Black Tulip: The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace

by Erik Schmidt

Black Tulip is the dramatic story of history's top fighter ace, Luftwaffe pilot Erich Hartmann. It's also the story of how his service under Hitler was simplified and elevated to Western mythology during the Cold War. Over 1,404 wartime missions, Hartmann claimed a staggering 352 airborne kills, and his career contains all the dramas you would expect. There were the frostbitten fighter sweeps over the Eastern Front, drunken forays to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, a decade of imprisonment in the wretched Soviet POW camps, and further military service during the Cold War that ended with conflict and angst. Just when Hartmann’s second career was faltering, he was adopted by a network of writers and commentators personally invested in his welfare and reputation. These men, mostly Americans, published elaborate, celebratory stories about Hartmann and his elite fraternity of Luftwaffe pilots. With each dogfight tale put into print, Hartmann’s legacy became loftier and more secure, and his complicated service in support of Nazism faded away. A simplified, one-dimensional account of his life - devoid of the harder questions about allegiance and service under Hitler - has gone unchallenged for almost a generation. Black Tulip locates the ambiguous truth about Hartmann and so much of the German Wehrmacht in general: that many of these men were neither full-blown Nazis nor impeccable knights. They were complex, contradictory, and elusive. This book portrays a complex human rather than the heroic caricature we’re used to, and it argues that the tidy, polished hero stories we’ve inherited about men like Hartmann say as much about those who've crafted them as they do about the heroes themselves.

Genres: History, Aviation, War, Military Fiction, World War II, Military History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2020

Reviews

[Jonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, let's be certain at the first about what it's not. This is not another biography of Hartmann. He hasn't any startling new revelations from the archives, or raked out from under a bed in Stuttgart. However, neither has he come to bury him, as we'll see.

"The Luftwaffe aces today are basically caricatures of themselves, and that actually keeps them distant from us, serving neither history nor today’s interested readers and citizens who hope to use their stories to make better decisions for themselves. Second, we would actually get closer to the aces as men—humanizing them, creating a deeper connection to their time and their trials. Today’s readers and commentators are interested in knowing the whole person (consider the rise of the anti-hero—we like fully developed characters, no longer just shiny ones). Ironically, this might allow figures like Erich Hartmann to attain more permanence and more relevance than they have ever had while shepherded so protectively."

What this book is, is a look at Hartmann through the prism of Nicholas Stargardt's The German War: A Nation Under Arms; an acceptance that Hartmann's environment had effect on him and an argument that this makes him actually more interesting; and that the early biographies were unsatisfying, one dimensional products of Cold War polarization.

As such, we're given a whistle stop run through the accepted biography (the Kindle title runs to 193 pages of text, plus notes and bibliography), so far nothing fabulous. However, where it excels is in it's running commentary (and occasional asides) which lift the biography out of the anodyne and put near on the (seemingly saintly) bones of the man - yes, he was a member of the Hitler Youth, and handpicked for what amounted to the equivalent of their Air Cadets: which carried logically means there was some degree of ideological acceptance out Nazism - however because the Nazi movement's control of education has already been discussed, this is neither a surprise not a shock.

And this theme runs on; the incredible combat successes are discussed, put into context and the controversies noted. Hartmann was uniquely lucky, in many ways, in that he was a natural fighter pilot, posted into combat without an appreciable break for years, and fighting a tactically inept and occasionally technically inferior enemy. He couldn't help but score big, and although controversy dogs the scoreboard of all of those with the label 'Ace' there's nothing in this book to suggest that Hartmann's score was over inflated.

Hartmann's time in Soviet captivity is treat in almost as much detail as his war record, and with a great deal of sympathy (and not a lot of commentary).

"Let’s be clear: Erich Hartmann was unambiguously a victim of Soviet punishment, lawlessness, and bureaucratic machinations. Likewise, the millions of German mothers, sons and daughters, and others were unambiguously victims of bombings, terror acts, and coercive violence over which they had no control. No serious observer would think otherwise. But using these realities to buttress a victim narrative that seeks to wipe away the realities of German aggression does us no good. It might have been at least palliative in 1950; it’s transparently inadequate today."

The final part of the book looks at the literary legacy and it's airbrushed view of Hartmann as a defender against the Soviet hordes. As you might guess from the quote above, it's a thought provoking read for anyone brought up on the myth of the 'Good German' (you might also like to try the aforementioned book by Starsgardt to see this applied to the German population of the time as a whole) and doesn't really paint a picture of Hartmann 'the man':

"Once you get past the initial posturing of these books (remember that cover designs and even titles can be influenced by a publisher as much as the writer), they usually deliver the tried-and-true anecdotes and revert to the same central messages: that these elite Luftwaffe men were misunderstood knights, that we should appreciate their tactical accomplishments independent of ideology, motivation, or impact, and that we shouldn’t bother investigating the flyers’ National Socialist connections because there usually were none and it didn’t matter anyway. Better to assume nobler values, even though many of these values were literally what the Germans were fighting against—recall Hitler and the Third Reich’s intolerance of individualism, democracy, and so on, as well as his effectiveness in shaping schools and institutions to abolish these things. This should be profoundly interesting to us, but no; after reading dozens of similar interviews with Luftwaffe pilots, you start to crave one that gets anywhere near issues like this."

Sadly, given the passage of time, we're unlikely to see a rounded bio along these lines, which is a shame.

So on the whole, I'd guess this will polarize horribly, but most importantly it made me think, and that's good for four solid stars. It's not an indictment of Hartmann, nor an accusation of participation in war crimes, but a look at a rounded individual rather than an idealized cutout;

"As Smelser and Davies conclude:
One wants to take nothing away from Hartmann in terms of his skill and daring as a fighter pilot. However, to divorce his exploits from the regime, which he loyally served and from whose leader he accepted its second highest decoration, renders no service. Nor does placing him not in the historical context of a war of racial conquest and annihilation, but rather in a romanticized feudal joust between knights."

And

"The more we treat our historical characters as if their lives were black and white, the more we expect our own lives to be black and white. This harms us. It harms us as citizens, as leaders, as professionals, and as commentators. It provides little value for navigating an increasingly complex world. But when, on the other hand, we treat our historical characters as if they were complicated, worthy of care, and occasionally messy, we can see our own lives in the same way."

Not sure I can recommend it, given it's scope for popularization and misinterpretation, but I enjoyed it as a short, thought provoking read.

[KOMET · Rating 1 out of 5]

I came to this book, "BLACK TULIP: The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace" with rather high expectations. As a longtime aviation enthusiast, I first became aware of Erich Hartmann (1922-1993), the great Luftwaffe fighter ace, as a teen in 1978 from reading Edward Sims' book 'The Aces Talk.' I later went on to read several other books that either exclusively focused on Hartmann's wartime achievements on the Eastern Front and life postwar or referred to his combat career in passing.

This book "BLACK TULIP" was a setup by both its author and publisher to convince the reader that some startling new revelatory information about Hartmann himself and his wartime service in the Luftwaffe had been uncovered that would cast serious doubt on the veracity of earlier works about Hartmann and show him to be a disreputable character shaped by his experiences from growing up in Nazi Germany. Frankly, what the author had to say about Hartmann was not revelatory nor original. What's more: some of what he added in the book as a way to lend clarity to his argument about Hartmann were either historically inaccurate or little more than an empty filler to make the book more weighty and scholarly than it really is. For instance, the author referred several times to the German military of World War I as the Wehrmacht. There was no Wehrmacht between 1914 and 1918! The German military between 1871 (when Germany became a unified country) and 1918 was known officially as 'das Deutsche Heer' or the German Army. The Wehrmacht did not come into being until 1935, which was also when Hitler introduced mandatory conscription and the Luftwaffe was formally established as a distinct branch of the German armed forces.

This is the author's first book and I think - as some budding writers will do - he tried too hard to impress readers with weak arguments meant to show Hartmann as disingenuous and dishonest with his war record and his attitude about having fought for Germany. Well, if you're going to indict Erich Hartmann, the top fighter ace of all time, then you might as well indict every German man and woman who served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Certainly, some of them committed atrocities. But one cannot indict the Wehrmacht en masse for war crimes carried out by some in its ranks.

[Liam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have been fortunate enough to have read very few books, during the roughly fifty years since I learned to read, which left me with a strong desire to kick the author very hard right in the ass. This book is one of those few. In this particular case, however, I would be unable to kick the author in the ass without also kicking him in the head, since he seems to have inserted the latter into the former.

Arguably the worst fault of this execrable waste of paper is that it is largely an exercise in self-aggrandizement (if not outright egomania) spiked with a large helping of virtue-signifying. It is not a biography of anyone, least of all the late Erich Hartmann. The author did no original research whatsoever, and was absolutely dismissive (damned near libelous in some cases) of the authors responsible for virtually all published works on his supposed subject. At the same time, Mr. Schmidt is so unbelievably lazy that in many cases he lifted alleged quotes from secondary sources without bothering to check the original sources to ensure those quotes were accurate. In some cases, he didn't even bother to check the secondary sources he cites, but merely lifts both quote and citation from Wikipedia!!!

Mr. Schmidt claims, in the dust-jacket flap copy, to have earned "an MFA in creative nonfiction". I didn't know you could get a master's degree in bullshitting; at least I learned something from this book, assuming that claim is accurate.

Don't be fooled, kids: this is not biography, nor is it history. It is merely a couple of hundred pages of utter nonsense written by a man so abysmally stupid that he doesn't know the difference between "scintillating" and "titillating", and so absurdly arrogant that he believes no one will notice his incompetence and laziness as a researcher (not to mention his, at best, mediocre skill as a writer). It never fails to shock me when people who are both egregiously ignorant and aggressively stupid apparently believe themselves to be absolutely brilliant; in this case I am completely at a loss to imagine how this utter fool ever got a book deal in the first place, never mind getting the manuscript accepted and actually published. Whomever it was at Casemate who was responsible for those decisions ought to be summarily fired...

[Darren Martinez · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is terrible. First it has very little about Erich Hartman. Almost nothing about his combat career. Very few pictures. The pictures don’t even make a lot of sense. The author spends most of the time rambling about Holocaust deniers? And how he’s a better historian than earlier writers because he uses footnotes. I wouldn’t brag about being a superior historian when I wrote a book about Erich Hartman that said almost nothing about Erich Hartman but was about something else. One of the worst books I’ve ever read. He’s obsessed with trying to prove Hartman was a fervent nazi something most people would assume already. Don’t read this book if interested in military history. I later went to the internet to look up Erich Hartman and found more info pictures etc. than were in this book. Pathetic!

[Garrett Olinde · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author concentrated on putting Hartman into the context of the Nazi Regime he fought for. He did a good job, while showing that it was possible for many or most Germans not to have actively supported the Nazi aims. However, he implicates even the most innocent member of the Wehrmacht in furthering the goals of the Nazis by doing their duty.

At no point in the book, that I could see, did he address how a German could have refused to serve in the military. A refusal to serve would have resulted in a beating on the way to the recruit depot, or imprisonment, or worse of all he could be executed.

If Hartman had not volunteered to be a pilot, he probably would have been in the Army in a ground unit. He still would have been participating.

[Lew · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is not a strict biography of Erich Hartmann. It is really looking at how Nazi Germany impacted individuals specifically Hartmann and other Germans who served in the military during WWII. It is at times thought provoking whether I agreed with Mr. Schmidt or not. It definitely gives me a different perspective when I read another WWII German military memoirs.
Kudos to Keith Sellon-Wright, the narrator of this audio book. I found him easy to listen to.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, but shallow feeling dive into Eric Hartmann's life and career. The author seems to do a lot of editorializing, I rather just know the facts and move on. A whole chapter or two is dedicated to examining the attitudes towards ex WWII Luftwaffe pilots and soldiers which seemed to have little to do with Hartmann himself.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is some new information on Hartmann and some great descriptions of several events.
At other times the author gets hung up on minutiae of mindsets so that it reads like a psychology textbook. Is OK but not what I was looking for.

[Glenn Shirley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author never answers his own questions. Lots of insights, but no real answers. We are never going to know Erich Hartman’s personal views of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

[John R Urry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a biography, more of an argument the author has about the virtues and ideals of Nazi fighter pilots . A laborious read with no real ending .

[Kenneth Flusche · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too much guessing and speculating I understand why
Too much criticizing of books not on my to read list
still a good read with some useful information

[אסי]

nie będę ukrywać, spodziewałam się czegoś więcej. średnio przypadła mi do gustu dość chaotyczna narracja, pobieżnie traktująca o większości etapów życia hartmanna.

poza tym, mam wrażenie, jakby on sam autora niezbyt interesował, ewentualnie irytował. ciężko zrozumieć ostateczne zamiary przyświecające napisaniu tej książki. dość nużąca lektura.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author spent far more of the book dissuading those who have read more famous biographies of Hartmann from buying into Nazi whitewashing than you'd hope.