I liked this book even more than [b:Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption|8664353|Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption|Laura Hillenbrand|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327861115s/8664353.jpg|12946965], although I don't want to make too many comparisons between these two books.
Franz is a really interesting guy. He was been excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and while that didn't seem to bother him so very much, he said the rosary daily. He didn't commune for more than 20 years!
He also had many interesting friendships with unique men, such as Steinhof (who mercifully shot down a plane rather than watch the pilot burn to death), Marseille (who put away his many girl friends for one in particular), Galland (who certainly risked his life by defying Goring), and many others, who just intrigue me.
Likes:
*This book makes me want to read more books about WWII Aces.
*Interesting characters, you can see that I listed a few above.
*Good character for many individuals in the story. Men who want to do the right thing. (IE: Franz stopped counting his victories, because it wasn't about victories for him.)
*This book has redeeming value for Germans involved in the war. As the book points out, not all Germans were Nazis.
*I've loved ME109s since I first learned about the little planes.
*Books like this remind me of how ugly war is, and how it quickly destroys a beautiful and product place like Germany, Syria, or the Ukraine. As MASH points out, war is worse then Hell, because there are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but most people impacted by war are innocent. (Take Franz, for instance.)
Dislikes:
*It is sad to me that the book was published after the death of both Franz and Charlie.