One of Hitler's Heroes
HANSER, RICHARD
One of Hitler's Heroes I Flew for the Fuhrer. Reviewed by Richard Hanser By Heinz Knoke. Co-author of "Victory at Sea, Holt. 212...
...His viewpoint on the war and on the world in general is undiluted Hitler Youth, and nothing that happened as he grew older appears to have changed it in any fundamental way...
...This is a mild example...
...As a Luftwaffe pilot, he flew 2,000 operational missions, 400 of them in the face of the enemy, and shot down 52 Allied aircraft...
...212 pp...
...This gallant airman informs us that Hitler marched on Warsaw because of the "horrible Polish atrocities against the German minority...
...that the Germans were fighting for the "freedom" of the Fatherland?freedom, no doubt, from the savage Danes and the invading Dutch...
...But even on this score, aside from some technical and military jargon, Heinz Knoke has little to reveal which we haven't known all along...
...To him, such questions are "academic...
...With the kind cooperation of Henry Holt & Co., whose editors have released the book with all its distortions left intact, I Flew for the Fuhrer sprays us once again with the unmistakable scent of Goebbels garbage under the guise of telling a gallant airman's story...
...No one can take from Captain Knoke the fact that he contributed mightily to the support of the Hitlerite tyranny and to the death toll of those who finally liberated the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe...
...And do they fully appreciate its true significance...
...3.00...
...One of them may be that, while Heinz Knoke was a distinct asset to the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler, he seems to have nothing to contribute to the Germany of Konrad Adenauer...
...Like any first-person record of adventure that teeters on the dividing line between life and death, this wartime diary holds a share of interest and excitement...
...Why do people all over the world hate us Germans and yet still sing German songs, play music by such German composers as Beethoven and Bach, and recite the works of great German poets...
...Heinz Knoke that, like Kipling's Fuzzy-Wuzzy, he is a first-class fighting man...
...We have heard it all before, and better...
...He conies to the conclusion that "it is useless to trouble ourselves" over the matter of responsibility and war guilt...
...Regarded as reading matter, however, I Flew for the Fiihrer is a rather primitive performance...
...He gave his all to the cause, and he is unabashedly proud of it...
...The reader is likely to come to one or two conclusions of his own...
...Co-author of "Victory at Sea, Holt...
...An idea of the almost imbecile shallowness of Knoke's outlook may be gained from his comment on the fact that both sides sang Silent Night" at Christmas time: "Do the British, the French and the Americans know that it is a German song...
...A comparable account by a pilot on the winning side would stand no chance of being published at this late date...
...and that the French and Czechs who resisted were "terrorists," while the Russians were "Asiatic hordes...
...But since Knoke is a far better pilot than writer, his story is repetitious, crude and, for an American reader, frequently offensive...
...At the end of the book, when we have had our noses rubbed for the last time in the Luftwaffe's glorious if unavailing victories over "those bastards"--i.e., the Allied airmen--Captain Knoke favors us with a fleeting reflection on the cause and meaning of it all...
...Regarded purely as a combat record, this is a remarkable achievement...
...What is supposed to give the book its special interest is the "other side of the hill" element, the glimpse into what it was like on the enemy side...
...prize-winning TV documentary It can safely be said of Capt...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 16
