People's Air Force: Air Power and American Popular Culture

摘要

Central to the rise of American air power was America's cultural fascination withaviation. Just as many Americans ascribed near miraculous powers to airplanes and predicted salvation through air power. Interwar figures used popular culture to urge the public to trust air power for national defense, but isolationism and anti-militarism limited the success of these efforts. World War II brought unprecedented public support for air power and ended American isolationism. After the war, air power advocates continued the popular culture crusade. Using media that average Americans turned to for diversion and entertainment, air power advocates waged a campaign to convert the American public to their gospel of revolutionary air power. Capitalizing on public support, air power advocates used speeches, radio addresses, magazine articles, novels, and movies in the late forties to spread their notions that air power had revolutionized warfare as well as human affairs. Air power advocates later identified the Soviet Union as a grave threat against which only air power could prevail. Central to the air power advocates' vision was strategic nuclear bombing.