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  • Black Tulip

  • The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace
  • By: Erik Schmidt
  • Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
  • Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
  • 3.2 out of 5 stars (16 ratings)

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Black Tulip cover art

Black Tulip

By: Erik Schmidt
Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
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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.

©2020 Erik Schmidt (P)2021 Tantor

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    1 out of 5 stars

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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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.

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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!

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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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