Ace of the Black Cross: The Memoirs of Ernst Udet

Reissue, with a new introduction.  xiv, 202pp, with some black and white plate illustrations.  Black cloth-covered boards, gilt titles on the spine.  8vo.  Volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout.  Dust wrapper just a little bumped on extreme edges.

Udet, the First World War German Ace of Aces, second only the famous Red Baron, writes in a jaunty, almost Boys’ Own style, of his experiences as a fighter pilot above the horrific trench warfare.  After the war, he became a stunt pilot and a star of the silver screen.  The second world war was a very different experience for him,  He became director-general of equipment for the Luftwaffe but it was a role to which he was ill-suited and he increasingly became disillusioned with the Nazi leadership.  In 1941 he shot himself, leaving a scrawled message for Goring claiming he had been betrayed. These are his memoirs, first published in 1935, when he was still enamoured with the life of a pilot and the national socialist movement that was sweeping his country.  It is a classic of aviation history.