Both adults had a habit of downplaying their service in the war. From the bird’s-eye perspective of pilots, they had seen the stacks of muddy corpses between the battle lines. When Germany lost the first war, the two men lost their jobs. In the Treaty of Versailles, the victorious French, British, and Americans stipulated that the German Air Force was to dissolve and the Army and Navy were to disarm. Germany also needed to hand over its overseas colonies, allow foreign troops to occupy its western borderlands, and pay 132 billion Deutsche Marks in damages (about $400 billion today).
