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I Flew for the Fuhrer, Heinz Knoke


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My grandfather was a navigator on Halifax bombers. One of his activites post war was reading war diaries, many of which were by German authors.

I have quite a few, so many that a friend of mine refers to my bookcase as 'the National Socialist Lending Library'. :-D

One of the books that I love most in my life is I flew for the Fuhrer.

It is well written, accurate, eye wateringly honest (my 1953 1st ed. pulls no punches in his admiration for the Nazi system or his beliefs) and very enjoyable.

I am sure most of you on here are aware of it, but for those that are not it is a really good window into the otherside of the air war over Germany and a vivid description of what happens to you when air superiority can no longer me maintained.

Much like J.E. Johnstone he is honest enough to acknowledge that his survival was due in part to missing the Battle of Britain.

I have re-read it countless times, and along with Desmond Scott's 'Typhoon Pilot' feel it is one of the outstanding books of the 2nd war.

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I've read that 2 or three times (2003 Cassell edition) and it is a good read and as you say is pretty honest it would seem, but he doesn't come across as a particularly likeable guy because of that.

Having read that book, and a few other Luftwaffe pilot memoirs, I'm surprised how many of them were convinced that once the Western Allies had defeated Germany they would be given an aircraft immediately to continue the war against Russia.

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One of the books that I love most in my life is I flew for the Fuhrer.

It is well written, accurate, eye wateringly honest (my 1953 1st ed. pulls no punches in his admiration for the Nazi system or his beliefs) and very enjoyable.

I am sure most of you on here are aware of it, but for those that are not it is a really good window into the otherside of the air war over Germany and a vivid description of what happens to you when air superiority can no longer me maintained.

I have re-read it countless times, and along with Desmond Scott's 'Typhoon Pilot' feel it is one of the outstanding books of the 2nd war.

I would agree, although the translation is well out of date and could do with a bit of a rewrite IMHO. I have been searching for a reasonably priced copy of the original German text 'Die große Jagd' (lit. 'the big hunt', but also 'charge', 'rush') for some time without success. AFAIK it has never been reprinted in German and doesn't enjoy the same 'popularity' at all in that language. (incidentally the title 'die Grosse Jagd' is also the German title for 'Moby Dick' - Melville's whale story!). Check out my Luftwaffe blog for more obscure German pilot bios. If there is just one that should be in English immediately it is 'Feindberührung', Julius Meimberg's memoir published by 296 Verlag ('Contact with the enemy'). John Weal has done the translation AFAIK but for reasons I'm unaware of the publisher has yet to bring it out. Unlike Knoke Meimberg did fly in the Battle of Britain..

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I'm quite certain that the book continued at least until the mid 90s under the title "Ich flog für den Fxxxer" (surprisingly), and was inthe programme of a small hardcore Nazi publisher who had all sorts of disgusting apologetic and/or revisionary filth. This alone is reason enough for me not to read that book, certainly not in German. Besides, he became a member of the SRP after the war, a straight continuation organisation of the NSdAP, which would suggest he was unable to reflect. Not me, I'm afraid, in any language.

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I'm quite certain that the book continued at least until the mid 90s under the title "Ich flog für den Fxxxer" (surprisingly),

no.. the book AFAIK has never appeared in German with its English title ( title chosen by the UK publisher, nothing to do with Knoke). And while the SRP may have been banned Knoke continued to serve in politics with the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Liberal Democratic Party), and was elected in the March 1961, September 1964, and September 1968 elections.

His book, subtitled 'flight log of a fighter pilot' was one of the first quality narratives in German to appear in English postwar and as such is an aviation classic. As for its title, see my post above - the German title was "Die große Jagd" -Bordbuch eines deutschen Jagdfliegers- (published 1952 Verlag C. Bösendahl, Rinteln. )

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  • 2 weeks later...

I read Knoke's book some years ago, and was impressed by the honest straightforward way in which it is presented, not as deliberately pc as Gallands book or as vehement as Rudels.

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  • 1 month later...
On 15 August 2016 at 0:47 PM, tempestfan said:

I'm quite certain that the book continued at least until the mid 90s under the title "Ich flog für den Fxxxer" (surprisingly), and was inthe programme of a small hardcore Nazi publisher who had all sorts of disgusting apologetic and/or revisionary filth. This alone is reason enough for me not to read that book, certainly not in German. Besides, he became a member of the SRP after the war, a straight continuation organisation of the NSdAP, which would suggest he was unable to reflect. Not me, I'm afraid, in any language.

 

On 15 August 2016 at 8:24 PM, FalkeEins said:

no.. the book AFAIK has never appeared in German with its English title ( title chosen by the UK publisher, nothing to do with Knoke). And while the SRP may have been banned Knoke continued to serve in politics with the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Liberal Democratic Party), and was elected in the March 1961, September 1964, and September 1968 elections.

His book, subtitled 'flight log of a fighter pilot' was one of the first quality narratives in German to appear in English postwar and as such is an aviation classic. As for its title, see my post above - the German title was "Die große Jagd" -Bordbuch eines deutschen Jagdfliegers- (published 1952 Verlag C. Bösendahl, Rinteln. )

You both both raise important points that I -in part - am in agreement with, and which, yes, are crucial in a critical understanding of how history is constructed, and on what basis.

 

Not having read the book, I'm not commenting on its contents, only the issues surrounding such works, as a general point.

 

Most true that from the record, this individual maintained repellent views throughout his life, profited personally from associating himself with the politics of genocide, and his estate presumably is enriched by purchases of said memoir.

 

I would argue that that its better to know about the promulgation and nature of such  views first-hand, and to observe that many people subsequently felt him fit to hold further public offices. I don't like either of those aspects, but I can't pretend they don't exist; much like the admirable Quaker tenet of 'bearing witness'. I believe we have a responsibility to decide what we do with such knowledge.

 

I agree it becomes complicated as an individual moral choice  to decide to pay for access to a particularly-privileged historical perspective. Not just for this book, but for a range of publications by those involved in, and profiting from Nazism, including - it must be acknowledged - any German military memoirs that contain first-hand accounts of conflict, military doctrine, weaponry, and so forth. 

 

If one argues that no profit should accrue to individuals who profited from Nazism, how and where do you draw the line? Why for example would it be ok to vilify Knoke and his publishers, but not NASA for getting to moon with Nazi scientists? Both of these cases are part of the same moral spectrum.

 

Personally I don't have clear answers to this, but the historical context clearly shows that both at the individual, and national level, we do not deal with such matters either consistently or in morally unambiguous ways.

 

I also find it necessary to remind myself how a German citizen who lost an entirely blameless family at Dresden might feel about the sale of Bomber Command memoirs? Or how an Indian historian would describe Churchill's views on race in relation to the Bengal famine?

 

If we can't operate in a wider structure of thought about the construction of history, we run a very real danger of turning into that which we repudiate.

 

 

 

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