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Re: JG 2 The Final Chapter
Hello,
Thank you for this thread and your interest in the final volume of a chronicle that has kept me busy for decades. It has given me enormous pleasure to talk to these veterans, which has enabled me to put the human aspect before figures and statistics in all my books.
Well, René, my translator and, above all, friend of more than 30 years, Hans Berger, former Stk. of JG 1, will be a hundred years old next October. Although he's doing well, I can't see myself burdening him again with a long translation (there's a lot of text again in this latest volume). So I'd rather not talk too much about a German version at this stage.
As for Jukka's kind words ("disastrous marketing"), I must confess that I don't care about marketing. I wrote these books for pleasure and not to gain anything from them. I'm happy to produce them first in my mother language because I love writing and reading in French. And if Hans translated them into German, it was so that the veterans and families I contacted could read the results of my lengthy research: the description of a tragic time and a tragic circumstance that cost so many young and promising lives.
So I have no plan of producing an English version of this chronicle. In any case, very few members of this forum purchased the first volume in English and it seems to me that those who wish to deepen their knowledge of the Luftwaffe history cannot afford to miss out on learning German.
As I write in the epilogue to this latest volume, I've done what I could with what little I had and I'll be relieved to discover my latest 'big book' even though I'll probably never read it.
Best regards
Erik
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