A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

by Adam Makos

  “What do you see tonight?” Franz asked her. Looking up, he saw the sky was clear. Hiya turned to him and said with a smile, “Tonight we can sleep.” Franz smiled gently at the little girl, although his eyes were sad.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Mr. Greisse walked with Franz to the train station. The platform was crowded with people sleeping on benches and others waiting in long lines, staring at their toes while facing the empty tracks. Soldiers milled about checking papers.

  Mr. Greisse was bound for Berlin and Franz was headed home to Amberg. Mr. Greisse apologized for not being able to help Franz’s mother. Franz reassured him that she would be fine because he would send her his pilot’s salary.

  Mr. Greisse shook Franz’s hand and said, “Good luck wherever you end up.” Franz felt his medical excuse in his pocket. He was days away from an easy chair in Florida’s opulent bar while the rest of Germany suffered in the cold. But Franz now had a problem with that notion. He had seen a little girl living in fear, without sleep, collecting bomb shards for toys. He knew the government of the 44 percent had long abandoned her. He would not join them. His sense of duty had never been to Hitler or The Party or Goering, it was always to Germany. But now, in the war’s last days, Germany had a new face, that of a little girl.

  “I won’t be at Tegernsee long,” Franz told Mr. Greisse. Mr. Greisse smiled because he knew what Franz meant.

  “Be careful up there,” he said. Then he turned and walked away, vanishing among the weary, shuffling crowd.

  NEARLY TWO MONTHS LATER, EARLY JANUARY 1945

  The snow crunched beneath the tires of the long black staff car as it pulled up and parked at the small hunting lodge on Lake Wannsee, southwest of Berlin.* A small sports car and then a kubelwagen with its top up followed the staff car. In long coats, men scurried from the vehicles, stopping only to glimpse the gray, icy lake that blended with the evening winter sky. Inside the lodge, dangerous words were spoken, words that could carry fatal consequences after von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler.6

  “We are convinced that we can put a stop to this devastation from the air and save the lives of innocent people,” said one voice.

  “We must examine the reality of our situation. Hitler needs to go, we all know that, but Goering must go first,” said another.

  “Treason is the only way you can explain what we are discussing.”

  “Exactly.”

  TWO WEEKS LATER, JANUARY 19, 1945, BERLIN

  Through snow flurries, the black boots of five of the bravest men in the German Air Force marched up the snowy steps to the “House of Flyers,” as the Air Force club was known. The snow and the late afternoon light cast an eerie blue glow over the empty streets and the men in their long coats. The House of Flyers loomed with its tall marble columns and ornate carvings set into the building’s façade. The men had legendary names among Germany’s fighter forces: Roedel, Neumann, Luetzow, Steinhoff, and a colonel named Hannes Trautloft. They had all gathered for the most dangerous mission of their lives. They glanced anxiously over their shoulders as chauffeurs drove their staff cars away. They knew there was no turning back.

  Roedel had proposed they shoot Goering that day, but the others talked him out of it, aware of an awful truth: killing Goering would not solve their problem. They needed him to step down. Stauffenberg could have shot Hitler but instead used a bomb because he knew that Hitler could be replaced by someone equally evil from his entourage. The same rule applied to Goering. Instead of killing him, the fighter leaders decided they would stare down the second most powerful man in the Reich and tell him it was time for him to go. They wanted Galland to take his place, reasoning that maybe he could do something to stop the bombing of Germany and, after consolidating power, maybe he could stand up to Hitler.

  The fighter leaders entered a conference room with dark wood walls and paintings of Air Force heroes, including Goering. There they waited for Goering on their side of a wide table. The radiator blasted hot air that filled the room with the scent of old cigars. The men began to sweat. A stoic intensity clouded Luetzow’s face as he clutched his chair, his mind elsewhere. He had lost his brother, Werner, at sea, a year prior. He knew his wife, Gisela, his four-year-old son, Hans-Ulrich, and his two-year-old daughter, Carola, were suffering under the same bombs as millions of other innocents, waking up three or four times a night to hurry to air raid shelters. The Man of Ice’s “easy charm” had vanished—he had flipped the switch and frozen his emotions, just like when he flew. Steinhoff lingered by the door like a bodyguard, while Roedel lounged at the table in a thick, padded leather seat, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Neumann nervously peeked from a snow-streaked window, watching for Goering’s arrival. Trautloft, the inspector of Germany’s day fighters, sat and stirred a cup of coffee, staring at the table. Trautloft’s thin lips tightened and his low-hanging eyelids had narrowed over his light blue eyes, causing them to almost disappear. He worried how Goering would react when he saw him there. The Reichsmarschall had no idea that Trautloft had cast his lot with “the Outcasts.”

  Trautloft’s friends in that room had all fallen from favor with Goering long before that day. They had been heroes of the Air Force until Goering demoted them the prior November and December. Goering’s plan to “Restore the Air Force” through greater National Socialist spirit also meant purging opposition. Goering had sacked Galland, the general of fighters, and replaced him with Colonel Gordon Gollob, a Party member. Goering had booted Roedel from command of JG-27 and Steinhoff from his new wing, JG-7. Goering had demoted Luetzow and sent him to oversee a flying school. Goering had already relegated Neumann to obscurity, assigning him to lead Italian pilots in Verona, Italy.

  Two weeks earlier Luetzow had summoned these men, his fellow Outcasts, to gather in secret. They had met clandestinely at Trautloft’s lodge on Lake Wannsee. There they agreed that Goering’s inept leadership had resulted in the destruction of their cities and the slaughter of their young pilots. When a solution emerged that could save Germany’s cities, Goering had squandered it. That solution was a wonder weapon, the Me-262 jet fighter, the only plane capable of sprinting past the Allied fighters to shoot down bombers. But Goering and Hitler had a lust for vengeance that blinded them to reason. Instead of giving the Me-262 to the fighter pilots, they had turned the jet into a bomber, a weapon of retaliation.

  There at Trautloft’s cabin, Luetzow and the Outcasts decided to act before not a brick was left standing in Germany. So Luetzow called the meeting with Goering under harmless pretenses, a confrontation that would later be called “the Fighter Pilots’ Mutiny.”

  Goering’s long, bulletproof limo screeched to a halt in the club’s turnaround. He climbed out, flanked by his bodyguards. He knew full well what awaited him. Word of the mutiny had already leaked. It had not come from Galland; the mutineers were careful not to invite him because they knew the SS were watching him, investigating Galland for violations of the “Subversion Law” because Galland had angered them by opposing their proposal for an SS jet wing. Galland knew of the “mutiny,” however, and wanted to follow the confrontation. He had Trautloft call him from the conference room and leave the phone off the hook on a table in the back, so he could hear everything.

  Goering learned about the pending mutiny from General Karl Koller, his chief of staff, a man the Outcasts had approached seeking his support.

  Later, it would be discovered that Koller had written in his diary: 7

  13 January 1945, 14.45 hours

  Have just heard that the Fighter Force is in the throes of a major crisis of confidence regarding its supreme commander.

  Some very bad feeling indeed. The most impossible ideas being thrown around. Occurrences similar to those of 20 July [Von Stauffenberg] must be avoided…. Talk of forcing a supreme commander to resign his post amounts to mutiny.

  The conference room’s doors swung swiftly open. Steinhoff spun and found himself staring into Goering’s blue eyes, the eyes of the second most pow
erful man in Germany. Goering’s face was tired and swollen. On his cheeks he wore pink blush that looked as garish as his pale blue uniform, which he had designed for himself. Its lapels were made of white silk and its collars piped with gold at every seam. He wore gold rings and his nails were painted with a clear coat.

  Goering, “the Colossus,” took his seat at the head of the table. Steinhoff and the others saluted. Goering offered a halfhearted salute in return. His entourage of officers, including General Koller, took their seats flanking him. Luetzow’s comrades sat at his sides.

  Luetzow broke the silence with a calm voice. “Herr Reichsmarschall, we are grateful to you for agreeing to listen to our problems. I must ask you, however, to hear me out to the end. If you interrupt me, sir, I believe there will be little point to this discussion.”8

  Goering’s eyes seemed to frost over. He glared at Luetzow then at each of the young men who sat with him. The men who opposed Goering were all half his age, in their thirties. Goering’s entourage stared at the table, afraid to breathe or move, bracing for his outburst.

  Luetzow knew he had only the ruse of strength with which to bully the bully. With the men at his sides, Luetzow hoped to bluff Goering into thinking that the fighter forces were behind them. In actuality, only the men at the table and a few confidants, like Galland, knew of the plot.

  Any other man would have melted under Goering’s stare. In brawling to bring Hitler to power, Goering had once been jailed. Behind bars he was deemed so violent that he had been kept separate from the other prisoners for their safety. A former morphine addict, Goering now wielded the power of life and death with the snap of his fingers. But instead of backing down, Luetzow upped his bluff. He slid a typed list across the table, his “Points of Discussion.” Goering pushed the list aside to Koller.

  “There is still time, sir, to prevent every city in Germany from being reduced to rubble and ashes,” Luetzow said. He told Goering that Galland needed to be reinstated and the 262s taken from the bomber forces and released immediately for fighter missions. Luetzow cited a quartermaster’s report that listed sixty 262s operational for combat operations, fifty-two of which belonged to the bomber forces. Another two hundred of the precious jets were sitting in bombed-out rail yards, stranded, because someone had decided to ship them by rail to save fuel.

  Goering interrupted Luetzow and reminded him sarcastically that the fighter forces were in a “deplorable state.” Goering told Luetzow with a smirk that in touring the bomber units he saw greater spirit and discipline. The bomber pilots, he said, were healthier and contained more veterans than the fighter forces.

  Luetzow cut Goering off. “So you have told us time and time again,” Luetzow said. “But you forget that we fighter pilots have been flying missions daily for over five years now. Our young pilots survive a maximum of two or three Reich Defense missions before they’re killed.”

  Red with rage, Goering shouted, “As if the head of the Air Force was not aware of that!”

  Luetzow did not break his stone-face composure. So Goering reverted to taunting. He told Luetzow that the real problem was the fighter pilots’ cowardice. Germany needs braver men, he said, “eager for a crack at the enemy,” to challenge the bombers nose to nose.

  Luetzow retorted, “And you, sir, have simply ignored the existence of four-engined bombers completely. You’ve given us no new aircraft, no new weapons.”

  “Enough!” Goering screamed. The sting of Luetzow’s words cut deeply. Goering had ignored the bomber threat and once said that the Americans were best at making razor blades, not airplanes. Goering had kept his Air Force flying decade-old 109s, and when the newer FW-190 fighters arrived, he sent most of them to the Eastern Front to fly ground attack missions. More than any one man’s, Goering’s foolhardy decisions had led to the devastation of Germany’s cities.

  Steinhoff spoke up. He agreed with Luetzow’s points. Roedel, Trautloft, and Neumann added their voices to the chorus. Steinhoff asserted that the 262 was Germany’s last hope to make a difference in the air war.

  Goering told Steinhoff to keep dreaming because the 262 was not going to him or the fighter pilots. “I’m giving it to the people who know what to do with it,” Goering said with a defiant pout.

  Luetzow had heard enough. He raised an outstretched finger, ready to tell Goering that compromise was obviously hopeless and that for Germany’s good Goering needed to step down. He never got to utter his words.

  Goering stood, quaking with rage. “What you’re presenting me with here, gentlemen, is treason! What are you after, Luetzow—do you want to get rid of me? What you’ve schemed up here is a full-scale mutiny!”

  Goering pounded the table and began cursing irrationally. Foam filled the corners of his mouth. Sweat poured from his brow. His eyes and the veins of his neck bulged as if he was about to explode.

  Goering turned to Steinhoff and screamed, “Your career is over and so is Galland’s—that coward would not even face me!”

  Turning to Luetzow, his lip quivering, he added, “And you, Luetzow—I’m going to have you shot!”

  Neumann looked at Roedel. They both knew they were watching Goering in the throes of a nervous breakdown.9

  Swiping Luetzow’s “Points of Discussion” to the floor, Goering stormed from the room with heavy footsteps, his entourage following him, casting sinister glances over their shoulders.

  “Galland will be shot first to set the example!” Goering shouted from the hallway.

  Silence settled in the room. Luetzow and the others stood around, hesitant to speak. Steinhoff looked to the window, where snow melted as it struck the glass. The room suddenly seemed tighter and hotter. He tugged his collar. The thought hit him. I feel like I’m in prison already.

  Trautloft gingerly picked up the phone he had left off the hook in the back of the room. Galland was still on the line and gave Trautloft a message for the others.

  “Adolf thinks we should save time as he did and get measured for our coffins now,” Trautloft said. “He did his before Christmas.”10

  Trautloft hung up the phone. No one spoke.

  “What now?” Steinhoff asked.

  The men looked to Luetzow, whose eyes remained stern. Reaching for his coat, he told the others: “Oh well, let’s go and get something to eat.”

  GOERING WANTED TO shoot Galland, Luetzow, and Steinhoff but needed time to assemble a case because each man was a national hero. He needed evidence more treasonous than just their act of defiance against him. He needed proof of treachery against the German people. As promised, Goering focused his rage on Galland first. He had Galland confined to his home on the Czech border and sent the Gestapo to dig for dirt on him, something Goering could use in a trial. The Gestapo arrested Galland’s adjutant, bugged his phones, and stole his BMW sports car. With both the Gestapo and the SS investigating him, Galland told his girlfriend, an artist named Monica, that he was flattered—they could just as easily have assassinated him.

  Eager to remove the mutineers from German soil, Goering banished Luetzow to a desk job in Italy with Roedel and Neumann. He fired Trautloft and assigned him to run a flying school. To spite Steinhoff, Goering banned him from all airfields and contact with the other mutineers. When Steinhoff was caught trying to visit Luetzow in Italy, he was sent back to Germany under guard.

  With the mutiny a failure, Galland and Luetzow were certain that Germany was doomed. They also knew it was only a matter of time until they would hear a knock on the door and find the Gestapo waiting to drag them to a firing squad. A deep depression fell over both men. They were Prussians, professional soldiers bound by an ancient code that valued honor and service above one’s life. Now they found themselves dishonored and effectively without careers. The war had already estranged Luetzow from his wife, who did not understand his devotion to the Air Force. To protect her and his children, Luetzow broke contact with them. Galland considered defecting to the Allies but worried that The Party would kill his parents in retalia
tion. He confided in his girlfriend that he had a plan to spoil Goering’s pleasure. That night, his girlfriend saw Galland cleaning his pistol.

  * * *

  * “We were being beaten both physically and psychologically, literally hammered to destruction,” Franz would remember.1

  * Franz would remember, “My instincts told me to protect them [the rookies] as best I could. Many of them were lost the first time they went up. They would simply freeze and just sit there while P-51s and P-47s shot them to pieces. They didn’t know what to do.”5

  * Two years earlier, at a villa on Wannsee, SS general Reinhard Heydrich had gathered fourteen top Party and government officials to outlay his plan for the Holocaust. But the Holocaust was not only Heydrich’s brainchild. In 1941, Goering had ordered Heydrich to formulate a plan for, in his words, the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

  20

  THE FLYING SANATORIUM

  FOUR DAYS LATER, JANUARY 23, 1945, LECHFELD AIR BASE

  BENEATH THE HANGING lights in a vast wooden hangar, Franz sat in the cockpit of a 262, but one not attached to an aircraft. Instead, it was just a mock cockpit that sat on wheels. An instructor leaned over him with a checklist, testing Franz, who practiced emergency procedures with blinding speed, his hands flipping inoperative switches, pulling dummy levers, and calling out numbers from fake gauges. Other pilots in other mock cockpits sat around Franz, undergoing the same training.

  Located in Southern Germany, Lechfeld was the hub of Germany’s jet training because Messerschmitt’s headquarters lay in the nearby town of Augsburg. Instead of retiring to Florida, Franz had landed a slot in jet school after pestering Roedel, who secured him the appointment, one that long lines of pilots desired. But jet school was not what Franz had expected. Three weeks into the eight-week course, he had not even sat in a real 262 and instead had flown just two hours of refresher flights in old twin-engine planes.