The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

The motif of the literary character Don Quixote from the Cervantes novel of the same name is one that Gladwell uses in reference to General Haywood Hansell to support the theme of Idealism versus Pragmatism. As a member of the Bomber Mafia, Hansell is drawn to ideas and ideals. He is a romantic figure like Don Quixote, seeing the world as he wants it to be while sometimes missing or ignoring the reality of it all. Gladwell writes that Don Quixote was Hansell’s favorite book from the time he was a young man studying literature. It’s a fitting detail because Hansell’s personality was so similar to Quixote’s.

Gladwell tells the story of Hansell courting the woman who would become his wife, Dorothy Rogers. He, of course, was smitten right away. They met in Virginia, and when she returned to her home state of Texas, he wrote to her every day for almost a year. Rogers “found him tiresome. He found her delightful” (78). She only answered a few of his letters, but in the end they married. It’s exactly what Quixote would have done, writes Gladwell. Still, the knight’s world is based entirely on an

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