This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batch, with Evan Thomas. His new book is Road to Surrender,

three men in the countdown to the end of World War II. The U.S. Army Air Force, it wasn't a separate

service yet. A Bob Lovett, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War working for Mr. Simpson,

imagines the future in which the Air Force will be its own service.

But right now, it is subordinate to George Marshall, the commander of the U.S. Army.

But we need to meet several personalities because they're going to get involved in this question of the atomic bomb and mass murder and

ending the war and precision bombing all these euphemisms that are important to understand.

Evan first will meet the man Tuy Spots, who is deputy to Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army

Air Force. Initially, Spots has, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Force, initially Spots has given the job

of bombing Germany, and then he's given the job of bombing Japan. Let's start with Germany,

because Spots is troubled by bombing civilians. The British called it de-housing.

And yet the war in Germany, as I understand it, was all about bombing the cities and then using the

euphemism of precision bombing.

What was Spatz's opinion right before Dresden?

Did he have one?

Spots was a member of the so-called bomber mafia that believed that bombing could actually

spare the world from intense trench warfare.

A few bombs here strategically placed could end the war quickly.

That didn't work.

Although we had a Norden bombsite,

you know, we had American technology, we had a B-17, good plane. And the skies over Germany,

it's cloudy, the Luftwaffe is shooting at you, there's flack, we dropped our bombs in the

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