"Wilderness" by Robert Penn Warren, A Novel Of The Civil War and Early American Immigration

"Wilderness" is a 1961 novel by Robert Penn Warren. The protagonist is a Jewish immigrant from Germany who has been born with a club foot but desires to immigrate to America and "fight for freedom". The story begins in his native country where he decides to leave for America after realizing he has little hope for a good future at home. His father was killed in riots in Berlin while fighting against government troops. He has been supported and assisted by an uncle who is also a rabbi. As Adam Rosenzweig prepares to leave, he is given several religious objects by his uncle which he carries, but uses little, during the length of the novel. The uncle also provides Adam with the address of an old friend who had previously emigrated to America and become wealthy as a businessman after beginning his life as a pack trader. Pack traders, many of whom were Jewish, traveled the roads of America carrying and selling a multitude of common household items in large backpacks. In order for Adam to get to America, he signs on with a human trafficker who is providing immigrants to both sides of the Civil War to fight as soldiers. The most important object Adam owns is a very well made leather boot which a cobbler friend made for him to help compensate for is club foot. While on the ship to America, the other men learn of Adam's disability and he becomes the "least of the least"on the ship since he is now known as being very unlikely to be accepted as a soldier. He is now forced to do the most menial chores aboard ship to compensate for his passage and the captain intends to actually prevent him from leaving the ship and retaining his as slave labor for the return voyage to Germany. But one of the crew gives Adam some advice just before the ship comes to port in New York which allows him to escape the vessel. He lands in New York with nothing and a very powerful scene ensues in which Adam, lost, alone, and hungry, finds the body of a black man hanging from a lamp post where he has been lynched in ongoing race riots. Adam finds himself the next day being dragged into one of those riots which is engaged in the murder of another black man. Adam finds himself being pursued by some of the rioters but manages to escape by running into the door of what turns out to be a house in which several black people are hiding. The rioters break in and Adam finds himself in the basement hiding in the dark where no one's race or color can be recognized. The rioters flood the basement and Adam finds himself being pulled above the waterline by a black man who turns out to be an employee of the man Adam was told to seek out when he got to New York. When the rioters disappear, the black man takes Adam, who is very ill, to the home of their benefactor, the rich Jewish trader. The trader has had a son killed in the Civil War and offers to make Adam his adopted son. Adam refuses the offer and is, instead, placed with a very abusive and coarse trader who needs a wagon driver to drive a wagon load of supplies south to sell to whichever troops of either side they might contact. The group consists of Adam, the trader Jed Hawksworth, and his black employee Mose who is actually an escaped slave as the book reveals in the long run. The three characters make a slow trip south to connect with fighting troops and are a truly odd collection of equally damaged characters who have simply fallen into each other's company. Mose, who has been savagely beaten by previous owners, becomes a friend of Adam but eventually kills Hawksworth and runs away. Adam, fearing that he will be blamed for the murder, buries Hawksworth in the woods, takes one of the wagons, and heads out to find Union troops which he can join to live out his dream of "fighting for freedom". I won't spoil the ending for you by fulling disclosing what happens from here on out. I will say that I have read several of Robert Penn Warren's books and this is just as good a novel as any the man who won two Pulitzer Prizes ever wrote. It addresses issues of war, racism, hatred, segregation, immigration, disability, and discrimination as well as any novel I have ever read. It is a powerful book which has fallen by the wayside of American Literature even though it is a fine piece of work by a man who should have been another of America's Novel winners. Robert Penn Warren is, in my opinion, just as great a writer as Hemingway, Steinbeck, Buck, or any other American who has ever been described as great. If you read the book, be forewarned that the novel does use the language of the time in which it was set and you will encounter several of the epithets which are not allowe in polite society today. But the novel is far greater than any of its detractors claim it to be simply because they are prejudiced against the language of America in the 1860's. Read it and you will see that I am correct.

"Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, A Book Everyone Should Read

Over the past ten days, I have written two other blog posts which were prompted by a book which I have just completed this morning, August 23, 2023, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, the popular television host.  The first post, entitled "Fascism In America, Yesterday And Today", was written and posted on August 13, 2023.  The second post, entitled "TRAITOR Trump, Adolph Hitler, And The Big Lie", was written and posted just yesterday, August 22, 2023.  In general, I rarely write more than one blog post about any book I have read.  The two examples of such books I have written about more than once recently are "The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey" by Candice Millard, and Bob Deans excellent book,  "The River Where America Began: A Journey Along The James".  

Each of those books is important in their own way as historical writing.  But neither of them is as important as Rachel Maddow's book about the history of early twentieth century attempts to bring Fascism to America. This is a book which is fully loaded with multiple warnings and historical accounts of those attempts to turn the United States into a Fascist stronghold and is an incredibly important book for every concerned American to read before they ever step into a voting booth again.  It is an incredibly well researched and documented book whose only flaw is that the writing itself is not the kind that wins literary prizes or leaves the reader consistently spellbound But Dr. Maddow has done a beautiful job of digging through vast piles of dusty, and often obscure, records to document an earlier time when Facism was gravely endangering America. Yes, she is Dr. Maddow, and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Oxford University and her research proves she earned it honestly.  In this book, she also does a fine job of proving that Fascism still endangers America today, and is actually doing so in a far more terrifying  way than it did in the 1930's and 1940's.  Although she does not make that claim word for word in the book, any intelligent reader can easily decipher the intent of the book.  In my opinion, it is a precursor to a second upcoming book about the ongoing Fascist threat in America and a historically based warning about the imminence of that threat. 

I'd like to use a few choice excerpts from the book to prove the point I just made in the earlier sentence about the present danger to America which is posed by TRAITOR Trump and those who support him.  The first instance in which the book convinced me that Dr. Maddow was on the right track came in her discussion of the efforts of Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, a North Carolina Democrat who used immigrants as scapegoats for his efforts to support Facism just as TRAITOR Trump has been doing for the past 10 years or so.  Reynolds used these words: 

"...seeping into this country by the thousands every single month...to take the jobs which rightly belong" to Americans.  "I wish to say, and I say it without the slightest hesitation--that if I had my way about it at this hour, I would build a wall about the United States so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of the earth could possibly scale or ascend it." (Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, page 220) 

As I said when I first wrote about this book, as soon as I read that quote the person who popped into my head was TRAITOR Trump.  Those words sound as if they probably came directly out of his mouth in some rambling rant in front of a crowd of a few thousand of his Fascist and TREASONOUS cult members. That moment is when I first began to realize just how important this book is as we face the most important election in the United States at least since 1860.  If we get this election wrong, this country and American Democracy will not survive the next four years.  On November 5, 2024, American voters are faced with the most clear cut choice in an election in the history of this country.  It is an election in which we are confronted with a choice between a Prosecutor and a Convicted Felon, a Patriot and a TRAITOR, a Skilled Supporter of Sexual Assault Victims and a Serial Rapist, Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, a Powerful Future and a Future Disaster which will not leave a single individual constitutional right intact.  It is purely a choice between Good and Evil.  As a nation and as individuals, we cannot get this choice wrong.  Our entire Democracy is at stake, nothing less!

The next quotation from Maddow's book which I have heard many times, but which struck me immediately in comparison to TRAITOR Trump was this one about Adolph Hitler's Big Lie and is a direct quote from his book, "Mein Kampf": 

 " The great masses, he wrote, "will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies.  Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the impossibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others."  (Rachel Maddow, quoting from "Mein Kampf", in "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", page 237. )

Let me also say, in clarification, that TRAITOR Trump's name is not even mentioned in this book.  But his grossly leering shadow is all through it.  His use of Adolph Hitler's Big Lie is the foundation on which his efforts to gain, abuse, misuse, misconstrue, misappropriate power, and destroy American is based.  He is first and foremost a pathological liar, and uses those lies to mislead, confuse, and control those members of his cult who are susceptible to them.  Just as Adolph Hitler did until the day of his death, TRAITOR Trump uses grandiose, unsupportable lies to gain power over people.  It is his favorite tool in his quest to destroy the world around him along with anyone who has sufficient courage to confront him.  While it is his favorite tool, it is not his only tool.  He also uses fear, intimidation, bribery, psychological manipulation, and a variety of other skills which he developed in his years as a juvenile delinquent son in the shadow of an enabling and destructive father.  If you doubt that statement, read his niece Mary Trump's Book, "Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man." You might also consider that 40 of 44 people who served him in his cabinet refuse to endorse him today.  And 40 lawyers who have all worked in the Department of Justice under Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush have all endorsed Kamala Harris.  One of those lawyers actually is previous Attorney General and numerous others were Deputy Attorneys General.  The people who know him and the danger he represents to America are trying desperately to tell the rest of the country the truth about his TREASON!

But as the book progresses in telling the story of early Fascist attempts in America, it becomes a genuine historical biography of one of the worst crime schemes ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting nation, its government, and its people.  Hitler's propaganda machine in America was under the charge of one George Sylvester Viereck who was able to engage the support of the great American flyer Charles Lindbergh and several members of the United States Congress.  They jointly established a scheme in which congress members who had the incredible power of "franking" which allowed them to mail nearly any written matter they chose to as many people as they chose in the country with the bill for the postage being paid by the United States government.  Maddow documents a top secret telegram from the German Charge' D'affaires in Washington to his superior in Berlin in which he said:

"These speeches, whose aim is to prevent America's entry into the war and to ward off all attacks from interventionist politicians, will be printed each time in the American parliamentary publication, the Congressional Record, by these Senators and Congressmen, and then an edition of 50,000 to 1 million copies will be sent by them to specially chosen persons.  In this manner, German influence is not visible to the outside, and, thanks to the privilege of free postage enjoyed by American Congressmen, the cost of this large scale propaganda can be kept disproportionately low..." ("Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", by Rachel Maddow, page 242)

Later in the book, Maddow points out that the Justice Department official O. John Rogge was able to document at least 24 members of congress who willingly assisted Viereck in his scheme to use "franking" to distribute Nazi propaganda to the citizens of the country at taxpayer expense.  Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly: "If 24 members of congress were induced by Germany in the 1930's and 1940's to support the German propaganda effort, in today's world with much more technically advanced means of communication and concealment of the transfer of monetary funds worldwide, and with Right Wing Radical Repugnican people in congress such as Marjorie Taylor Green, George Santos, Ted Cruz,  James Comer, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan, Thomas Massie, Louie Gomert, and Matt Gaetz, just how difficult would it be for Russia and Putin to construct just as destructive and treasonous operation in congress?" Be honest with yourself when you answer that question!

 

O. John Rogge, the Assistant Attorney General who had uncovered Viereck's scheme as well as the identities of his congressional coconspirators, went to the Attorney General as he was about to depart from the Department of Justice on a speaking tour about his findings, was denied that permission and, bravely stated that he intended to do so anyway, He began his speaking tour and, after his first night's speech was delivered the message by an FBI agent that he had been fired as he sat in a Washington State airport waiting out a weather delay to proceed to another city for another such speech.

In the conclusion of the book, Maddow talks about the fact that the subject(s) of this book, attempted Fascism and those who perpetrated and supported it are still being followed by others who are just as dangerous to democracy and America.  She says this in conclusion: 

"If we're willing to take the harder look at our American history with Fascism, the truth is that our own story in this wild, uncertain twenty-first century has not an echo in the past but a prequel.  For our turn in history--and for the next time this comes around too--we have the advantage of knowing what preceded us.  The story of what it took, inside and outside the government, to stop the violent American ultra-right in the run up to World War II--that's a gift from the smart, brave, determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing Americans who went before us.  If we learn it, and we choose it, we can inherit their work."  (Rachel Maddow, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", Page 326) 

That concluding paragraph from the book tells us all we need to know in order to what we should have been doing all along, "If we learn it, and we choose it, we can inherit their work."  That should the goal and the daily effort of every patriotic American in today's world, to inherit the work of those same "...smart, brave determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing Americans who went before us."  in the perpetual fight against Fascism, Nazism, Communism, TREASON, Insurrection, Desertion, and the generalized abandonment of the values which motivated the Founding Fathers to build the greatest democracy on the face of the earth. 

 

 

 

   

TRAITOR Trump, Adolph Hitler, And The Big Lie

 

Adolph Hitler

I am in the process of reading Rachel Maddow's book, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", which  I have already written one blog post that was prompted by information contained in her book. She discusses in several places in the book the work done by the infamous Joseph Goebbels who ran Hitler's propaganda efforts worldwide.  She also includes the following quotation from Adolph Hitler's book which served as a major building board on which his attempt to conquer and subjugate the entire world was built,  "Mein Kampf":

" The great masses, he wrote, "will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies.  Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the impossibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others."  (Rachel Maddow, quoting from "Mein Kampf", in "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", page 237. )

That quote from the book is the basis of what we know today as The Big Lie, especially as it has been practiced by TRAITOR Trump.   To simplify what The Big Lie actually means, it boils down to this: If you tell most people a lie so grand and extravagant, they will believe it easier than they would a relatively mild mannered and simple lie. TRAITOR Trump is not the first would be dictator, despot, or cult leader to use The Big Lie.  But no one on earth has perfected The Big Lie to the point that TRAITOR Trump has.  We see and hear repeatedly of incidents, both public and private, in which TRAITOR Trump is using The Big Lie or making references to issues which he wishes to portray as destructive to America or to support other lesser, but still markedly dangerous, lies he is telling nearly every time he opens his mouth.  This link discusses his half-hearted denial of a frequently seen allegation that  he kept a book of Hitler's speeches at his bedside for much of his life.   The quotation below comes from an article written by Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex and discusses his dependence on The Big Lie with well researched and documented proof of that fact:

"Our study systematically documents a new feature of
American political life: roughly one- fourth of the country
and half of the Republican Party rank and file say that they
buy into the idea that the election was stolen from
President Trump. Across the 40 days of our study  
acceptance of this big lie was pervasive, sticky, and consequential.This echoes a dynamic typically observed in
authoritarian regimes, in which a charismatic leader creates
blatant falsehoods to justify his hold on power and requires
everyone to behave as if those lies are true. Donald Trump
eschewed the long democratic tradition of stepping aside
and pledging support to his opponent once the results
were no longer in doubt to any reasonable observer."  ( "Donald Trump and The Lie", by Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, page 17, available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A438DF5A45FE78CB2BC887859EFAB587/S1537592722000901a.pdf/donald_trump_and_the_lie.pdf) 

Arcenaux and Truex go on to say this about support for The Big Lie even from Republicans who don't actually believe the election was stolen from Trump.  They state that " The results from the conjoint experiment illustrate that  whether Republicans really believe that the election was  not stolen from Trump, many will reward Republican candidates who claim that it was."  That kind of deceptive acceptance of The Big Lie even when those who are accepting of it know better is a truly fearful response and identical to what happened among German citizens after Adolph Hitler rose to power and his Fascism spread across the country.  As we grow daily closer to the November election, we also grow closer to the day when each of us who steps into a voting booth must make a personal decision concerning for whom and what future for America we will choose to support.  My personal decision about this election was made at least as soon as that fateful day on June 16, 2015, when TRAITOR Trump came down that garish escalator and espoused the lie that he was fit to lead the greatest democracy in the world.  He was never fit to do that job and, if he lived to be a thousand, he will never be fit.  This election is beautifully and simply bifurcated into two clear cut existential opposites.  It is about Democracy versus Fascism, Patriotism versus TREASON, Freedom versus Tyranny, Prosecutor versus Convicted Felon, Right versus Wrong, and Good versus Evil.  The answer is simple.  Do what you should have been doing all along, VOTE STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC, Every Election, Every Race!  Then the country will be fine! 

Watching The Documentary "Big Sonia" July 5, 2019

A couple of nights ago, on July 5, 2019, my wife and I watched the award winning documentary "Big Sonia" on the Scientology Network.  Lately, we have watched a few documentaries on this network which still leaves me somewhat apprehensive as it should since I firmly believe that the so-called "religion" is  nothing more or less than one of the most dangerous cults in the world.  For that reason, I have not included a link to their website in this blog post.  Enough said about that topic.  The documentary was released in 2016 and I had never known about it until now.  It is a documentary about Sonia Warshawski who was 91 at the time the movie was made.  She is a Jewish Polish born survivor of the Holocaust and was imprisoned by the Germans when she was in her early teen years.  Nearly her entire family were victims of the Holocaust and she had to watch her father and brother removed by the SS never to be seen again.  She watched her mother marched into the gas chamber but somehow managed to survive until liberation by the Allies.  She met and married her husband in the death camps and they came to America where they ran a tailor shop until his death.  

Sonia continued to operate the shop in a dying mall until she finally received an eviction notice as the owners prepared to sell the severely deteriorated property.  But, simultaneously, she was speaking in any forum available to her, about her experiences in the Holocaust including prisons and schools.  Sonia Warshawski is presumably still alive at this writing and is a tiny force of nature in her 90's at a time when most of her age peers are long dead.  Her story should be required viewing for every student in school in America, in every prison and jail, and in every church of the more mainstream denominations. I have not seen a more inspiring, and on some key levels, terrifying documentary in many years.  

At this time in America, we have seen racism, hate speech, hate crimes, and all other forms of Right Wing Radical acts expanding and sweeping across the country just as any other virulent disease would. Those acts have included murder as seen in Charlottesville, Virginia; beatings, harassment, and arson all across the country.  And as this has been happening, the nameless TRAITOR who currently illegally occupies the White House based on his TREASON with Russia has not attempted to say or do anything stop it because of his own clearly delineated acts of hatred, racism, ignorance, and up to the caging of babies.  America and American Democracy are in greater danger than they have been in more than 60 years and we need a thousand people like Sonia Warshawski speaking out against hatred, calling the perpetrators to task for their crimes, and serving as examples for the entire human race.  As a nation, we simply cannot afford to allow these crimes to persist!  We cannot allow their perpetrators to go unpunished!  We cannot stand by and watch our country turned into a Third World bastion of all these destructive, racist, misogynistic, debilitating, and corrosive values.  Watch this documentary the first chance you get!  Tell every friend you have to watch!  Practice the values which Sonia Warshawski expresses in the movie and tell the entire world that Sonia Warshawski is an American Heroine. 

"Black Earth The Holocaust As History And Warning" by Timothy Snyder---Book Review

Ever since its release date of September 8, 2015, I had been seeing this book quoted in all sorts of legitimate writing both in the public media and in more academic articles about World War II, the Holocaust, genocide, and totalitarian governments.  I am always involved in reading, research, and writing about liberal issues, dystopian governments, totalitarian governments, etc. and became particularly involved in these issues with the tragic rise to prominence of the TRAITOR & International Terrorist Trump.  But I never ordered the book because my to be read list is always too long.  Then in October 2017 my wife, Candice, and I took a long vacation in the Desert Southwest.  On October 6, 2017, we happened to visit the El Paso Holocaust Museum which will receive a much deserved post on this blog sometime soon. When we completed out tour and went into the gift shop, the first thing to catch my eye was a copy of this book which I immediately bought.  I finally finished reading it a few weeks ago and should have done so before October 2017 had passed.  

Photo Of Timothy Snyder by The Book Haven

"Black Earth..." is a wonderful piece of historical writing by one of the true experts on the subjects of the Holocaust, World War II, and Eastern Europe.  Timothy Snyder has written a dozen or so books on a wide ranging list of subjects in at least four languages.  It is reported in the latest issue of "The Nation" that he has just released his latest book, "The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America". Mr. Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and is said to be able to do research in at least eight languages.  To say the least, he is a prolific author, highly acclaimed professor, and prodigious researcher.  The worst thing I can say about "Black Earth..." or Mr. Snyder is that he writes like a Yale professor of history.  By that I mean that this is a complex, well researched, lengthy, and studious book.  But do not let that keep you from reading it.  The broad ranging analysis and statistical examination of the Holocaust, Hitler's ideas, and the execution of the war across all of Europe is highly educational and worthy of your time.  The last three chapters and the conclusion are the least amount of this book that anyone should allow themselves to skip by with reading.  On page 320 in the conclusion, Snyder writes "There is little reason to think that we are ethically superior to the Europeans of the 1930's and 1940's, or for that matter less vulnerable to the kind of ideas that Hitler so successfully promulgated and realized."  That statement is absolutely true about America today.  

We are seeing a time in our country where a usurper, TRAITOR, international terrorist, racist,  demagogue, and would be dictator has been allowed to conspire and commit TREASON with an enemy of America and is still tolerated by a significant portion of America and allowed to live inside the White House with the assistance of a Russian Owned Criminal Syndicate.  In early May, TRAITOR and international terrorist Trump stated that immigrants "...aren't people. These are animals."  Those very same words were spoken by his hero, Adolph Hitler about Jews before and during the Holocaust.  On several other occasions, TRAITOR and international terrorist Trump has used words written and spoken by Adolph Hitler.  His followers, just as Hitler's followers did, cheer him on during these occasions, defend his use of them afterwards, and base their own hate filled actions on such quotes and actions.  Timothy Snyder is dead center on target when he says that "...there is little reason to think we are ethically superior...".  It is my sincere hope and heartfelt suggestion that each of you who reads this book review will also read "Black Earth...", take the information and ideas it contains to heart, and take future actions to prevent the possibility that another Holocaust directed Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants, the poor, the elderly, and the young can arise in America.  

A Higher Call By Adam Makos with Larry Alexander--Book Review

Adam Makos with Larry Alexander 2012 A Higher Call ( New York, Penguin Random House)

After seeing some television publicity for this book, I decided to read it even though I have never read a lot of WWII literature.  This book is not a classic but it is well worth the time to read.  The book will hold your interest and keep you turning pages until the end.  But it has many of the typical drawbacks of a book written with a ghost writer.  The book tells the story of what might have been the most unusual encounter between German and American military personnel during WWII.  In some ways, the story is reminiscent of the famous Christmas Truce of WWI in which British and German troops instituted a temporary cease fire on Christmas Day 1914 across trenches. "A Higher Call" tells the story of an encounter between Charles Brown, an Appalachian West Virginia farm boy turned bomber pilot, and Franz Stigler, a German Messerschmitt pilot and full fledged aerial ace over the skies of Germany near the end of WWII.  

Brown and his crew were on their first bombing run flying in the rear position of a squadron of bombers.  That position in a squadron was always assigned to the newest crew because it gave them a chance to watch ahead to see what the other pilots were doing.  But it was also the first place in a squadron that German fighter pilots attacked since they usually made their first approach from above and behind.  In the fire fight, Brown's plane was literally riddled with German fire and according to every person who saw the plane it was literally on the verge of being unable to stay airborne.  Franz Stigler was not in the initial group of planes that attacked the squadron.  Somehow, Brown and his co-pilot were able to keep the bomber aloft after the firefight ended and peeled off to try to return to their base in England.  Stigler got airborne and was searching for planes that might be stragglers or wounded.  He spotted Brown's bomber and made an initial approach to shoot it down which would have given him his last necessary kill to receive the Iron Cross, Germany's most coveted military award for fighter pilots.  

But as Stigler approached the bomber for his customary close in kill, he realized that it was deeply, gravely damaged.  The rear of the plane was nearly destroyed.  The tail gunner was dead, hanging in his safety harness. The rear turret was nearly blown off the airplane. Only one gun on the plane was in working order.  Several of the crew were wounded.  The rear stabilizers were damaged beyond what would be considered remotely safe to fly even in a straight line. The plane was perforated by machine gun fire from end to end. Stigler was a devout Catholic and had been trained by a man who was also highly honorable and had told Stigler long before that if he "ever saw him shoot down a pilot hanging in his parachute, I will kill you myself".  Stigler realized that Brown's plane was attempting to return to its base in England and would need to fly over a coastal antiaircraft battery which would surely finish the plane and its crew.  He flew alongside the plane and tried to signal with his hands, since Brown also had no useful radio, to tell Brown to change his route to avoid the flak zone.  Brown did not understand and kept flying toward the coast. In desperation, Stigler fell into place near the plane hoping the antiaircraft gunners would believe he was simply allowing the wounded plane to get over open water before he shot it down.  The gunners fell for the bait.  Stigler flew alongside Brown until he was safely over open water on his way to England, saluted Brown, and peeled off to return to his base.

Stigler knew that if the story ever made into the German military command, he would be summarily executed for dereliction of duty.  Stigler never told a soul until many years later when he had successfully immigrated to Canada.  Brown and his crew made it back to England and reported the truth of what happened and were nominated for medals by their commanding officer.  But the US and Allied command immediately put a gag order on the episode and declared it Top Secret.  The crew got no medals.  Many years later, when he was an aircraft manufacturing executive in Florida, Brown advertised in German language WWII newspapers to try to find the pilot who had saved his crew.  He left out several key details of the incident in his letters to the papers and eventually Stigler heard of the effort by Brown, learned who Brown was, and contacted him.  Both men had been deeply affected by the incident and eventually became life long friends, often referring to each other as brothers.  They made speaking engagements together, talked on the phone on nearly a daily basis, and shared a deep, almost spiritual relationship.

Despite any deficiencies the book has due to the ghost writer, it does a wonderful job of describing the incident and the effect it had on Stigler and Brown.  It focuses almost entirely on the war career of Stigler with little emphasis on the war career of Brown.  It also says as little as possible about the relationship between the two after their reunion.  In these respects, the book is deeply deficient.  But the book also does a good job of telling the story of how many Germans were deeply opposed to Hitler and the Nazis while remaining deeply committed to their country.  There were many people, even in the German military, who knew how horrible Hitler and the Nazis were, how terrible their efforts to annihilate the Jews and other minorities were, and how devastating the Nazi actions were to the German character, reputation, and morale. Every one of those people placed their very lives in danger by holding such views.  There was a real resistance in Germany during WWII and the heroes and heroines of that resistance deserve to have their stories told. 

After WWII ended, Franz Stigler found himself ostracized in Germany because the German people believed that the fighter pilots had failed Germany by not protecting them from the Allied bombing which led to the end of the war.  As a former fighter pilot, Stigler found it nearly impossible to get any kind of job even down to the most menial of labor.  He chose to emigrate to Canada and it turned out to be the best thing he could have done.  He prospered in Canada and even owned a fully restored Messerschmitt fighter plane which he used to act as the "bad guy" at air shows all over North America traveling and flying with the very men he had fought against in the war.  The story of Stigler and Brown is a story that deserves to be told, deserves to be read, and deserves to be repeated by others who are forced into enmity by unjust governments.  Buy the book!  Read it!  Come to understand that not all Germans were evil during WWII.