Customer Reviews

I Flew for the Fuhrer (Greenhill Military Paperbacks)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fascinating and forthright book about a young German growing up during the Nazi era,who just wants to fly.

I read this book (my Dad bought it back in the 50's) when I was about 12, and am purchasing it again. As a kid growing up in Ireland, I remember being struck by the honesty of the book.

On reading it again in later years, this book still stands out as an honest piece of literature. He makes no excuses for his political views, indeed the book (unintentionally) does a good job at showing how such views developed.

Parts of the book are quite disturbing with the portrayal of unjustified and outright hatred (dropping my bombs at the feet of the dirty Bolsheviks). This is tempered with humanity shown through the joy shown at the shooting down his first Spitfire, watching the pilot parachute to safety, and then having a drink with him later that day after his capture.

This book shows how one was lead to adore and revere Hitler, while keeping one's eyes shut to the political repression, and the maltreatment and murder of Jews, political dissidents, Russian POWs, homosexuals, gypsies, etc.. Having lived for 3 years in Germany, this is a insightful unwitting commentary on the average German citizen of that time.

He expesses shock at finding out about the Holocaust after the war, but I really don't believe him.

The aerial dogfight descriptions are enthralling (especially if you are an aviation fanatic like me), and I recommend this book.

This autobiography was not intended to be a political or social comment upon the thinking in those times, but I believe with the passage of 55 years, it does just that.

This book is one you WILL read again and again.

When Lieutenant Heinz Knoke spotted the British Spitfire, it was flying in circles, taking pictures of the docks below. Knoke maneuvered his Messerschmitt Me-109G above the plane just as it stopped circling and headed back for England. Opening his throttle, he dived on the Spitfire, firing at its tail. Despite the British pilot's twisting maneuvers, Knoke's fire ripped into the Spitfire's fuselage. Then another Messerschmitt flew in to finish the job. As Knoke watched the Spitfire plummet to earth, he shouted, "Bail out! Bail out!" Then, as the plane began to break apart, Knoke saw a body detach itself from the Spitfire, and parachute bloom. It was March 5, 1943, and Heinz Knoke had just bagged his first enemy plane. There would be other enemy planes: B-24 Liberators, B-17 Flying Fortresses, P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. All Knoke's victories and an eyewitness account of the eventual destruction of the Luftwaffe are revealed in I Flew for the Führer, Knoke's World War II diary, a fast reading tale of the air war over Europe. Originally published in 1957, Knoke's story has been reprinted by Greenhill Books. It is easy to see why. Knoke's book is raw, seat-of-your-pants storytelling. The day-by-day war journal is free of the imagery and adjectives that weigh down some military histories. There is no apology for the war or any profound theme; the book is just a combat pilot's simple daily record. And Knoke saw plenty of combat. Earning his wings after the Battle of Britain, Knoke went on numerous routine patrols all over France, but saw very little action. It was not until he was stationed at Jever, in northwest Germany, that the action stepped up. Shortly after he downed the Spitfire, American bombers began crossing over into Germany. To break up the formations, Knoke and his comrades came up with the idea of attacking the bombers using bombs with delay fuses. The operation worked for a while, but the Americans eventually began to learn how to dodge the falling bombs. Slowly, as Knoke racked up enemy kills (his tally rose to 33), the number of bombers flying over from Great Britain grews. Soon, they were escorted by P-47 Thunderbolts, keeping the Messerschmitts away from the formations. Knoke found himself bailing out or crash landing more and more often. In one action, Knoke came under fire from a Thunderbolt and popped his canopy to bail out. But the Thunderbolt kept firing at him. Knoke crouched down in his cockpit, despite the flames all around him. When his engine quit, the Thunderbolt overshot his plane, so Knoke opened fire on the enemy fighter before crash landing his plane. The American, his plane shot-up, ended up parachuting down near Knoke, where they shared a cigarette. But that kind of chivalry became rare as pilots on both sides began firing on parachuting pilots. Eventually Knoke found himself forced to fly wounded, taking off with one, sometimes two other pilots to engage hundreds of bombers escorted by hundreds of fighters. Despite his injuries, Knoke continued to fly his plane until incapacitated by a land mine while driving to his airbase. I Flew for the Führer is an excellent microcosm of Germany during World War II. Knoke started off eager for war, believing the war propaganda churned out by the Nazi press. He became a professional who enjoyed the excitement of the war. Eventually, he saw many of his friends killed but held on to the hope that Hitler's wonder weapons would turn the tide of the war. As the Allies closed in on Germany, he clung to the hope that Germany could make peace with the West, then turn and defeat the Red Army. He ended the war a cripple, cursing the Führer he once glorified. I Flew for the Führer is not only World War II in Europe at its best, it is combat aviation at its best. Both historians and aviation buffs will find something of interest in these pages.

Heinz Knoke was not only a heroic German aviator, but a father and a husband, completely dedicated to his country. A part of Nazism was a huge sense of nationalism, which Knoke often referred to. He fought, not neccesarily for the Nazi cause, but becasue he was a German, and he wanted to protect his country. I obtained this book from my father, who had gotten it from his father. His father bought it in the '50's, as aviation has been a passion in my family for years. My grandfather trained British pilots during the war. I am glad that he thought enough of Knoke and his story to pass his story down. It is the most startlingly blunt story I have ever read, and it was wonderfully written.

The book describes the life of a man growing up in the wake of the Third Reich. He describes his way thru the ranks and months in the war. The book is very easy to reaad and being a bit ego in the begining is just something that puts the reader into his thoughts about the war later in the book. The book (at least the swedish version) contains several pictures of fellow fighterpilots and it gives you a good inside feeling how one must have felt when they one by one fell away... In short: A very good book, and being so easy to read, a good one even for those who perhaps isn't that "well read" on the war.

If Heinz had been an RAF pilot he would have been out of the cockpit more than in it. An absorbing account of the never ending and punishing grind of the German combat pilot. His accounts of aerial bombing of US B17's and B24's is made all the more remarkable in the way the tactic came about. His regard for his enemy and his comrade admirable. Not to be missed.

just a beautiful true not hyped up story of a fighter pilots everyday life with clean well writen storys.How wounderful and full of energy knoke was in the early 40,s to the total destruction of his fighter wing in 45.

Written largely in diary form, the book will give you great insight into the mind of a German aviator in WWII. He seems sincere and straightforward, but the book was published after the war and everyone benefits from hindsight. Still, there are comparisons to be drawn with today's world. That is, how a country can be duped into starting a useless, destructive conflict.

"I Flew For the Fuhrer" was written by a former German interceptor pilot who was officially credited with 52 kills (planes, not airmen), and he undoubtedly bagged more.

Will we ever be able to sift WWII truth from wartime propaganda? This book is a start.

The author tells us both the overall picture and the situation in his own unit. For example, he informs us that the German attack on Russia was a pre-emptive strike because of an imminent Russian attack.

"We soon reach Grodno. The roads are clogged with Russian armies everywhere. The reason gradually dawns on us why the sudden surprise attack was ordered by our High Command. We begin to appreciate the full extend of the Russian preparations to attack us. We have just forestalled the Russian time table for an all-out attack against Germany for the mastery of Europe...The situation is ideal for the Bolshevists to launch their attack on Europe in furtherance of their general plan for world revolution."

The recounting of the aerial dogfights was thrilling. The author had a special move, a spiraling corkscrew climb that enabled him to escape many times. The author and his friend also dreamed up the idea of bombing tightly packed bomber formations. They used rockets too.

The numerical superiority of the allies was 8 to 1 in fighters, so it's not surprising that the author was shot down five times. He also experienced a few crash landings during training and in non-combat circumstances.

At the end of the war the odds became suicidal, and after ditching his aircraft the author had to escape from the French resistance.

Ahh, but all war is not Hell. "If we should lose this campaign, the conduct of the Frenchwomen must bear a major share of the responsibility. Nights of passion and debauchery..."

I've heard of being swallowed up by the Russian winter, but swallowed up by the French ... oh, never mind.

This is a quick read. It takes the form of a diary, although it was written after the war. Knoke was a high-scoring Luftwaffe pilot. He fought briefly in the Battle of Britain, and then on the Russian front, but the majority of his victories were against bombers and escort fighters during the Allied bomber operations against the Reich in 1943 and 1944. At first he approaches this task with gusto. He comes up with a scheme to drop time-delay bombs onto the American bombers, and eagerly awaits the introduction of Me262 jet fighters. As the war continues his comrades are shot out of the sky, or crash in accidents, and he is frequently ordered to send his last half-dozen Messerschmitts against thousand-strong bomber formations, guarded by Allied fighters. He is shot down several times - there is a period in 1943 where he seems to be shot down every other page, but each time he gets back into the air, escaping from hospital if needs be. He ends the war with a smashed foot, numerous minor wounds, and a crippled right leg. This is all conveyed in punchy, precise sentences. He becomes accustomed to death early in his career, during one of his first training flights, and he does not become philosophical until the final chapters.

Knoke comes across as a complicated man. He seems likeable, but there are flashes of darkness. He enjoys flying, and writes about the beauty of Norway's mountains, but he is clearly a product of his upbringing, and of a terrible regime. He describes the invasion of Poland as a liberation of the German minority from wanton massacres - perhaps he believed that in 1939, but the book was written in 1953, and is not a literal presentation of his diaries, it is a post-war adaptation. By the end of the book he is aware that the Nazis have brought nothing but death and destruction to everything he loved, but he is still puzzled that the world hates Germans. He wants the Allied forces to team up with the Germans and fight the Soviets. The book was written in 1953, and he ends by wondering when Stalin's tanks will roll across Europe. There is a postscript from 1991, in which he contemplates the fallen Berlin Wall, but he does not mention politics.

It is interesting to compare the book with information that has emerged since it was published. The introduction credits him with fifty-two victories, but an appendix from 1997 notes that this is a mistake, and that he actually shot down thirty-three Allied aircraft. The 1997 appendix does not point out that Knoke died in 1993 (his wife, Lilo, who is mentioned throughout the book, died in 2000).

On a tangent, there's a very informative website about Heinz Knoke's career, made by a man called Franck Ruffino. Amongst other things, it fills in some detail about Knoke's first shared kill, a Spitfire reconnaissance flight over Norway. Knoke writes that he is happy to see the pilot bale out, and later shares a brandy with him. The website identifies the RAF pilot as F/Lt Alastair Gunn. Sadly, it points out that Gunn was later executed for his part in the "great escape", something which would undoubtedly have horrified Knoke, if he had known.

The website suggests that at least one of Knoke's anecdotes in the book was actually a white lie. There is an incident where he has to belly-land his 109 onto a Norwegian glacier. Knoke attributes this to a faulty fuel system, but the website makes a convincing case, based on photographs and personal testimony from a Norwegian urchin, that Knoke and two other pilots of his flight had been flying hundreds of miles off-course in order to take photographs of Norway's scenery, and they had simply run out of fuel. He could not write this down at the time, because he would have been court-martialed, and so would his friends.

Knoke recounts a story in which he is shot down, and gets into a gunfight with some French resistance soldiers. It does not ring true. It seems very James Bond, complete with a witty quip from Knoke after he shoots a man in the head.

If you are into fighter planes, Knoke generally does not go into detail about his aircraft, although there are little titbits here and there (he tests a 30mm cannon, and his 109 is equipped with unguided anti-bomber rockets on at least one occasion). He flies a 109 throughout his career, and seems to skip from an E to a G model, although he apparently flew an F model as well.

Overall this is an interesting contrast to typical RAF pilot memoirs. Knoke seems to have been made of the same stuff - wet, soppy upbringing, followed by a brief burst of enthusiasm for the war, followed by grinding fatigue and fatalism - but at the same time his politics are laughable, and I have to wonder how much of the book is true to life, and how much is embroidered.

I read this book when I was twelve years old. This book was given to me by a childhood friend from Mexico, of course the book had been translated to Spanish. At the time I was fascinated by the Luftwaffe fighter pilots and since I was so young I believed what I read. Also at the time I did not care about politics. Which I do not recall Mr. Knoke got into much in the version I read. I read this book countless of times between the ages of 12 and 16. I will read the English version now that I am definitely older and wiser.

The book is in a diary form and reads fast. Without going into much detail he describes the air battles over Europe. His air victories and the many times he got shot down. Towards the end of the book after he was wounded he states he shot down 52 airplanes according to the Air Ministry. I read on a review from a 1997 edition he actually shot down 39. I would like to cross reference this statistic since he was flying about everyday sometimes twice per day there exists the possibility he could have brought down 52 airplanes.

Like I said before I was fascinated with this pilots and I think it was a great read. Gives you the German side of this epic era.

Looking forward to read the English version.