The habit of lumping together groups of people â?? often furriners, but not always â?? into an undifferentiated mass is one of the Naval Diplomatâ??s pet peeves. There is no â??the Chinese,â? â??the Japanese,â? or other groups whose members all purportedly think alike. A related, and perhaps even more baleful habit is assuming that enemies are uniformly wicked. Which brings us to a new book about World War II from co-authors Adam Makos and Larry Alexander. (Thanks to my amphibian pal Commander Salamander for the tip.) Titled A Higher Call, the book chronicles the life of Franz Stigler, a fighter ace in the German Luftwaffe, or air force.
An airline pilot who hailed from Bavaria, Stigler joined the Luftwaffe when recruiters made him an offer he couldnâ??t refuse. He battled Britainâ??s Desert Air Force over North Africa, fought against Patton and Montgomery in Sicily, and ended up opposing the Allied combined bomber offensive against Germany. Just before Christmas time in 1943, he had a chance to bring down a crippled straggler from a massive B-17 raid against his homeland. Stigler passed up the chance. His forbearance stemmed from a code of honor that forbade attacking helpless enemies. That code bound combat pilots even in Germanyâ??s life-and-death struggle against the Grand Alliance. Long after the war Stigler met and befriended Charlie Brown, the U.S. Army Air Forces pilot whose life he had spared.
Read Full Article »