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,
Richtofen 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.