John Killen's exhaustive work is a study of German air power between
1915 and 1945, from the early days of flying when Immelmann, Boelke,
Richthofen and other First World War aces fought and died to give
Germany air supremacy, to the nightmare existence of the Luftwaffe as
the Third Reich plunged headlong to destruction. Here are the aircraft:
the frail biplanes and triplanes of the Kaiser's war; the great
Lufthansa aircraft and airships of the turbulent Thirties; the
monoplanes designed to help Hitler in his conquest of Europe. Here are
the generals who forged the air weapon of the Luftwaffe - the swaggering
Goering, the playboy Udet, the ebullient Kesselring and the scapegoat
Jeschonnek; here, too, are the pilots who tried to keep faith with their
Fatherland despite overwhelming odds; Adolf Galland, Werner Molders,
Joachim Marseille and Hanna Reitsch. Not least are the actions fought by
the Luftwaffe from the Spanish Civil War to the Battle of Britain,
through the bloody struggle for Crete and the siege of Stalingrad to the
fearful twilight over Berlin.