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Black Tulip
- The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Military & War
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Publisher's Summary
With over 1,404 wartime missions, Erich 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.
Hartmann 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. 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 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.
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What listeners say about Black Tulip
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Floyd Paulos
- 27-05-2021
absolutely awful. Don't waste your money.
90% padding & self indulgent woke political commentary ( just in case nobody knows that Nazism was bad) & 10% about aerial combat. I want a refund.
1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 25-05-2021
Poor book
Barely half this book is written about Erich, most of it is political ramblings from a typical western point of view, rather then explaining why the German people may have held certain views etc. A lot of stuff told is what the author thought Erich would have been thinking, or may have thought or could possibly have thought.... There is even multiple chapters devoted to scrutinising other authors that have written about Erich. This book flys all over the place, painting stains seems to be a strong point through the whole book, on as many people as he can, it’s more like the writings or ramblings of the authors views and feelings about everything that most of the time have nothing to do with Erich, more political and demonising of anyone German than interesting facts. The only reason I listened to the whole book is because I had to pay for it.
Poor book, I want my money back!
1 person found this helpful
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- Geoff Alford
- 17-06-2021
Mind numbingly boring German History lecture
I thought this book was supposed to be about a German WW2 fighter ace but I pulled the pin on it after Chapter 5 because it just repeated what is well known about German history. I should have realised during the preface when he writes well I’m not going to talk about all of his combat or words to that affect. I’ll be returning this mind numbing jibber.
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- Amazon Customer
- 29-05-2021
A well balanced epic history
A painstakingly well researched in depth look at the subject and cause and effect in a historical context. Love your work!
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- Lorne
- 02-03-2021
No good
Was waiting for this. The ww2 aviation aspect seems to be only few mins long. This is some sort of awkward thesis on him not being closely examined enough for his knowledge and complicity in all things Nazi. Fair enough but not really a compelling book. Peppered with Wikipedia grade research on a few topics (eg, paragraph on me163). Accuses previous authors of being armchair/ part time historians. Most of the time ,while I attempted to listen, my main thought was “what the heck is he trying to get at here”
5 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-07-2021
waste of time and money
author basically claims that all German pilots were closet Nazi racists and their biographies were all sugar coated to make them look better and not at all based on facts
1 person found this helpful
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- Megan M.
- 04-02-2022
Way too much nazi politics.
The story was great about Erich. I felt a lot of the book was about Nazi politics. So much so at times I thought I was reading another book altogether.
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- Ivan Arciniegas
- 20-01-2022
Real title should be. Convincing you Nazism is bad
Hey! I know the Nazis where bad. But I was not looking for a book to convince me of something I already know. I simply wanted a book to show me what makes a good pilot a good pilot. The book had hits of knowledge but is mostly an attempt to convince you again of something obvious. Is a disappointment and a waste of money and time. The book is title is deceiving. I will be buying the books that the this convincer spoke badly about this book.
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- Jet Utter
- 30-06-2021
Horrible!
I only stomached about half of the book. Hands down the worse read in about 80 titles. DO NOT purchase
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- Andrew Weeks
- 04-06-2021
Nothing new
No new ground. However entertaining as narration was excellent and subject matter is very interesting
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- Subway
- 08-05-2021
The Hartmann Bio You've Been Waiting For
While taking nothing away from Hartmann's achievements, this book goes well beyond the early post-war sycophantic hagiographies that placed Hartmann and other German aces on pedestals for adoration, presenting an academic-quality analysis that considers the fighter pilots' roles in the larger war, their places against the wartime and post-war political backdrops, and the part they played in post-war reconciliation. The author works in an appropriate amount of introspection that provides a good learning exercise for readers who may wish to examine their own attitudes.
Well-researched, written, and read -- highly recommended for anyone wishing to consider the Luftwaffe jagdflieger experience in context during and after the war.
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