It really is like seeing a film negative compared to the original printed image. Where Wolfgang Faust is glorifying in the gore and lurid descriptions of Soviet atrocities, Rudel is explaining orders, regimental movements, relative speeds between aircraft and the minutae of a combat pilot. Where Hank Chinaski is a worthless bar-fly who will call a day successful if he merely avoids shitting himself, Rudel is leading a bomber command and often destroys ten Soviet T-34 tanks a day. Where Bukowski is a masterful writer, Rudel is dull and factual. Ladies, I present to you Hans Ulrich Rudel’s Stuka Pilot memoir of his experiences throughout WW2. Now, would I be able to find a book that represented the opposite of these two? A successful businessman in post-war Germany, Hans Ulrich Rudel died in 1982.The last two books I reviewed were, respectively, a beautifully written pseudo-memoir about a degenerate alcoholic who achieved nothing in life, and a trashy pseudo-memoir full of blood’n’guts on the WW2 Eastern Front. His memoirs, Stuka Pilot, was published in 1958. Rudel returned to West Germany in 1953 and joined the neo-Nazi German Reich Party. In both these books Rudel was seen to be promoting Nazi ideas and attempts were made to stop the publication of his war diary, Nevertheless, being published in West Germany. He followed this with Daggerthrust or Legend, a book that attacked those members of the German Army that had not given their full support to Adolf Hitler.
In We Frontline Soldiers and Our Opinion to Rearmament of Germany he advocated a new war in the Soviet Union in order to obtain German Lebensraum.
On 8th May, 1945, Rudel flew his Ju-87 Stuka to the American Zone in order to avoid capture by the Soviets.Īfter the Second World War he moved to Argentina where he worked for the State Airplane Works. After having one leg amputated he was back on duty six weeks later. On 9th February he was shot down over the Soviet Union. In January, 1945, Rudel was awarded the Golden Oakleaves and was promoted to the rank of colonel. During this period he was shot down nearly thirty times by anti-aircraft fire. Rudel flew 2,530 sorties and claimed to have destroyed 519 Soviet tanks on the Eastern Front. On 18th July, 1941, Rudel was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class. Later that year he provided air support for Operation Barbarossa. He took part in the airborne invasion of Crete in May 1941. In May 1940 Rudel was accepted to join a Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombing flying course. On 11th October, 1939, Rudel was awarded an Iron Cross 2nd Class. On the outbreak of the Second World War Rudel flew reconnaissance missions during the invasion of Poland. After leaving school he joined the Luftwaffe. Hans Ulrich Rudel, the son of a Protestant minister, was born in Konradswaldau, Germany, on 2nd July 1916.
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