This biography by James Corum—an established historian of German military history—examines the career of relatively unknown German Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen. It centers on Richthofen's significant professional contributions in both aircraft technical development in the 1930s and in creating the Luftwaffe's effective operational/tactical ground-support techniques. Indeed, this focus occasionally makes personal information about Richthofen's hunting trips or family matters seem tangential. On the whole, Corum solidly establishes Richthofen's historical significance.

The book's strength is in discussing airpower technology and operational developments. As a staff officer in the Luftwaffe Technical Office in the mid-1930s, Richthofen used his academic training (a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule Hannover) to help to develop most of the major German aircraft used in World War II as well as early rocket and jet-propulsion projects. Corum also adeptly shows Richthofen's leading role (beginning with the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War and continuing in World War II) in honing the Luftwaffe's operational abilities in the areas of reconnaissance, concentrated ground attack (especially interdiction), communication with ground commanders, and a system of forward aerial observers. He emphasizes Richthofen's keen grasp of logistics by highlighting his strategic understanding—relatively rare among German generals—of aircraft production and his operational use of transport planes to supply advancing air and ground units and mobile engineers to repair/improve captured airfields, thus enabling ground attack squadrons to keep pace with the panzers. Indeed, Corum makes a strong case that the Luftwaffe's ability to maintain a high daily sortie rate in France was a key component in the Germans' 1940 victory. Lastly, he illustrates Richthofen's creativity in using new technology such as the first cluster bombs (the SD-2) and the first guided bombs (the Fritz X and HS 292).

Corum's work also offers interesting insights into broader issues, but these are unfortunately not always thoroughly investigated. For example, the book explains Richthofen's support for Nazism as resulting from patriotism and respect for Hitler's leadership skills. His support was not blind; he openly criticized the decision to keep the Sixth Army in Stalingrad and warned that the air supply effort would fail. He did not suffer for these objections; his promotion to Field Marshal soon followed his disagreement with the Führer. Corum, however, provides little investigation of Richthofen's opinion of Nazi racial and territorial objectives, merely noting that the general did not see his role as making such policy decisions.

Regarding war crimes, Corum asserts that Richthofen's air raids on Guernica and Warsaw were justifiable military actions (there was no international law then governing aerial bombardment) that caused unfortunate civilian casualties that were exaggerated by contemporary media. This explanation works better with Guernica than Warsaw, where Richthofen himself urged the strike as a “devastation and terror raid” intended “to eradicate Warsaw” (p. 172), a statement only partially explained. Corum does conclude that Richthofen was almost certainly guilty of war crimes in the Soviet Union against prisoners of war, where the general showed—in clear violation of existing international law—scant concern for ill treatment and neglect of POWs who were used under his command as airfield laborers. Unfortunately, there is little elaboration on this matter.

Likewise, some military issues remain incompletely explained. Corum asserts that during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe prematurely shifted from bombing radar sites without fully discussing the rationale behind this. Likewise, he notes that logistical challenges encountered in the Balkan campaign should have alerted the Luftwaffe to expect similar problems in the U.S.S.R.; but he does not address why they ignored this warning. He reveals that Richthofen considered most army commanders (Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was the notable exception) to have a limited grasp of airpower. Typically they wanted to deploy airplanes for small strikes against specific tactical objectives, whereas Richthofen understood airpower's decisiveness lay in concentrating it to interdict enemy rear area targets. Corum, however, offers little discussion of ground commanders' actual views, only Richthofen's opinions of them.

Complicating the book's handling of broader issues is the paucity of citations and the lack of a bibliography. Corum does use important sources—Richthofen's diaries and papers, the Karlsruhe Collection (postwar studies of specific military issues by Luftwaffe officers), and what remains of Luftwaffe records—extensively and positively, but he cites few sources when addressing broader contextual issues. For example, on the officer corps' views regarding the Weimar Republic and Nazism, he cites a single monograph published in 1973. Background on the Spanish Civil War and the German aristocracy's views of and relationship to Nazism lack any references to the relevant literature. This tendency to undercite also includes specific issues; for example, a fairly detailed discussion of Soviet aid to the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (p. 121) and the rather significant assertion that the Luftwaffe intelligence section “blithely assured that the RAF's fighters were inferior and that the Luftwaffe's battle-tested units would win control of the air over southeastern Britain in three days” (p. 216) both go uncited.

The biography also suffers from unfortunately frequent stylistic flaws, editing oversights and factual errors. Transitions are often weak and accomplished frequently with subheadings, which fragments the narrative. There is no conclusion; instead all substantive conclusions appear in the rather unwieldy introduction. Material is often repeated (e.g., he discusses the Fokker Dr I triplane in essentially the same manner on pages 59-60 and on 63-65), and words/phrases are omitted (e.g., “Mussolini requested German aid for his forces in Libya and agreed to commit further German forces to the Mediterranean,” p. 237). Factual errors include crediting the Poles with cavalry divisions instead of brigades (p. 164), calling Belgian fortifications near Liege “French Maginot Line forts” (p. 198), and placing the Allied landing at Anzio in “early 1943” (p. 359) instead of early 1944. These errors are individually minor but their cumulative frequency tarnishes the book's overall impression.

Corum's biography achieves its basic purpose in establishing Wolfram von Richthofen's significance in pioneering modern aerial warfare and developing the Luftwaffe into an effective, integral component of the German blitzkrieg. While making this contribution to airpower history, the biography's insights into other issues are too frequently incomplete. As a result, the work achieves its main goal, but falls short of the promise of helping us better understand both the man and his times.