It is January, 1945, in devastated Berlin, and the war in Europe is entering its final months. General Adolf Galland and his Luftwaffe fighter pilots are being made the scapegoats for the Third Reich’s imminent defeat by failing to stop Allied bombers from turning Germany’s cities into rubble. When Galland is fired from his post as General of the Fighter Arm by Hermann Göring, a group of pilots fiercely loyal to the celebrated ace with nearly 100 aerial victories stage an unsuccessful palace revolt in hopes of removing the drug-addled Reichsmarshal from office. Göring threatens to have the mutineers shot. Because of Galland’s popularity and status as a national hero among the German people, however, he chooses instead to demote or banish them all as punishment for their disloyalty, even though it means grounding many of the Luftwaffe’s few remaining experienced and most successful fighter pilots at a critical juncture of the war.
But Galland happens to be one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite generals, and when the Führer gets wind of what Göring has done, he summons the disgraced fighter pilot to the Reich Chancellery, overrules the Reichsmarshal, and asks what he can do to make things right.
“What can I do for you? Something personally, I mean. You and I have had our disagreements, ja, but you have always been a loyal officer. One of the few.”
“Mein Führer, I have only one request for myself,” Galland replies. “I wish to finish this war the way I started it, commanding a squadron of fighters. I want this squadron to be equipped with the Me-262, and I want to hand-pick my own pilots. I want to put together an elite unit, a squadron of the best pilots we have left, flying the best fighters, a small but formidable and mobile Kommando capable of striking fear into the hearts of our enemies wherever they are.”
