話：マルコム・グラッドウェル
『逆転! 強敵や逆境に勝てる秘密
』
「爆撃が怖くなくなる」理由
第二次世界大戦の気配が濃厚になってきたころ、イギリス政府には大きな懸念があった。
In the years leading up to the Second World War, the British government was worried.
戦争になったら、ドイツ空軍がロンドンに猛攻を仕掛けるだろう。それを止めるすべはない。
If, in the event of war, the German Air Force launched a major air offensive against London, the British military command believed that there was nothing they could do to stop it.
軍事戦略家の
バジル・リデル＝ハートは、ドイツ軍による空襲が始まれば、最初の一週間でロンドン市民の死傷者は25万人にのぼると推測した。
Basil Liddell Hart, one of the foremost military theorists of the day, estimated that in the first week of any German attack, London could see a quarter of a million civilian deaths and injuries.
ウィンストン・チャーチルは、
「ロンドンは敵の格好の標的であり、猛獣が舌舐めずりをする丸々と肥えた立派な牛（a kind of tremendous, fat, valuable cow）だ」
と表現し、30〜400万人が地方に疎開すると計算した。
Churchill described London as
"the greatest target in the world, a kind of tremendous, fat, valuable cow, tied up to attract the beast of prey."
He predicted that the city would be so helpless in the face of attack that between three and for million Londoners would flee to the countryside.
開戦前夜の1937年、イギリス軍司令部が不吉な報告書を発表する。
In 1937, on the eve of the war, the British military command issued a report with the direst prediction of all:
ドイツ軍の空襲が継続的に行われると、死者は60万人、負傷者は120万人になるというものだ。
a sustained German bombing attack would leave six hundred thousand dead and 1.2 million wounded and create mass panic in the streets.
ロンドン市民は恐怖のあまり職場を放棄して、工業生産が立ちいかなくなるだろう。
People would refuse to go to work. Industrial production would grind to a halt.
政府はロンドンの地下に防空壕網を張りめぐらせることを検討したが、すぐにあきらめた。防空壕に入った市民が、二度と出てこなくなると思ったからだ。
The army would be useless against the Germans because it would be preoccupied with keeping order among the millions of panicked civilians. The country's planners briefly considered building a massive network of underground bomb shelters across London, but they abandoned the plan out of a fear that if they did, the people who took refuge there would never come out.
空襲の恐怖で心理面に打撃を受ける人が続出することが予想され、郊外に精神科病院がいくつか新設された。
They set up several psychiatric hospitals just outside the city limits to handle what they expected would be a flood of psychological casualties. "There is every chance," the report stated, "that this could cost us the war."
1940年秋、恐れていたことがいよいよ現実になった。
In the fall of 1940, the long-anticipated attack began.
ドイツ空軍の爆撃機がロンドン上空に来襲し、高性能爆弾と焼夷弾を投下したのだ。なかでも最初の空襲は57日間続いた。
Over a period of eight months -beginning with fifty-seven consecutive nights of devastating bombardment- German bombers thundered across the skies above London, dropping tens of thousands of high-explosive bombs and more than a million buildings were damaged or destroyed.
死者は4万人、負傷者は4万6000人。損壊した建物は100万棟になり、とりわけイースト・エンドは壊滅的な被害を受けた。
In the city's East End, entire neighborhoods were laid waste.
すべてはイギリス政府の予想どおりだった。たったひとつ、ロンドン市民の反応を除いては。
It was everything the British government officials had feared -except that every one of their predictions about how Londoners would react turned out to be wrong.
人びとはパニックに陥らなかった。
The panic never came.
郊外に建てられた精神科病院は閑古鳥が鳴いていたので、軍事施設に転用された。
The psychiatric hospitals built on the outskirts of London were switched over to military use because no one showed up.
女性と子どもは多くが疎開したが、市内に残らざるをえない人たちはそのまま残った。
Many women and children were evacuated to the countryside as the bombing started. But people who needed to stay in the city by and large stayed.
政府が驚いたのは、市民が空襲に勇敢に立ちむかう姿もさることながら、彼らが見せる無頓着に近い不思議な態度だった。
As the Blitz continued, as the German assaults grew heavier and heavier, the British authorities began to observe -to their astonishment- not just courage in the face of the bombing but something closer to indifference.
イギリスのある精神科医は終戦後すぐの時期にこう書いている。
One English psychiatrist wrote just after the war ended:
1940年10月、数度にわたる空襲を受けた直後のサウスイーストを訪れる機会があった。
In October 1940 I had occasion to drive through South-East London just after a series of attacks on that district.
…
100メートルごとに、爆弾でできた大きな穴や、住宅や商店の廃墟が現れる。空襲警報が鳴りだし、成りゆきを見守った。
Every hundred yards or so, it seemed, there was a bomb crater or wreckage of what had once been a house or shop. The siren blew its warning and I looked to see what would happen.
子どもの手を引いて歩いていた修道女が先を急ぐ。だが彼女と私のほかは、誰も警報に気づいていないかのようだった。
A nun seized the hand of a child she was escorting and hurried on. She and I seemed to be the only ones who had heard the warning.
少年たちは通りで遊び、買い物客は値段交渉に余念がない。警官はいかめしい面もちで交通整理を続け、自転車は死の恐怖も交通ルールもおかまいなく疾走していく。
Small boys continued to play all over the pavements, shoppers went on haggling, a policeman directed traffic in majestic boredom and the bicyclists defied death and the traffic laws.
私の見るかぎり、空を見上げる者は皆無だった。
No one, so far as I could see, even looked into the sky.
そんなバカなと思うだろう。
I think you'll agree this is hard to believe.
戦時下である。
The Blitz was war.
爆弾が炸裂して、四方八方に飛びちる破片が直撃したら即死だ。焼夷弾が毎夜あちこちを燃えあがらせ、100万人が住む家を失っていた。
The exploding bombs sent deadly shrapnel flying in every direction. The incendiaries left a different neighborhood in flames every night. More than a million people lost their homes.
間に合わせの防空壕となった地下鉄駅には毎夜大勢の人が詰めかけ、外では爆撃機の轟音や爆発音、高射砲の発射音が響き、救急車や消防車のサイレンがひっきりなしに聞こえてきた。
Thousands crammed into makeshift shelters in subway stations every night. Outside, between the thunder of planes overhead, the thud of explosions, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns, and the endless wails of ambulances, fire engines, and warning sirens, the noise was unrelenting.
1940年9月12日の夜に実施されたある調査では、ロンドン市民の3分の1が前夜は一睡もできず、もう3分の1が眠れたのは4時間未満だったと答えた。
In one survey of Londoners, on the night of September 12, 1940, a third said that they had gotten no sleep the night before, and another third said they got fewer than four hours.
これがもしニューヨークだったら？ 自分の働くオフィスビルが瓦礫と化す生活が2ヶ月半ずっと続く生活に耐えられるだろうか？
Can you imagine how New Yorkers would have reacted if one of their office towers had been reduced to rubble not just once but every night for two and a half months?
ロンドン市民のこの冷静な態度は、少々のことでは動じない「ジョン・ブル魂」の発露と言うこともできる。
The typical explanation for the reaction of Londoners is the British "stiff upper lip" -the stoicism said to be inherent in the English character. (Not suprisingly, this is the explanation most favored by the British themselves.)
しかし他の国でも、同じように激しい空襲下で住民は平然としていることがわかってきた。つまり空襲は、当初想定されていたような打撃を与えていないということだ。
But one of the things that soon became clear was that it wasn't just the British who behaved this way. Civilians from other countries also turned out to be unexpectedly resilient in the face of bombing. Bombing, it became clear, didn't have the effect that everyone had thought it would have.
この謎を解明したのが、カナダの精神科医
J.T.マカーディとその著書『モラールの構造（
The Structure of Morale
）』だった。
It wasn't until the end of the war that the puzzle was solved by the Canadian psychiatrist J. T. MacCurdy, in a book called The Structure of Morale.
マカーディによると、爆弾を落とされた人は3つのグループに分かれるという。
MacCurdy argued that when a bomb falls, it divides the affected population into three groups.
ひとつは「死ぬ人」。
The first group is the people willed.
空襲体験で最悪の被害をこうむるグループだ。当たり前だが。
They are the ones for whom the experience of the bombing is -obviously- the most devastating.
このグループに関して、マカーディはこう書いている。
But as MacCurdy pointed out (perhaps a bit callously),
「共同体のモラールは生存者の反応に左右される。ゆえに死者は関与しない。死体は走りまわってパニックを拡散しないのである」
"the morale of the community depends on the reaction of the survivors, so from that point of view, the killed do not matter. Put this way the fact is obvious, corpses do not run about spreading panic."
次が「ニアミス・グループ」である。
The next group he called the near misses:
爆風を受け、目の前で建物が破壊され、死体の山に恐れおののき、自らも負傷しながらも生命は失わなかったグループである。彼らは強烈な印象を受けている。
They feel the blast, they see the destruction, are horrified by the carnage, perhaps they are wounded, but they survive deeply impressed.
ここでの「印象」は空襲にまつわる恐怖反応を補強するものであり、その結果「ショック」を引き起こすこともある。この「ショック」も意味の広い言葉で、茫然自失、感覚麻痺、神経過敏、それに目にした恐怖が頭から離れないといったことがすべて含まれる。
"Impression" means, here, a powerful reinforcement of the fear reaction in association with bombing. It may result in "shock," a loose term that covers anything from a dazed state or actual stupor to jumpiness and preoccupation with the horrors that have been witnessed.
第3は「リモートミス・グループ」。
Third, he said, are the remote misses.
サイレンは聞こえるし、敵の爆撃機が上空を飛ぶのを見たし、爆発音も耳に飛び込んでくる。
These are the people who listen to the sirens, watch the enemy bombers overhead, and hear the thunder of the exploding bombs.
でも爆弾が落ちるのは通りをずっと行った先か、隣のブロックだ。
But the bomb hits down the street or the next block over.
これを2度、3度と繰りかえすうちに、彼らが空襲体験で抱く感情はニアミス・グループとは正反対になる。
And for them, the consequences of a bombing attack are exactly the opposite of the near-miss group.
それは「どこか不死身感の漂う興奮」だとマカーディは指摘する。
They survived, and the second or third time that happens, the emotion associated with the attack, MacCurdy wrote, "is a feeling of excitement with a flavour of invulnerability."
ニアミスは心身に深い傷を残すが、リモートミスは無敵感覚を植えつけるのである。
A near miss leaves you traumatized. A remote miss makes you think you are invincible.
大空襲をくぐりぬけたロンドン市民の日記や回想には、こうした現象を裏づける記述がたくさんある。
In diaries and recollections of Londoners who lived through the Blitz, there are countless examples of this phenomenon. Here is one:
初めて空襲警報が鳴ったときは、子どもたちを連れて公園の防空壕に逃げこみました。「このまま死んでしまうにちがいない」と思っていました。でも何ごともなく終わって防空壕を出たときは、「何があっても死なない」と思うようになっていました。
When the first siren sounded I took my children to our dug-out in the garden and I was quite certain we were all going to be killed. Then the all-clear went without anything having happened. Ever since we came out of the dug-out I have felt sure nothing would ever hurt us.
別の女性は、爆発で家が激しく揺れたときのことをこう回想している。
Or consider this, from the diary of a young woman whose house was shaken by a nearby explosion:
ベッドに横たわったまま、何ともいえない満ちたりた勝利感を味わっていました。「いま爆撃されてる！」そう何度もつぶやいていました。まるでおろしたてのドレスのぐあいを確かめるように。その夜はたくさんの人が死んだり、けがをしたりしました。だから不謹慎かもしれないんですが、あのときほど純粋で完全無欠な幸福感を味わったことはありません。
I lay there feeling indescribably happy and triumphant. "I've been bombed!" I kept on saying to myself, over and over again -trying the phrase on, like a new dress, to see how it fitted. "I've been bombed!..I've been bombed -me!" It seems a terrible thing to say, when many people were killed and injured last night; but never in my whole life have I ever experienced such pure and flawless happiness.
なぜロンドン市民は大空襲にもひるまなかったのだろう？
So why were Londoners so unfazed by the Blitz?
ロンドンは800万人以上が暮らす大都会だ。それで死者4万人、負傷者4万6000人ということは、ニアミスで心身に傷を負った人よりも、リモートミスで強烈な高揚感を覚えた人のほうがはるかに多かったと言える。
Because forty thousand deaths and forty-six thousand injuries -spread across a metropolitan area of more than eight million people- means that there ware many more remote misses who were emboldened by the experience of being bombed than there were near misses who were traumatized by it.
マカーディは解説する。
MacCurdy went on.
私たちはただ怖がるだけではなく、怖がることを怖がってもいる。それだけに恐怖を克服すると気持ちが高揚する。
We are all of us not merely liable to fear. We are also prone to be afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration....
空襲になったらパニックに陥ると思っていたのに、実際の場面では落ちつきはらった態度を周囲に見せることができて、なおかつ無事だった。
When we have been afraid that we may panic in an air-raid, and when it has happened, we have exhibited to others nothing but a calm exterior and we are now safe,
事前の危惧といまの安堵感の落差が自信につながり、それが勇気の源になったのだ。
the contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.
大空襲が最も激しかったとき、ボタン工場で働いていた中年の男性は疎開の打診を受けた彼の自宅には二度も爆弾が落ちていたが、そのたびに妻ともども助かった。男性は疎開を断った。
In the midst of the Blitz, a middle-aged laborer in a button-factory was asked if he wanted to be evacuated to the countryside. He had been bombed out of his house twice. But each time he and his wife had been fine. He refused.
「こんな経験、いままでになかったし、この先も二度とない。それをみすみす見逃せというのかい？ 冗談じゃない！」
"What, and miss all this?" he exclaimed. "Not for all the gold in China! There's never been nothing like it! Never! And never will be again."
同じできごとなのに、心身に深い傷を受ける人もいれば、反対に幸福感や充実感で舞いあがる人もいる。ボタン工場の男性も、爆発の衝撃で揺れる家にいた女性も、胸がわくわくしていたはずだ。
The idea of desirable difficulty suggests that not all difficulties are negative.
MacCurdy's theory of morale is a second, broader perspective on this same idea. The reason Winston Churchill and the English military brass were so apprehensive about the German attacks on London was that they assumed that a traumatic experience like being bombed would have the same effect on everyone: that the only difference between near misses and remote misses would be the degree of trauma they suffered.
But to MacCurdy, the Blitz proved that traumatic experiences can have two completely different effects on people: the same event can be profoundly damaging to one group while leaving another better off. That man who worked in a button factory and that young woman whose house was shaken by the bomb were better off for their experience, weren't they?
どう言いつくろってもこれは事実だ。ただ、そのとき彼らのなかに恐怖心は存在しなかった。だからこそ戦時下の耐えがたい生活を乗りきることができたのかもしれない。
They were in the middle of a war. They couldn't change the fact. But they were freed of the kinds of fears that can make life during wartime unendurable.
…
私たちは開戦前のイギリス政府と同様、深刻な損害をもたらす不幸な出来事が、一種類の結果しか引きおこさないと思いこんでいる。
Too often, we make the same mistake as the British did and jump to the conclusion that there is only one kind of response to something terrible and traumatic.
だがそうではなく、結果にはプラスとマイナスの2種類が存在するのだ。
There isn't. There are two.
…
出典：
マルコム・グラッドウェル『
逆転! 強敵や逆境に勝てる秘密』
Malcolm Gladwell:
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
