The Luftwaffe: From the North Cape to Tobruk, 1939 - 1945. An Illustrated History. Translated from the German by Don Cox.
1991 · West Chester, PA
by Nauroth, Holger.
West Chester, PA: Schiffer Military History, (1991). Octavo, gray illustrated cloth (hardcover), marbled endpapers, 235 pp + [v] pp ads. Former-owner bookplate; otherwise, Fine in a Fine dust jacket. From dust jacket: This new book on the Luftwaffe has few of the “heroic” pictures and none of the typical aircraft photos of that era. Instead, these 500 photographs show the day-to-day life as experienced by the hundreds of thousands who served the Luftwaffe. Picture for picture, this collection of photos gives a singularly unique perspective on service life with the flying units. These are the mechanics, the maintenance crews and other ground personnel, the raido operators and the pilots. Photos of flight operations on all fronts, of maintenance work, of flight preparations, of the long wait for aircraft that never returned. For those who were directly involved, the photograph is a natural way to graphically bring back long-forgotten memories: for those who didn’t experience that harsh period of time, the photograph provides a better and more informative understanding. These feelings are enhanced knowing that none of the photos in this collection were taken from the material recorded by the official propaganda photographers of the time. Instead, the vast majority of the material in this book comes from private sources, hidden for years in dusty shoeboxes. Luftwaffe operations during the Second World War are portrayed in approximately 500 photos, most of them published here for the first time. Within these pages you’ll not only find the famous heroes, but also those everyday pilots, ground crew, and others upon whose faces were etched the strain of war. (Inventory #: 60890bd)