Hans-Joachim Voth

Hans-Joachim Voth is UBS Foundation Professor of Economics at the University of Zurich. The grandson of a Luftwaffe engineer, he qualified as a glider pilot with the Oxford University Gliding Club

How the Nazis used vanity to lure pilots to their deaths

“Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.” Ecclesiastes had a point, but he never met a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. For the young Germans who hurled their Messerschmitts at enemy planes over the Channel, the Reich, and the Eastern Front, there was one object that could make them forget their odds of survival: a small iron cross,