Hansen Udet grew up listening to his uncle’s tales of aerial combat in the Great War. One of Germany’s most brilliant pilots, Uncle Ernst had flown with Manfred von Richthofen, the famous Red Baron.

Decades later, the world is at war again. Hansen follows his family legacy, and becomes a fighter pilot in the German Luftwaffe. His plane is a Messerschmitt Bf-109, faster and far more lethal than any aircraft his uncle ever flew. Hansen soars into combat with pride, and without fear. Behind the controls of his fighter, he is master of the sky.

But warplanes are not the only things that have changed. The world has changed. Germany has changed too, and not for the better. Even as he racks up his own string of aerial victories, Hansen comes to realize that the leaders of his beloved Germany have abandoned their country’s values in the blind pursuit of military conquest. They have traded honor for ambition, freedom for oppression, and compassion for brutality.

He watches in growing horror as his own countrymen begin the persecution, and then the systematic slaughter of European Jews. To a boy raised to value human decency, this descent into barbarism is too much to endure. And now Hansen, a warrior of Hitler’s infamous Third Reich, is falling in love with a young Jewish woman.

Even as enemy pilots try to blast his plane from the sky, Hansen finds himself locked in a struggle more dreadful than any dogfight. Torn between his love for the beautiful Rachel, and his loyalty to his own nation, he must betray either his heart or the country of his birth. The only honorable choice leads to treason.