What do you think?
Rate this book
The Final Hours: A German Jet Pilot Plots Against Goering
In Fair jacket, 5 3/4 By 8 1/2`` Book of the Month Club edition, Very slight signs of age to book, Black DJ has edgeware. He became the chief of staff of the Post War German air force and chairman of NATO's military committee.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
7 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 25, 2015
As a long-time military aviation history buff, I've read plenty of unit-level and personal accounts, representing both Allied and Axis nations, of World War II air combat, but this is probably my favorite yet. In large part this is because unlike most authors, Steinhoff (despite being the 22rd highest-ranking ace of all time) does not attempt to present a comprehensive history of his career. Instead, he limits the book to a brief account of a few key incidents in late 1944 to spring 1945, when the outcome of the air war in Europe (and by extension the war in Europe as a whole) was already a foregone conclusion. The First and The Last, by Steinhoff's more famous colleague Adolf Galland, serves as an illustrative contrast: The First and The Last spans the entirety of Galland's career at the Western Front throughout the war, and as such covers a far broader range of topics, but it also frequently gets bogged down in a dry excess of names, places, events, etc. and isn't a particularly gripping read. By comparison, what the handful of scenes and themes in The Final Hours lack in number and duration, they more than make up in drama and intensity:
1. The prologue, in which we meet Steinhoff, mangled beyond recognition in a freak accident less than three weeks before the war's end, as a prisoner in an American hospital burn ward. This section begins with the macabre tone you'd expect-- "We also-- though of widely different origins and occupations-- share a common fate that has forged close personal ties: our faces have been destroyed by fire." However, it ends on an unexpected note of levity, courtesy of the unlikely tale of Steinhoff and a comrade, both still heavily bandaged and barely mobile, "breaking out" of the minimum-security POW hospital, wandering several miles through the Bavarian countryside to retrieve the typewriter that will be used to write the manuscript of the book, and then returning to the hospital with the typewriter before curfew.
2. The staggeringly awful leadership of the Luftwaffe, particularly in the person of its supreme commander Hermann Göring. As the Allies gained the upper hand in the air over Europe, instead of increasing the resources available to the Luftwaffe's defensive fighter units, Göring instead diverted the lion's share of resources to the offensive bomber units (which had already ceased to function as an effective military force) and publicly humiliated the fighter pilots as cowards and shirkers. The icing on this cake of misery for the fighter units was that the Luftwaffe possessed a miracle weapon that could have turned the tide-- the Me 262, a jet fighter far more advanced than anything in the Allied arsenal-- but Göring and Hitler both insisted this revolutionary fighter plane be used solely as a bomber. (This is territory that The First and The Last also covers heavily, but Steinhoff manages to communicate effectively via historical flashbacks and vignettes what Galland devotes whole chapters to.)
3. The attempt in late 1944-early 1945 by the most senior fighter pilots to depose Göring as commander of the Luftwaffe. Having failed to via various approaches to gain direct access to Hitler, the pilots eventually confronted Göring directly with their grievances. The showdown, pitting a handful of the Luftwaffe's heroes on one side of the table versus the bloated, vain Göring and his entourage of sycophantic bureaucrats on the other, crackles like a Tarantino Mexican standoff (although unlike a Tarantino scene, it does not end with each side gunning each other down to the last man). Not surprisingly, the attempt comes to nothing, with Göring storming out and threatening to have the mutineers-- some of the most highly decorated and famous heroes of the Reich-- shot. Given that this happened mere months after the failed July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler, the fact that the pilots had the balls to engage in any kind of conspiracy against their high command is rather remarkable.
4. The brief but fascinating career of Jagdverband 44. Göring never followed through with his threat to shoot the mutineers, but he did strip them of their commands and place them under watch, leaving them in the limbo of being grounded with nothing to do, yet at constant risk of arrest for mutiny, treason, or desertion at Göring's whim. But then in March 1945, when the end was so near that the Allies were openly disregarding the Luftwaffe's existence, Göring suddenly presented the mutineers with what they had been demanding all along: a fighter unit of Me 262s, free to operate on their own without interference from Luftwaffe high command. JV 44 reads like a Hollywood plot summary: a "Dirty Dozen"/"Luftwaffe All-Star Team" of the Reich's greatest aces collected from Göring's shit list and thus "expendable", answerable to nobody, equipped with a fantastic superweapon, and tasked with the impossible mission of defending Germany from Allied air fleets that sometimes numbered over 1,000 heavy bombers at a time. In the two months of JV 44's existence, they had considerable success, but the war had been decided already, and so it made absolutely no difference. "We were like dayflies who had come to the end of their day, where the dream dissolves into nothingness. Why did we still fly? Whom were we doing it for?"
5. And lastly, the brothers-in-arms/bromantic bond between Steinhoff and Günther Lützow, another of the mutineers who serves as their spokesman in the showdown with Göring. The moody Lützow, prone to major bouts of depression brought on by the consequences of Göring et al.'s disastrous leadership, personifies the emotional rollercoaster of the Luftwaffe veterans as they plummet from early triumphs to certain defeat, and so it is tragically fitting when Steinhoff learns that Lützow, his best friend with whom he has survived so many years of war, has been killed during a meaningless action with mere days left in the war.
The organization of the book (particularly its frequent flashbacks) can be a bit tricky to follow at times, and it's often short on background info, but since the book is a short one and anyone reading it is likely to already be knowledgeable about the general subject and the names involved, these weaknesses are easily forgivable.
1. The prologue, in which we meet Steinhoff, mangled beyond recognition in a freak accident less than three weeks before the war's end, as a prisoner in an American hospital burn ward. This section begins with the macabre tone you'd expect-- "We also-- though of widely different origins and occupations-- share a common fate that has forged close personal ties: our faces have been destroyed by fire." However, it ends on an unexpected note of levity, courtesy of the unlikely tale of Steinhoff and a comrade, both still heavily bandaged and barely mobile, "breaking out" of the minimum-security POW hospital, wandering several miles through the Bavarian countryside to retrieve the typewriter that will be used to write the manuscript of the book, and then returning to the hospital with the typewriter before curfew.
2. The staggeringly awful leadership of the Luftwaffe, particularly in the person of its supreme commander Hermann Göring. As the Allies gained the upper hand in the air over Europe, instead of increasing the resources available to the Luftwaffe's defensive fighter units, Göring instead diverted the lion's share of resources to the offensive bomber units (which had already ceased to function as an effective military force) and publicly humiliated the fighter pilots as cowards and shirkers. The icing on this cake of misery for the fighter units was that the Luftwaffe possessed a miracle weapon that could have turned the tide-- the Me 262, a jet fighter far more advanced than anything in the Allied arsenal-- but Göring and Hitler both insisted this revolutionary fighter plane be used solely as a bomber. (This is territory that The First and The Last also covers heavily, but Steinhoff manages to communicate effectively via historical flashbacks and vignettes what Galland devotes whole chapters to.)
3. The attempt in late 1944-early 1945 by the most senior fighter pilots to depose Göring as commander of the Luftwaffe. Having failed to via various approaches to gain direct access to Hitler, the pilots eventually confronted Göring directly with their grievances. The showdown, pitting a handful of the Luftwaffe's heroes on one side of the table versus the bloated, vain Göring and his entourage of sycophantic bureaucrats on the other, crackles like a Tarantino Mexican standoff (although unlike a Tarantino scene, it does not end with each side gunning each other down to the last man). Not surprisingly, the attempt comes to nothing, with Göring storming out and threatening to have the mutineers-- some of the most highly decorated and famous heroes of the Reich-- shot. Given that this happened mere months after the failed July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler, the fact that the pilots had the balls to engage in any kind of conspiracy against their high command is rather remarkable.
4. The brief but fascinating career of Jagdverband 44. Göring never followed through with his threat to shoot the mutineers, but he did strip them of their commands and place them under watch, leaving them in the limbo of being grounded with nothing to do, yet at constant risk of arrest for mutiny, treason, or desertion at Göring's whim. But then in March 1945, when the end was so near that the Allies were openly disregarding the Luftwaffe's existence, Göring suddenly presented the mutineers with what they had been demanding all along: a fighter unit of Me 262s, free to operate on their own without interference from Luftwaffe high command. JV 44 reads like a Hollywood plot summary: a "Dirty Dozen"/"Luftwaffe All-Star Team" of the Reich's greatest aces collected from Göring's shit list and thus "expendable", answerable to nobody, equipped with a fantastic superweapon, and tasked with the impossible mission of defending Germany from Allied air fleets that sometimes numbered over 1,000 heavy bombers at a time. In the two months of JV 44's existence, they had considerable success, but the war had been decided already, and so it made absolutely no difference. "We were like dayflies who had come to the end of their day, where the dream dissolves into nothingness. Why did we still fly? Whom were we doing it for?"
5. And lastly, the brothers-in-arms/bromantic bond between Steinhoff and Günther Lützow, another of the mutineers who serves as their spokesman in the showdown with Göring. The moody Lützow, prone to major bouts of depression brought on by the consequences of Göring et al.'s disastrous leadership, personifies the emotional rollercoaster of the Luftwaffe veterans as they plummet from early triumphs to certain defeat, and so it is tragically fitting when Steinhoff learns that Lützow, his best friend with whom he has survived so many years of war, has been killed during a meaningless action with mere days left in the war.
The organization of the book (particularly its frequent flashbacks) can be a bit tricky to follow at times, and it's often short on background info, but since the book is a short one and anyone reading it is likely to already be knowledgeable about the general subject and the names involved, these weaknesses are easily forgivable.
May 6, 2011
Fascinating true account of a Luftwaffe pilot during the last days of WWII. Germany had developed the first jet aircraft during the last days of the war, but Steinhoff thought it was not being used effectively for German defense, due to Goering’s incompetence. He describes how he and a few of his comrades tried to get rid of “Fatty” (Goering), even going so far as to consider assassination.
September 24, 2007
Written by one of the few German pilots to fly the ME 262, the world's first jet fighter, in combat. A fascinating story of both flying, and of an officer's realization that his superiors are both incompetent and insane.
Read
August 11, 2011As good as Messerschmidts over Sicily. A great read. The author spells out the the despondency felt by the thinking soldier during Germany's final ours as her leaders pushed her into the abyss.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews