He graduates to fly professionally and then enters the Luftwaffe early in World War II. The book first focuses on the German Franz Stigler, who learns to fly gliders in his youth, encouraged by his father. Makos also illustrates these pilots on both sides had a lot in common. It changed the author’s perspective about the enemy. This was later met with some resistance, especially regarding the German pilot who fought for Nazi Germany and risked severe punishment for his actions. Makos aims to prove there were good men on both sides of the conflict. The book reads like a novel, with well-paced narratives that build the background stories and interactions of the protagonists. The narrative follows two parallel paths of pilots on the opposite sides of the conflict in the European theater in World War II, whose lives are forever connected by an instance of grace at an unexpected moment. New York: Berkley Caliber, 2014.Īdam Makos’s book A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II is an amazing tale of unlikely friendship realized despite almost impossible odds. A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search the world for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever.Makos, Adam, and Larry Alexander. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as 'top secret.' It was an act that Franz could never mention for fear of facing a firing squad. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called 'the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.' The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler-and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber's tail. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission.

At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown.

'A remarkable story.worth retelling and celebrating.'-Ī 'beautiful story of a brotherhood between enemies' emerges from the horrors of World War II in thisĪ badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER: 'Beautifully told.'

A higher call