Fighter ace Col. Johannes Steinhoff commanded an elite group of pilots trained to fly the first jet aircraft employed in combat, the famous Messerschmitt Me-262, at a time when Reich Marshal Hermann Gsring, by then out of favor with Hitler for his failure to stop the Allied bombing raids, denounced his own pilots as cowards. After Gsring refused to deploy the Me-262 as a fighter, the role for which it was designed, and instead ordered its use as a bomber, Steinhoff and other senior air leaders devised a plot to depose Gsring from his command of the Luftwaffe in the futile hope of staving off final defeat in the air. The pilots' long-standing disgust with their Reich Marshal's military incompetence and technical dilettantism led to their dangerous intrigue in the fall of 1944. There was an added element of risk as their desperate gamble came in the wake of the July 20 plot against Hitler, the onrushing Allied onslaught, and the general disintegration of the German military and its war effort. Steinhoff crashed while trying to take off in a heavily laden Me-262. The explosion left him badly burned and still in the hospital when the war ended. German soldier the account that became The Final Hours. His memories are vivid, painful, and gripping. Free from the years of recrimination and reflection so common in similar works, his tale recounts the pressure of fighting for a lost cause and the intrigue fostered by an unstable command. His account reveals every facet of a remarkable fighter pilot's struggle for survival and provides an excellent case study of the plodding bureaucracy and scheming obscurantism so characteristic of the Third Reich. I first discovered Johannes Steinhoff as a graduate student, preparing a field in World War II. His name kept appearing as one of the gifted warriors who carried the Third Reich on their shoulders for six years. Never did men fight better in a worse cause than did the Germans from 1939 to 1945, and Steinhoff was a paladin. As a fighter pilot he served on every major front and scored 176 aerial victories. He was among the first to fly jets in combat, serving with the famous Squadron of Experts in the war's final days. He had been decorated with the Knight's Cross with Swords and Oak Leaves. bravery they recognized were no less real for that. There was also a certain karmic irony in someone often called the handsomest man in the Luftwaffe having his face burned off in a crash just at the end of the war, eventually emerging from years of restorative surgery with a gargoyle mask that was mostly scar tissue. It required little imagination to interpret Johannes Steinhoff as a symbol of Germany itself: disfigured by its past, permanently marked for everyone to see. I regularly suggested the trope to my classes, and considered myself a clever young professor indeed. It required no more research than reading German newspapers to discover that Johannes Steinhoff was more than a symbol of a vanished regime and a lost war. When the newly-established Federal Republic of Germany began considering recreating its armed forces as part of its reintegration into an emerging Western Alliance, Steinhoff was among the first veterans consulted. challenge openly what he considered the disastrously mistaken operational decisions of Hitler and his lieutenant, Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goring. Initially reluctant, like many of his counterparts, to consider putting on a uniform once more, Steinhoff finally decided that he might after all be able to contribute directly to creating a new Germany. It would not be a Germany of power and conquest like its Imperial and National Socialist predecessors. Nor would it be the Holy Germany, a beacon to the nations, of which resisters like Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg had dreamed. This Germany would be a state and a people among others, committed to a common European and Atlantic enterprise. Resisting the ideological and military challenges of the Soviet Union was merely a first step towards the eventual construction of a community of free peoples, linked by mutual interests and mutual respect. He saw German-American relations as the cornerstone of that enterprise. whose officers and men served a democracy in the context of the NATO Alliance. He eventually rose to be its Inspector-General, then as Chairman of the Military Commission of NATO, retiring as a four-star general. Neither he nor his pilots ever fired a shot in anger. In his later years, Steinhoff described that as the aspect of his career of which he was most proud. I learned that during our collaboration on a book titled Voices from the Third Reich. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan made international headlines by standing alongside German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to commemorate German war dead at Bitburg, in a cemetery including some graves of SS men. General Steinhoff, by then retired, attended the ceremony, and was shaken by the negative reactions it evoked in Europe and the United States. Johannes had told his own wartime story, in The Straits of Messina and this volume, The Final Hours. But he believed there was a larger story to tell: the story of the German people, especially the generation that had fought World War II in the front lines. understand the complex web of circumstances and principles that brought Adolf Hitler to power and held Germany in his thrall until nothing remained. To tell the story, Johannes decided he needed an American collaborator. By then I was teaching at Colorado College. Johannes's son-in-law was also on the faculty, in a different department, and the General and I had met casually a couple of times. When his daughter suggested What about Dennis? he was willing to consider it. We met, talked, and came to a quick agreement. For me it was the start of an adventure. We'll be working in each others' pockets for a long time, Johannes told me. I want someone who can discuss more than today's newspaper. It didn't take me long to discover that the general

World War I was the greatest cataclysm Europe had ever known, directly involving 61 million troops from 16 nations. Yet the history of the war and the reasons it started and spread so rapidly were vastly more complex than the players realized. Written by highly respected authorities, this book discusses the literature on all aspects of the war, making it an excellent starting point for anyone seeking guidance to the immense, and often daunting, body of World War I literature. The struggle mobilized manpower from home, troops from the colonies abroad, and—in most countries-women as well as men. Governments increasingly intervened in everyday life. New weapons and organizational structures were developed. Yet the history of the war and the reasons it started and spread so rapidly were vastly more complex than the players realized. Written by highly respected authorities, this book discusses the literature on all aspects of the war. Dennis Showalter's opening chapter covers the controversial issue of the war's origins—a complex subject that has been much debated by historians. Ensuing chapters consider the literature on each of the participating countries. The broader subjects of the war at sea and the war in the air are also covered. Daniel Beaver's final chapter discusses the mobilization of industry and the new military technology. This book is an excellent starting point for anyone seeking guidance to the immense, and often daunting, body of World War I literature.