In World War II Europe, 1 September 1939 – 3 May 1945, 1785, Luftwaffe officers andenlisted men won the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross – the highest decoration for courage andbravery Hitler’s Germany and Third Reich could bestow on a troop. The two-volume set tellseach of their stories through the eyes of the commanders of 113 of these men as recorded intheir official efficiency reports contained within. Never in the history of military publishing has
such an achievement occurred, as far as this reviewer knows. And to be companied by a photo
AND a photo of the actual signed official documentation? The true WWII aficionado willsacrifice an eye a several teeth to add them to his growing library!Especially endearing to the serious buff is the fact that author French MacLean not onlyserved 34 years as an Army infantry officer, but within that time completed four tours of duty inGermany as a battalion commander. In addition, he served as the Inspector General for the U.S.Army in Europe, followed by a professorship at the National War College in Washington, DC. Hishalf dozen WWII books have been praised by such scholars and investigators Sir John Keeganand Simon Wiesenthal, and Moshe Arens.In short, 800 pages of biographies, personnel evaluations, and facial portraits respond toColonel MacLean’s provocative question, “So who were these officers? Were they mass-murderers that I once wrote were ‘formed under the evil ideology led by a social outcast andcomposed of vicious criminals that sink to their lowest common denominator – hate? Or werethey prim and proper Prussians, depicted in the movies with gleaming boots, iron wills, andmathematical minds who saw the world only in terms of tactical key terrain? My dad whofought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 9 th Infantry Division simply called them ‘toughbastards’, not elaborating much more than that. Post WWII German leadership attempted toanswer the questions by agreeing, “The front-line fighter units were led exclusively by ‘aces’whose ambition was, and must be, to keep ahead of everyone else in their personnel kills andkeep their squadron ahead of any other. They were not yet tactical leaders of large formations,though the position changed later-on with the growth of the enemy fighter and bomber arm. Agood fighter type was seldom a good bomber type and vice-versa.”Author MacLean then answers his own questions, “A true look at who these officers andpilots really were can be ascertained by what their superiors wrote about them in the “heat ofbattle”. Fortunately, the German military provided this mechanism through their extensiveofficer efficiency reporting system. I hope my work in these two volumes does them, and
history, justice.”
