Much has been written about World War II in the seven and a half decades since it ended in 1945. But as writer Malcolm Gladwell shows with his new book "The Bomber Mafia," some incredible stories and perspectives have been largely forgotten.

A group of pilots, led by Brigadier General Haywood Hansell, earned the derogatory nickname Bomber Mafia because of a not-widely-shared dream that they could use a few strategic bombings to lower the death toll and have a "clean" war.

"But that's not what war ever is," says Gladwell. "It never has that kind of fairy tale ending." A few failed attempts led to a changing of the guard, the invention of napalm, and a summer of attacks on Japanese cities that Gladwell says was at "a scale of destruction almost unmatched in human history."

Malcolm Gladwell is bestselling author and host of the Revisionist History podcast. His latest book, “The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War” tells the story of a group of pilots with an idea that, had it succeeded, would have reinvented warfare as we know it.