The most accomplished fighter ace in history remains an enigma. Erich Hartmann, who claimed 352 aircraft shot down over the Eastern Front, was both a dutiful servant of the Third Reich and a celebrated Western hero after the war. This rigorous, even-handed biography follows Hartmann from the middle rungs of Hitler Youth leadership to the frozen expanses of the Eastern Front, in and out of the vast and corrupt prison system of the Soviet Union, and through a postwar career with the West German military where his idolization took root. The result is a penetrating work of history that finally acknowledges the ambiguity in Hartmann's life, painting him not as a one-dimensional hero or a full-blown Nazi agent, but as the complex and captivating man that he was.