Bombing Hitler's Hometown

The white-knuckled bombing mission American airmen carried out on Hitler’s hometown is now told for the first time through the eyes of the men on the airplanes – as well as the innocent Austrians under the bombs – in this groundbreaking true story of the aerial bombing and its aftermath from retired CIA officer Mike Croissant.

Foreword by Richard Overy, author of The Bombers and the Bombed

In April 1945, Linz was one of Nazi Germany’s most vital assets. It was a crucial transportation hub and communications center, with railyards brimming with war materiel destined for the front lines. Linz was also the town Hitler intended to remake as the cultural capital of Europe.

The airmen of the Fifteenth Air Force were a mix of seasoned veterans and newcomers. As their mission was unveiled in the predawn hours of April 25, groans and muffled expletives passed many lips. The reality would prove more brutal than any imagined.

In the unheated, unpressurized B‑24 Liberator and B‑17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers, young men battled elements as dangerous as anything the Germans could throw at them. When batteries of anti‑aircraft guns opened fire, the men flew into a man‑made hell of exploding shrapnel. Aircraft and men fell from the sky as civilians on the ground struggled to survive.

Drawing on new interviews and previously unpublished sources, Mike Croissant compellingly relates one of the war’s last truly untold stories—a gripping chronicle that is also a timeless tale of courage and terror, loss and redemption.