I was friends with Walter Schuck, Gunther Rall, Johannes Steinhoff, and many other Luftwaffe aces, and interviewed them. Some of those are in my books, fill interviews, and other biographies. I interviewed Johnnie Johnson also, and Ray Toliver was the man who started me on this career of interviewing the Germans way back in 1977. RIP to all of them. Good show. I have done a few history shows for TV as well.
To General Steinhof, Hals und bein bruch! He wrote this on my Air Force academy cadet hat as a cadet in 1985 and said, Your Air Force will carry on the good fighting spirit of the old Luftwaffe! Prost! He was right. As American Air Force cadets and future pilots we were inspired by his words tremendously. Prost to a great man!
General Steinhof flog nicht nur den weltweit ersten Düsenjäger Me 262 sondern er war auch mit der Me 109 ein sehr erfolgreicher Pilot - mit seinem unstrittig großen Wissen, war er auch noch in Bundeswehr ( als diese noch aus Soldaten bestand ) aktiv tätig !
A trivia factoid about Steinhoff - he began his career as a naval aviator, then transferred to the Luftwaffe. His book "The Final Hours" is a great read.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography job. Historians did a very good job presenting actual facts from fiction. Orator presented the documentary very well. Class A research project. Rough air combat missions. Steinhoff was a natural fighter pilot.
Talk about inner courage on the world's stage! !! I wonder if after his horrific injury he drew some of that encouragement from the apparently many "random acts of kindness from strangers", as,for example, the many plastic surgeons, and especially the anonymous English surgeon who " . . . was able to give him eyelids so the general was able to close his eyes for the first time in fourteen years." RIP, all you famous and anonymous kind heroes and heroines!
The only difference being that the B17 job was to kill thousands of civilians and destroy irreplaceable work of art, while the job of the fighter was to protect civilian cities...
@@francescoguzzetta Technically true. but it needs more context-did the Germans wage war in a morally superior way? They sort of reaped what they sowed. That doesn't mean the suffering of innocent women and children was right.
@@momotheelder7124 well, if you consider the overall picture, of course nazi crimes are immensely more horrifying and their leadership was waging an immoral war of aggression. However, in the specific context of the aerial bombardment of civilian cities, allied were definitely on the wrong side. And the fighter pilots trying to stop the bombers that were trying to burn alive their families and children were definitely acting on a superior moral ground. It's not a coincidence that at Nuremberg trial it was not pressed any charge related to air bombing (despite the London bombing was indeed a crime against Hague convention), because the subject would have been too embarassing for Allies.
@@francescoguzzetta Bombing of targets like the Tirpitz or Arizona was no a war crime, it was a military target, now the usage of the V series rockets, atom bombs & bombers in general on civilians is, in that case, the Allies could be put in just as large act of war crimes as their enemies,
Steinhoff was saved by an italian fighter ace. Sergeant Maj. Luigi Gorrini. The german pilot with his Me 109 in flame was under close attack by two P 47 Thunderolt. The italian pilot on Macchi MC 205 Veltro shot down with 20 mm and 12,7 mm guns the first P 47 and the second one gave up.
@@mautoban66 All these people we are talking have died, and Luigi Gorini died in 2014. But you can see an interwiew on this channel writing: Johannes Steinhoff - Luigi Gorrini - il cacciatore del cielo (the sky hunter). There are subtitles, but unfortunately are only in italian language. I hope you can understand the writed sentences. Bye
@@robertoorsi5771 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ec5J6Ra7JFw.html I found this and its even with German subtitles. Before I never heared all These namens. In this aspekt RU-vid ist still great. Sadly it became a plattform of censorship in general. Thank you so much.
Yes it certainly is a good one to read! The part that describes his ME-262 crash and the immediate aftermath is very hard to grasp that one could come out of that alive.
I'm sure it has happened over multiple air wars, but not an accepted practice by any side. I have read many accounts of pilots being very respectful in victory. Some even escorting disabled enemy planes. Most would say it was about getting the aircraft out of the sky, not the airmen. What happened after they hit the ground another story, but mosty respectable in the European theatre at least.
@@Vlerkies Doch, es gehörte fast zur Routine, das US-Piloten auf am Fallschirm hängende Deutsche Piloten geschossen haben. Es wurde den jungen US-Piloten gelehrt, das sie auf am Schirm hängende Deutsche Piloten schiessen sollten, weil sonst diese Piloten nach ihrer Landung mit dem Schirm, ein neues Flugzeug bekämen und dann wieder gegen die aliierten Flugzeuge kämpfen würden. Es mag sein, das es Us-Piloten gab, die sich nicht an diese Forderung hielten, und somit immerhin noch einen Funken Menschlichkeit besassen.
It was always about getting the machine out of the fight, when the pilot and crew were flying it they were a threat, after they bailed out, they had no control over the aircraft, and were just non-combatants who deserved to be left alone. Their fate was in the hands of those on the ground. Most wartime pilots honoured that unwritten gentleman's agreement as best they could, all honour goes to them.
6:10 It was rather a fight against numerical superiority. How can 16 German fighter pilots survive against 1300 allied escort fighters. The cowboys did not even need to aim. They created a spray of bullets. Evidence is that they had shared kill scores because they did not even know who shot down the enemy.
Hello, it was recorded maybe 20 yrs ago and moved from vhs to digital way back then. I'm sorry it doesn't meet your std, it is poor but still understandable.
Euhhmmm I don't get the scandal at the bitburg cemetery.... The graves show clearly the date of death being in september 44. So how in the hell could these SS men have been involved in atrocities at the battle of the Bulge when this only took place in december 44?
@@Vlerkies Yes, doing well here. I'm still flying with the ACG. We just left the Eastern Front and are flying the Tobruk campaign (Team Fusion's Desert Wings add-on). I was very happy to see you still posting videos. It's been a while. Stay safe! Flyby out
@@longbowdt Good to hear you are well bud. Fond memories of patrolling the channel being your wingman and pouncing on unsuspecting Englanders. Haven't done much flying of anything in the last few years, real life stuff getting in the way. Still got all my gear plugged in just no time, but one day!
😁 In the words of Steinhoff, "Marseille was extremely handsome. He was a very gifted pilot, but he was unreliable. He had girl friends everywhere, and they kept him so busy that he was sometimes so worn out that he had to be grounded. His sometime irresponsible way of conducting his duties was the main reason I fired him. But he had irresistible charm."
@@Vlerkies I think this man would bring down the British Empire in one night, how and why, very simple, he would be captured by them then pull of some James Bond lvl BS and escape, then sleep with the Queen,
But hey, when you have irresistible charm what can you do, waste it all because of some duty to your country??? Come on guys! We ladies don't stop existing in times of war you know?
The victors write the history books, been that way since the beginning of time. Germany's aggression and heinous acts during World War 2 left little to celebrate after the war, and that unfortunately impacted on many honorable, good and brave people like Steinhoff. Google translate Die Sieger schreiben die Geschichtsbücher, und das seit Anbeginn der Zeit. Deutschlands Aggression und abscheuliche Taten während des Zweiten Weltkriegs ließen nach dem Krieg wenig Grund zum Feiern übrig, und das wirkte sich leider auf viele ehrenwerte, gute und mutige Menschen wie Steinhoff aus.
His post war rehabilitation is one thing, and quite admirable. The hagiographic treatment of his wartime career is another entirely. Couple of key points. Steinhoff noted in his book that the Germans were treated to revelations about the concentration camps 'as if we didn't know'. Clearly, they did. Secondly, he and his fellow conspirators in late 1944 weren't driven by the criminality of the regime, or the atrocities, or any of that. They were driven by Goering's incompetence and his treatment of them. They didn't object to the Nazis until THEIR sacred cow was gored.
Before Dresden there was Quernica Rotterdam W A R S A W London and many many more. The nazis killed more Germans than the allies! At the end of the end of the war they actually ordered the destruction of German factory’s infrastructure and housings. After all this time you were not able to keep up?
@@mikestevenson2303 German contacts that actually lived at the time and survived ww 2. For decades i spend time allover Germany also the times when there there were 2 Germany’s Most of them very well educated. They’re seeing Americans and Russian as liberators now! How Russians and Americans dealt after the war (especially the Russians) is seen not so positive. You can find many uploads on RU-vid about both times. The vast majority of them are in German only.....no subtitles. Those i started watching during the lockdown. About your first comment....... Dresden ofcourse should have never happend. But the trains ready bring people to their dead did not leave from Dresden those particular days. During the attack selected people were kept out of the shelters. The irony is that because of this some survive.
@@touraneindanke Thats mostly communist education from Germans upbringing. My Friend Alfred Habsburg(Please Google him) or the 3 million Germans that died in WW2 would not agree with Germans today, that the Russians were liberators. They pretty much rapped every woman from 12 and up to about 75 and also shipped allot of the men to camps in Siberia. The Germans never bombed a German city. But when the USA got involved they started bombing and killing German civilians just for body count figures. Dresden(Great book by David Irving) was nothing more than an extermination raid by RAF Harris. The war was over! The Americans were coming into the west of Germany and Russians were storming in through Poland.
Well, the Luftwaffe pilots may have had their code of honour and gallantry, but that was their mistake. The allied pilots had none of that. Naivety has its price and they certainly paid for it.
Numbers will always win. Ironically, Nazi Germany mostly had the best trained pilots and soldiers in general the first 2-3 years of WWII but at the end of the day, this does not really matter if you cannot make up the losses of men and material. On the eastern front, Stalin did not care about how many million of his people had to die as long as they killed enough Germans as well. That situation was vastly different on the western front. On the western front, it was mainly numbers in material that made the difference.
The code of German fighter pilots did not apply to Poland, Russia, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, and England, where they shot at pilots who were rescuing parachutes, and massacred civilians on the roads together with bombers and Stukas. It is enough to get acquainted with the conversations of the shot down German pilots, which the English recorded secretly in prisoner-of-war camps. book: "Soldaten: Protokollevom kampfen, Toten und Sterben" by Sonke Neitzel / Harald Welzer. Der Code der deutschen Jagdflieger galt nicht für Polen, Russland, Griechenland, Jugoslawien, Frankreich und England, wo sie auf Piloten schossen, die Fallschirme retteten, und Zivilisten auf den Straßen zusammen mit Bombern und Stukas massakrierten. Es genügt, sich mit den Gesprächen der abgeschossenen deutschen Piloten vertraut zu machen, die die Engländer heimlich in Kriegsgefangenenlagern aufgenommen haben. Buch: "Soldaten: Protokollevom kampfen, Toten und Sterben" von Sonke Neitzel / Harald Welzer.
