“You have no idea what we did!” Franz said, clenching his fists. He had watched his fellow fighter pilots fight bravely until they died, one by one, while The Party’s leadership called them “cowards,” deflecting the blame for the destruction of Germany’s cities onto them. In reality, Franz and his fellow fighter pilots never stood a chance against the Allies’ industrial might and endless warplanes. Of the twenty-eight thousand German fighter pilots to see combat in WWII, only twelve hundred survived the war.
