The Angel Flies to Stalingrad — Oliver Fairfax

THE ANGEL FLIES TO STALINGRAD. VOLUME SEVEN OF THE BRANDT FAMILY CHRONICLES.Valentine Brandt's wartime service with the Luftwaffe was short and predictable. Older, wiser pilots would rather not fly supplies to the dreadful Gumrak, the last airfield supplying the German garrison in Stalingrad. Landing wasn't the problem and it took Valentine too long to learn that. As a Russian speaker, Valentine was useful to his Soviet captors. He was spared, to work as slave labour. The M.G.B., the Soviet secret police are brutal, but a tiny part is diabolically clever and Valentine must serve the Soviet State by spying in Berlin. The M.G.B. burn and turn him and send him on his way. But there is no straight path for the Brandts and, on his journey, he acquires baggage that will do more than weigh him down. It could get him killed. It's 1947 by the time Valentine enters destroyed Berlin. The weather is brutal, food is short and fuel scarcer still. So far as the Germans are concerned the war might just as well continue. The French, like the Russians and Americans, want a potato-patch where the rump of Germany stands. France again casts avaricious eyes at the mineral rich Saar and Ruhr. The British are broke and exhausted. The Germans have no allies and certainly no friends. They are on their own. Valentine struggles in a world of scavengers, base threats and sudden death. A world where survival is not possible for all. Hope, like food, is rationed. Stalin will take West Berlin before he takes the rest of Europe. Deprivation is his weapon of choice and a blockade his strategy. Remember one of the Brandts shibboleths: ‘Never put anyone in a position where they have nothing to lose, because they will fight.' Vital life signs flicker as American policy changes. This time, no guns, no dictator, only larceny, resolve and American know-how. Watch the miracle. The Stalingrad Airlift failed, but the Berlin Airlift will succeed because America has the men, machines and the will to make it happen. General Lucius D. Clay introduces a hidden dimension to counter the Soviet blockade and slam the door on Stalin's ambition. Join Valentine under the splutter and roar of hundreds of aircraft engines as divided Berlin, survives, recovers and prospers as America feeds it, four tons a time.Here is a story of triumph, of unsung American heroes, of resolve and of leadership in the victory over privation.ABOUT THE BRANDT FAMILY CHRONICLES. The series, at the time of writing, comprises seven books ranging from the Napoleonic Wars (Vols 1-4), through The Franco-Prussian War (Vols 5,6), to the Cold War (Vol 7). They start when Germany was conceived and develop through its birth to modern times. (1950). The thread is the Brandt Family and their adventures. The environment is German history. History is written by the winner and, from ace to knave, it's a pack of lies. These books are not German history. They are a unique view of German history and the stories are told from this deserted and neglected standpoint. This, so-far, unilluminated emphasis discloses both a disguised truth and a hidden one. Germany is not the warmonger it has been painted and, as the series develops, readers' curiosity may be piqued into checking to see if they agree with the author's conclusions.ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Oliver Fairfax is a nomad. A Scot by birth, he has wandered from England to Hong Kong and back - twice. He has lived in France and now in New Zealand. He worries that a generation is rising who cannot tell the difference between a citizen and a subject. He is concerned about the pervasive growth of regulation that cannot be afforded, cannot be complied with, but that seeks to remove free choice. He worries also about political correctness and the suppression of dissonance being two policies that misinform ordinary people's decision-making processes. But those irritants aside, life's great! â€" and remember, you should never have joined if you can't take a joke.