The period between the two World Wars is an extremely interesting but largely unknown part of the German aviation history.

 

Signed in June 1919 and promulgated in January 1920, the Treaty of Versailles included many measures to limit the Germany's rearmament: it revoked the right to having tanks, artillery and military aviation, which caused the dissolution of the Luftstreitkräften.

 

However, the Treaty did not damage the aeronautical industry as much, which indeed managed to bypass the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty regarding building vehicles and equipment, especially in other countries. For pilot training and equipment testing, Germany could count on the secret aviation school in Lipetsk, USSR, allowing the Weimar Republic to develop aeronautical expertise without France and the UK knowing. The school of Lipetsk closed in September 1933, a few months after the Nazis seized power in Germany. In 1935, the Third Reich restored its air force: the Luftwaffe, which will become in 1939, on the eve of World War II, the most powerful military aviation of the Western world.

 

Historian Jacques Pernet – an expert in German and American aviation – and journalist and writer Jean-Charles Stasi vividly tell us the story of German aviation in this richly illustrated book.