of LeMay in almost a quarter of a century. Through personal interviews with LeMay’s family and the last surviving men who served under him along with declassified papers, Kozak has brilliantly woven together a remarkable portrait of this highly complex and fascinating individual -- one of the most controversial figures in our nation’s history whose life raises important and relevant ethical issues that we still face today.