Who was General Curtis LeMay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K-VHqH-p-0
Who was General Curtis LeMay? Part One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kbe9X5Bg4w
Who was General Curtis LeMay? Part Two

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Total war fair

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In this informative new episode of "America's Untold Stories" with Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert, we delve into the intriguing life of General Curtis LeMay, a highly decorated military leader, leading up to the pivotal Cuban Missile Crisis.


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Twelve O'Clock High is a 1949 American war film directed by Henry King and based on the novel of the same name by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay, Jr. It stars Gregory Peck as Brig. General Frank Savage. Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill, Millard Mitchell, and Dean Jagger also appear in supporting roles.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two: Dean Jagger for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Thomas T. Moulton for Best Sound Recording. In 1998, Twelve O'Clock High was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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Madman Theory
The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with United States President Richard Nixon's foreign policy. Nixon and his administration tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think he was irrational and volatile. According to the theory, those leaders would then avoid provoking the United States, fearing an unpredictable American response.

Some international relations scholars have been skeptical of madman theory as a strategy for success in bargaining. One study found that madman theory is frequently counterproductive, but that it can be an asset under certain conditions. Another study found that there are both bargaining advantages and disadvantages to perceived madness.

In 1517, Niccol; Machiavelli had argued that sometimes it is "a very wise thing to simulate madness" (Discourses on Livy, book 3, chapter 2). However, in Nixon's Vietnam War, Kimball argues that Nixon arrived at the strategy independently, as a result of practical experience and observation of Dwight D. Eisenhower's handling of the Korean War.

In his 1962 book, Thinking About the Unthinkable, futurist Herman Kahn argued that to "look a little crazy" might be an effective way to induce an adversary to stand down.[7]

Richard Nixon

Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, wrote that Nixon had confided to him:

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.[8]

In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that "the madman was loose" when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population), and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.[9]

The administration employed the "madman strategy" to force the North Vietnamese government to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.[10] In July 1969 (according to a CIA report declassified in February 2018), President Nixon may have suggested to South Vietnamese president Thieu that the two paths he was considering were either a nuclear weapons option or setting up a coalition government.[11]

Several American diplomats, staff members, friends, and family, knew Nixon indulged in alcohol and had trouble battling insomnia, for which he was prescribed sleeping pills. According to Ray Price, he sometimes took them together. This affected his acuity and understanding of his surroundings on several occasions; from John Ehrlichman calling him "looped", to Manolo Sanchez, a Republican operative and special counsel to the President, thinking Nixon had a stroke or heart attack while on the phone with him, to not being able to pick up a telephone call from the British prime minister during the Mideast crisis. Both Nixon's daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower and friend Billy Graham acknowledged this fact, after his presidency. Nixon also took dilantin, recommended by Jack Dreyfus. That medicine is usually prescribed for anti-seizure attacks, but in Nixon's case it was to battle depression.[12] Also, Henry Kissinger portrayed the 1970 incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon's supposed instability.[13]

Donald Trump
See also: Foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration

Former US president Donald Trump is considered a modern example of the madman strategy.
Some have characterized former US President Donald Trump's behavior towards allies and hostile states as an example of madman theory. For instance, during the KORUS FTA renegotiations Trump told US trade negotiators to warn South Korean diplomats that "if they don't give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal", which Jonathan Swan of Axios characterized as a "madman" approach to international relations.

Jonathan Stevenson argued in The New York Times that Trump's strategy could have been less effective than Nixon's because Nixon tried to give the impression that "he'd been pushed too far, implying that he would return to his senses if the Soviets and North Vietnamese gave in", whereas the North Korean government was unlikely to believe that "Trump would do the same" because his threats were "standard operating procedure", not a temporary emotional reaction.[7] International relations scholar Roseanne W. McManus argued that Trump stating that he was relying on madman theory made the approach counterproductive, as he was undermining the belief that his "madness" was genuine.

Vladimir Putin

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, several journalists speculated that Russian president Vladimir Putin was using the madman strategy.
See also: Nuclear threats during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Another example of madman theory has also been attributed to Russian president Vladimir Putin, especially in the lead up and during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2015, Martin Hellman stated that "nuclear weapons are the card that Putin has up his sleeve, and he's using it to get the world to realise that Russia is a superpower, not just a regional power." This use of the madman theory, Hellman argued, was something which the West had not "properly caught on to."

In 2022, days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gideon Rachman argued in the Financial Times that Putin's "penchant for publishing long, nationalist essays" regarding Ukrainian and Russian history, his plans of nuclear weapons exercises as well as his image of "growing increasingly out of touch and paranoid" and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, could have been the use of madman strategy. Rachman stated that Putin "is ruthless and amoral. But he is also shrewd and calculating. He takes risks, but he is not crazy", comparing Putin's recent actions to his more "rational" actions of the previous 20 years. However, Rachman also noted that "the line between acting like a madman and being a madman is disconcertingly thin."[17]

In the first days of the invasion, Paul Taylor of Politico also speculated that Putin was using the madman strategy, after his decision to place Russian deterrence nuclear forces on "special alert". Taylor stated that Putin was exhibiting "pathological behavior" by "swinging wildly from seeming openness to negotiations to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in four fronts, while threatening the world with mass destruction." Taylor also referred to Putin's television address prior to the invasion, stating that "his branding Ukraine's elected leaders as drug-addicted neo-Nazis raised doubts even among supportive Russians about his mental state and health."[18]

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 political satire black comedy film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film also stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern.

The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52 (following orders from the general) from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.

The film is often considered one of the best comedies ever made and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it twenty-sixth in its list of the best American movies (in the 2007 edition, the film ranked thirty-ninth), and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White), and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

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Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) was an American Air Force general who implemented an effective but controversial strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater of World War II. He later served as Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, from 1961 to 1965.

LeMay joined the United States Army Air Corps, the precursor to the United States Air Force, in 1929 while studying civil engineering at Ohio State University. He had risen to the rank of major by the time of Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the United States's subsequent entry into World War II. He commanded the 305th Operations Group from October 1942 until September 1943, and the 3rd Air Division in the European theatre of World War II until August 1944, when he was transferred to the China Burma India Theater. He was then placed in command of strategic bombing operations against Japan, planning and executing a massive fire bombing campaign against Japanese cities and Operation Starvation, a crippling minelaying campaign in Japan's internal waterways.

After the war, he was assigned to command USAF Europe and coordinated the Berlin Airlift. He served as commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) from 1948 to 1957, where he presided over the transition to an all-jet aircraft force that had a strong emphasis on the delivery of nuclear weapons in the event of war. As Chief of Staff of the Air Force, he called for the bombing of Cuban missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis and sought a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1965, LeMay agreed to serve as pro-segregation Alabama Governor George Wallace's running mate on the far-right American Independent Party ticket in the 1968 United States presidential election. The ticket won 46 electoral votes, 5 states, and 13.5% of the popular vote, a strong tally for a third party campaign, but the Wallace campaign came to see LeMay as a liability. After the election, LeMay retired to his home in Newport Beach, California, and died in 1990 at age 83.

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Russia is all rattle and no saber ... "
Curtis LeMay