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Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History
The Airborne Mafia: The Paratroopers Who Shaped America's Cold War Army
The Airborne Mafia explores how a small group of World War II airborne officers took control of the US Army in after World War II. This powerful cadre cemented a unique airborne culture that had an unprecedented impact on the Cold War US Army and beyond.
Robert F. Williams reveals the trials and tribulations this group of officers faced in order to bring about their vision. He spotlights the relationship between organizational culture, operational behavior, and institutional change in the United States Army during the Cold War, showing that as airborne officers ascended to the highest ranks of the army they transmitted their culture throughout their service in four major ways―civil-military relations, preparation for potential atomic combat, helicopter airmobility, and strategic response forces.
Experiences of training and commanding airborne divisions in World War II led these men to hold sway in Army doctrine by the mid-1950s. Dominating institutional thought and imparting their values, beliefs, and norms throughout the service they enjoyed a special privilege within the group culture. Williams demonstrates this impact, privilege, and power by focusing on the paratrooper triumvirate of Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, and James Gavin and the lasting impression they made on how the US Army fought.
The Airborne Mafia illuminates the power subcultures can have in changing their parent cultures over time, particularly one as set in its ways and as large as the US Army. With a deft touch, deep research, and an unwavering eye for the human stories behind organizational change, Williams helps explain the existence and importance of the paratrooper mystique that exists within the military still today.
Robert F. Williams reveals the trials and tribulations this group of officers faced in order to bring about their vision. He spotlights the relationship between organizational culture, operational behavior, and institutional change in the United States Army during the Cold War, showing that as airborne officers ascended to the highest ranks of the army they transmitted their culture throughout their service in four major ways―civil-military relations, preparation for potential atomic combat, helicopter airmobility, and strategic response forces.
Experiences of training and commanding airborne divisions in World War II led these men to hold sway in Army doctrine by the mid-1950s. Dominating institutional thought and imparting their values, beliefs, and norms throughout the service they enjoyed a special privilege within the group culture. Williams demonstrates this impact, privilege, and power by focusing on the paratrooper triumvirate of Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, and James Gavin and the lasting impression they made on how the US Army fought.
The Airborne Mafia illuminates the power subcultures can have in changing their parent cultures over time, particularly one as set in its ways and as large as the US Army. With a deft touch, deep research, and an unwavering eye for the human stories behind organizational change, Williams helps explain the existence and importance of the paratrooper mystique that exists within the military still today.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2025
7 people are currently reading
54 people want to read
About the author
Robert F. Williams
2 books1 followerDr. Robert F. Williams is a research historian with Army University Press at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There he has begun a research study on the first year of the war in Ukraine and its tactical implications for the United States Army. A former airborne infantry non-commissioned officer, he has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2023 and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018. His work on has appeared in the Journal of Military History, Military Review, Parameters, War on the Rocks, the Modern War Institute, and Stars and Stripes. He is a historian of the United States Army and land warfare, with a particular interest in the organizational culture of the U.S. Army. He recently published his first book, The Airborne Mafia: The Paratroopers Who Shaped America’s Cold War Army.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 4, 2025
The Airborne Mafia is a study of the officers and leaders of the U.S. Army who received paratrooper training and their effects on the doctrine and development of the Army as a whole. This follows other books on different groups of military leadership who had some unifying aspect, hence the idea of organized crime, a semi-secret society with its own unique goals, traditions, and rituals, participating within the context of the larger society in which it operates.
It is cleanly written and sourced well, though some of that gets beyond my usual range for verification by dive. The core thesis is that the paratroop ethos, due to the tactical restrictions of the technology (i.e. if you jump from a plane, you end up where you end up), emphasized an omni-disciplinary attitude, interested in fast response with small grouped forces. And the idea is usually born out. This plays out even after sending in infantry by parachute becomes (moderately) technologically obsolete, but the emphasis of mobility via the air (rotorcraft in particular) becomes an increasingly larger part of general doctrine to the point of functional invisibility. The book closes with stories from the closure of Enduring Freedom/Freedom's Sentinel that show the contemporary relevance of the troops, the technology, and the theory.
What is absent is context. This may be a me-problem, or perhaps it is a me-fixation, but the concept of the 'mafia' within organizations, particularly in a government and quasi-government context, is worth study. And while I have seen several books about the different groups, they all tend to present the different factions in the same sort mold of the unorthodox insiders. Like reading early Christian texts, you often have to piece together what someone else was saying based on attacks upon them.
But the contextual problem exists on macro and micro levels. What is described as unique about the Airborne ethos seems not very unique, not if I remember my Thucydides, nor is there much in the way of conterfactuals outside of the general diminishing of the Army as a service branch. In what could have been an existential crisis in the sense of the atomic aspect of the Cold War challenging the use of the status quo of standing armies, the leadership found ways to argue for its continued utility. Linking what was done to the history of those leaders is persuasive, but reservedly so. And it has a sort of unpersuasive quality in terms of some of the wackadoodle sorts of things that these people proposed. Near the end of the book, the author expresses more criticism about the choices, but I feel like any look at some of the points of doctrine misses the forest when there are things like complaints over not invading Vietnam during the First Indochina war.
All this is not a fault of the book. Its topic is exactly what it says on the tin. But as I presume something of a generalist readership to my audience, this is less of a quirky revisionist history and more an extremely cool niche history, contextualizing other broader histories.
My thanks to the author, Robert F. Williams, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Cornell University Press, for making the ARC available to me.
It is cleanly written and sourced well, though some of that gets beyond my usual range for verification by dive. The core thesis is that the paratroop ethos, due to the tactical restrictions of the technology (i.e. if you jump from a plane, you end up where you end up), emphasized an omni-disciplinary attitude, interested in fast response with small grouped forces. And the idea is usually born out. This plays out even after sending in infantry by parachute becomes (moderately) technologically obsolete, but the emphasis of mobility via the air (rotorcraft in particular) becomes an increasingly larger part of general doctrine to the point of functional invisibility. The book closes with stories from the closure of Enduring Freedom/Freedom's Sentinel that show the contemporary relevance of the troops, the technology, and the theory.
What is absent is context. This may be a me-problem, or perhaps it is a me-fixation, but the concept of the 'mafia' within organizations, particularly in a government and quasi-government context, is worth study. And while I have seen several books about the different groups, they all tend to present the different factions in the same sort mold of the unorthodox insiders. Like reading early Christian texts, you often have to piece together what someone else was saying based on attacks upon them.
But the contextual problem exists on macro and micro levels. What is described as unique about the Airborne ethos seems not very unique, not if I remember my Thucydides, nor is there much in the way of conterfactuals outside of the general diminishing of the Army as a service branch. In what could have been an existential crisis in the sense of the atomic aspect of the Cold War challenging the use of the status quo of standing armies, the leadership found ways to argue for its continued utility. Linking what was done to the history of those leaders is persuasive, but reservedly so. And it has a sort of unpersuasive quality in terms of some of the wackadoodle sorts of things that these people proposed. Near the end of the book, the author expresses more criticism about the choices, but I feel like any look at some of the points of doctrine misses the forest when there are things like complaints over not invading Vietnam during the First Indochina war.
All this is not a fault of the book. Its topic is exactly what it says on the tin. But as I presume something of a generalist readership to my audience, this is less of a quirky revisionist history and more an extremely cool niche history, contextualizing other broader histories.
My thanks to the author, Robert F. Williams, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Cornell University Press, for making the ARC available to me.
March 3, 2025
While primarily a book for people who are already familiar with the U.S. military, and its performance from WWII to the presence, Airborne Mafia does not demand expertise in the subject. It does assume that its reader is very interested in the evolution of the military (and the Army in particular), as well as the culture of "airborne" in and outside the military. Considering the airborne — paratroopers, the soldiers who parachute out of planes (an august company of which for the sake of indulgence I ought to mention that I was once a part, in the 173rd Brigade; the author is more modest and omits this information) — is also the space that gave rise to special forces and later special operations, it ought to be of some interest to anyone with a passing interest in U.S. military history. This book concerns that culture, and how it spread throughout the Army's hierarchy, adapting to and reflecting German innovations in WWII, then to the new reality of an "atomic" battlefield, later to the counterinsurgency model, and then, finally, as a ready-reserve force for the wider military from the Cold War to today. It is an informative book, and comprehensive; it stays close to its relatively narrow subject though it bulges in every chapter, as one can see opportunities the author chose not to take straining to expand into new paragraphs or entire sections. For those folks who want to trace the evolution of this elite mentality, and understand it better, "Airborne Mafia" is a great place to start; it is even comprehensive enough to be a good enough place to stop.
January 2, 2026
Fantastic read with loads of info and really well written. Not overly academic and easily digestible.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews