I would like to see a movie about Erich Hartmann. Hartmann was the highest scoring fighter ace in history, with 352 victories. The highest-scoring non-German ace of all time is Ilmari Juutilainen of Finland, who had 94 victories.
Hartmann said that he was more proud of the fact he’d never lost a wingman in combat than he was of his (very high) number of enemy planes shot down. He wrote to his fiancee every day of the war. He was never shot down by an enemy plane. But there were times when he was forced to crash land, due to flying into the debris of enemy aircraft he’d just shot down. On one of those occasions he landed behind enemy (Soviet) lines. The Soviets captured him. Upon being captured he very convincingly faked an injury. The Soviets left him lightly guarded. When the one man guarding him became distracted by a German attack, Hartmann overpowered the guard, and quickly fled his Soviet captors. Bullets whizzed past him as the soldiers attempted to recapture him. He safely made it back to German lines.
Near the very end of the war he was ordered to surrender to the British, while the rest of his unit would surrender to the Soviets. He’d never disobeyed an order–except for that one order only. He felt it would be bad character to abandon his men to Soviet captivity (a very strong likelihood of death) while he himself enjoyed the comparative safety of British captivity. He remained with his unit, with himself and the rest of the unit eventually surrendering to the Americans.
However, at Yalta FDR had agreed that any German servicemen who’d engaged primarily in fighting against the Soviet Union would be handed over to that nation; regardless of who they’d actually surrendered to. As a result of which, Hartmann and the rest of his unit were handed over to the Soviets. Hartmann spent years in Soviet captivity, during which the Soviets used torture and threats to attempt to get Hartmann to turn traitor to West Germany. Hartmann steadfastly refused, at one point physically attacking his Soviet interrogator. Fortunately, Hartmann’s celebrity status prevented him from joining the many, many German servicemen who’d died in Soviet gulags due to hunger, overwork, cold, and disease.
In the 1950s, large numbers of German servicemen were liberated from Soviet captivity due to a trade deal between West Germany and the U.S.S.R. Hartmann was among them. He rejoined his wife, and learned that his son had died while he was away. Hartmann then put his energies into building up the West German air force. Due to political corruption and bribery, some of the aircraft used by the West German air force were unsafe, leading to the deaths of West German pilots. Hartmann took a stand against that corruption. He was punished for this good behavior, and forced into an early retirement.
