Black Tulip by Erik Schmidt *** (of 4)

Sometimes, examination of a microscopic detail can illustrate a much larger image. Such is the case in this thoroughly researched biography of Erich Hartmann, the WW II pilot with the greatest number of kills. Hartmann dispatched more than 300 enemy airplanes while flying missions for Germany's Luftwaffe, more than double the war's next most successful pilot, and in general terms, ten times as many as an average pilot flying for any country during the war. Hartmann's unchallenged ability to knock an airplane out of the sky depended upon incredible close-flying skill, devastating sneak attacks, point-blank firing, and rapid escape to avoid hurtling shrapnel.

Hagiographers on both sides of the Atlantic have elevated Hartmann to idol status in the subsequent decades; a dueling knight of chivalry and honor. Which is why Schmidt's detailed analysis is so timely and important. Hartmann, after all, was flying in support of Hitler's offensives on the Western Front, the Eastern Front, and in support of a home bent upon extermination and annihilation of non-Aryan Europeans.

Beginning with an interrogation of Hartmann's own opinions regarding Nazism, Anti-Semitism, and nationalism (Hartmann left behind such a thin trail of interviews it is hard to say for certain to what degree he ever questioned the reason he was flying so many missions), Schmidt moves on to the more problematic question of Hartmann's over-the-top, post-war biographers. A great many have claimed to admire Hartmann through a finely-focused military lens, insisting their admiration is apolitical. Schmidt rightly points out that any historian claiming to ignore politics is in fact making a political decision.

Hartmann, skilled as he was, battered by ten years in Russian postwar detention camps, was in the end flying in support of Nazi world domination.