May 8th, 1945.
The war in Europe is over.
A 23-year-old German fighter pilot surrenders to American forces.
He’s the most successful fighter racece in history.
352 confirmed aerial victories, more than any pilot from any nation in any war.
His name is Eric Hartman.
The Americans process him, then hand him over to the Soviets.
“
Hartman expects to go home within months.
Standard prisoner of war protocol.
The Geneva Convention guarantees it.
Instead, the Soviets keep him for 10 and a half years.
They try him as a war criminal, sentence him to 25 years hard labor.
They want him to confess to crimes he didn’t commit to become a propaganda tool for the Soviet state.
He refuses every single time.
This is the story of the man the Soviets called the Black Devil and the Germans called Booby the Kid.
Eric Alfred Hartman was born on April 19th, 1922 in Vice, Germany.
His mother, Elizabeth, was a licensed pilot, unusual for a woman in 1920s Germany.
She taught young Eric to fly gliders when he was 14.
By the time he was a teenager, flying was as natural to him as walking.
In 1940, at age 18, Hartman joined the Luftvafer.
He entered flight training just as Germany was achieving air superiority across Europe.
The Luftvafer was considered the most advanced air force in the world.
Hartman wasn’t a natural at first.
During training, he crashed several aircraft.
His instructors noted that he was reckless, overconfident.
One instructor wrote that Hartman wasn’t fighter pilot material.
They were catastrophically wrong.
In October 1942, Hartman was assigned to Yagashvada 52 on the Eastern Front.
The unit was already legendary, producing more aces than any other fighter wing in history.
Hartman joined the third grouper under the command of Major Hubertus Fonbonin.
He was 20 years old.
He’d never seen combat.
On his first combat mission on November 5th, 1942, Hartman became separated from his squadron, panicked and nearly got himself killed.
He fired at a Soviet aircraft from too far away, wasting ammunition, then barely made it back to base with his fuel tank nearly empty.
His squadron leader chewed him out.
You’ll never become an ace flying like that.
Hartman took the lesson to heart.
From that point forward, he refined a tactical philosophy that would make him the deadliest fighter pilot in history.
His rule was simple.
See, decide, attack, reverse.
Get close, extremely close.
So close you can’t miss.
Fire a short burst, break away immediately.
Most fighter pilots opened fire at 300 to 400 m.
Hartman waited until he was within 50 m, sometimes closer.
At that range, he almost never missed.
He became known for firing only short bursts, two or 3 seconds, then disengaging before the enemy could react.
Another pilot once asked him, “How do you get so close without being seen?” Hartman replied, “I don’t think about being seen.
I think about getting the kill.” By mid1943, Hartman’s kill count was climbing rapidly.
He shot down his 50th aircraft in March 1943, his 100th in July, his 150th by September.
The Soviets began to notice.
They called him the Black Devil because of the distinctive black tulip design painted on the nose of his BF-109.
Soviet pilots were warned about him specifically.
If you see the black tulip, disengage immediately.
Hartman eventually removed the tulip marking.
It was making Soviet pilots too cautious, avoiding combat.
He wanted them to engage, not flee.
His wingmen and squadron mates gave him a different nickname, Booby, German for kid or boy.
Even as his kill count climbed into the hundreds, Hartman maintained a boyish, easygoing demeanor on the ground.
He joked, played pranks, refused to take himself too seriously.
In the air, he was something else entirely.
Hartman’s tactics were unorthodox.
He avoided prolonged dog fights.
No aerobatic maneuvers unless absolutely necessary, no chasing damaged aircraft across the sky.
He positioned himself carefully, attacked decisively, and disengaged immediately.
“Dog fighting is for fools,” he said.
“The goal isn’t to be fancy.
The goal is to shoot down the enemy and survive.” He was shot down or forced to crash land 16 times during the war.
Not once was it due to enemy fire hitting his aircraft critically.
Every single one was caused by debris from aircraft he destroyed at close range.
fragments hitting his propeller, oil on his windscreen, coolant lines severed by shrapnel from his own kills.
He was never wounded by enemy fire, not once.
By August 1944, Hartman had 301 victories, surpassing the previous record held by Gearart Barkhorn.
He was 22 years old.
Herman Guring, commander of the Luftvafer, summoned Hartman to Berlin and personally awarded him the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds, Germany’s highest military honor.
Only 27 people received it during the entire war.
Guring offered Hartman a promotion and a transfer to a training unit in Germany away from combat.
Hartman refused.
He wanted to stay with his unit with his men.
By the end of the war, his total stood at 352 confirmed victories, 345 Soviet aircraft, seven American.
No other pilot in history before or since has come close, but his war was about to get much worse.
On May 8th, 1945, Germany surrendered.
Hartman and his unit were in Czechoslovakia in territory that would be occupied by the Soviets.
Hartman made a critical decision.
Surrender to the Americans instead.
He led his men west and surrendered to US forces.
The Americans treated them well.
Hartman believed he’d be processed and released within months.
Like most German PS, but the Yalter Conference had divided Europe into spheres of influence.
The Americans were obligated to hand over German prisoners captured in certain areas to the Soviets.
Hartman and his men were among them.
In late May 1945, Hartman was transferred to Soviet custody.
The Soviets didn’t treat him like a prisoner of war.
They treated him like a war criminal.
Hartman was transported to a prison camp in Shakti in southern Russia.
The conditions were brutal.
Starvation rations, forced labor.
Prisoners died regularly from malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion.
The Soviets wanted Hartman to confess to war crimes.
Specifically, they accused him of deliberately shooting at Soviet civilians and of destroying Soviet property beyond military necessity.
Both charges were fabricated.
Hartman’s entire combat record was against military aircraft.
He’d never strafeed ground targets or attacked civilians.
He refused to confess.
Every interrogation, he repeated the same thing.
I was a fighter pilot.
I fought only against military targets.
I committed no crimes.
The Soviets tried psychological pressure.
They brought in fellow prisoners who’d already confessed or been coerced into confessing and had them testify against Hartman.
He still refused.
They tried isolation.
Weeks alone in a cell with no contact.
Hartman passed the time doing mental math and reciting poetry he’d memorized.
They tried bribery.
Confess and we’ll send you home immediately.
Hartman refused.
In 1949, the Soviets tried him in a military tribunal.
The trial was a sham.
The evidence was fabricated.
The verdict was predetermined.
Hartman was sentenced to 25 years hard labor.
He was 27 years old.
He’d expected to be home by then, reunited with his wife, Ursula, whom he’d married in 1944.
Instead, he was looking at spending the rest of his youth and possibly his life in Soviet labor camps other prisoners broke.
Some confessed to crimes they didn’t commit just to improve their conditions.
Some collaborated with the Soviets in exchange for better treatment.
Some simply gave up and died.
Hartman did none of these things.
He organized protests among the prisoners.
He refused to work when conditions became unbearable.
He stood up to guards who abused prisoners.
At one point, he spent several months in solitary confinement for leading a hunger strike.
The Soviets wanted to break him, turn him into propaganda.
The greatest ace in history, confessing to war crimes, denouncing Nazi Germany, and praising the Soviet Union.
He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
In 1955, West German Chancellor Conrad Adinau negotiated with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for the release of German PS still held in the Soviet Union.
After 10 and 1/2 years, the Soviets finally agreed to release Hartman.
On October 10th, 1955, Hartman crossed the border into West Germany.
He was 33 years old.
He had left behind his youth, his health, and a decade of his life.
His wife Ursula had waited for him.
Through 10 years of uncertainty, not knowing if he was alive or dead, she never remarried, never gave up hope.
When Hartman stepped off the train in West Germany, she was there.
They had two children together and remained married until his death.
Hartman joined the new West German Air Force, the Bundesluva, in 1956.
He trained on jets, transitioning from the BF109 to the F86 Saber and eventually the F-104 star fighter.
He clashed with Luftwaffer leadership over the F104.
Hartman believed the aircraft was dangerous and unsuitable for the Luftwaffer’s needs.
He was proven correct.
The F104 had a terrible accident rate in German service, killing dozens of pilots, but his outspoken criticism made him unpopular with superiors.
In 1970 at age 48, Hartman retired from the Luftvafer as an Oust equivalent to a colonel.
He spent his retirement giving interviews, attending reunions, and corresponding with historians.
He remained unapologetic about his wartime service.
I fought for Germany, not for Hitler, he said.
I was a soldier.
I did my duty.
Soviet veterans never forgave him.
Some continued to accuse him of war crimes decades after the war.
Hartman never backed down, never confessed, never compromised.
On September 20th, 1993, Eric Hartman died of natural causes at age 71.
He was buried with full military honors.
Eric Hartman’s life wasn’t just about aerial scores.
It was the result of skill meeting will and circumstance.
He shot down 352 enemy aircraft, a record no other pilot has reached.
That fact alone shows unmatched ability.
But his story didn’t end in the sky.
He fought other pilots, not civilians, and his wartime record contains painful moral questions.
He served his country under a criminal regime.
The context matters, and it complicates any simple hero label.
Hartman himself kept the focus narrow.
I fought for my country, not a political party.
Whether that is enough is for history to judge.
What is clear is this.
He was supreme at his craft, and he endured when everything tried to break him.
352 victories, 10 years of captivity, a life defined by skill, stubbornness, and refusal to compromise.
That is Eric Hartman’s legacy.
Complicated, human, and unyielding.
