Germany’s First World War Aviators

This book offers new methodological approaches that contextualize the lives of German First World War aviators through the iconography that created their image, the act of killing and rituals of death in aerial combat, and the collapsing perceptions of space and time created by the world’s first aerial conflict. Readers will encounter pilots and observers who endured the violent experience of flying aircraft made of wood and canvas while struggling for survival in an environment that could just as easily kill and maim through mechanical or structural failure as well as through combat. Embedded in this history are aviators who forged a new kind of warfare, overcame remarkable physical and psychological injuries, and cemented the public idea of the fighter pilot. In doing so, they established aviation as a site of memory, mourning, and meaning-making, which, in the aftermath of defeat, became a significant pillar in the rhetoric used to fuel the rise of Fascism and Nazism. This volume will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of the First World War and modern Germany, as well as to general readers interested in First World War aviation.