The History of the Luftwaffe - A Phoenix Rising
From the ashes of the fires lit in the dog-fights of the skies above the carnage of World War I, a phoenix would rise- the Luftwaffe of the Third Reich. No ordinary air force, the Luftwaffe was to become the handmaiden of Hitler's dream of conquest and a vital component of 'blitzkrieg' or 'lightning war'. However the glories won in Poland, Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium and finally France, as the Nazis marched, victorious, through Europe, were to turn sour. The fuehrer's continual demands upon his air force, as he fanatically pursued his 'Grand design' forced the Luftwaffe into the of workhorse, though incompetence, intrigue and greed amongst its commanders made the task near impossible. Starved of new planes and pilots to fly them, stretched across two fronts in Europe and playing a vital role in North Africa, Goering's elite corps was fatally flawed. This tragic story chronicles the initial brilliant success of the Luftwaffe in Europe, its structure and tactics and the inherit weakness that were to drag the phoenix once again to its inescapable consummation within the fires of Berlin. The story told using very rare footage only recently obtained from the eastern block and not seen in the west since the war.
