A Nation of Fliers German Aviation and the Popular Imagination

Gigantic, fragile airships hovering in a vast sky, war aces obsessed with death and destruction, daring young men launching their handbuilt gliders, schoolchildren wearing gas masks during air-raid drills - the bright idealism of flight and its darker service in total war come to life in this book about Germany's perilous romance with aviation. From the Kaiser's Second Reich to Hitler's Third Reich, machine dreams mingled with imperial dreams and mastery over the natural world held the promise of mastery over the political world. This is popular history of the modern era.