On January 1, 1945, Adolf Hitler awarded a decoration created for a single person to a pilot who flew 2,530 missions and claimed 519 tanks destroyed. This episode examines the life of Hans-Ulrich Rudel, from a Lutheran minister's son in Silesia who joined the Hitler Youth in 1933 to the most decorated German airman of the war. It covers his part in the September 1941 attack on the Soviet battleship Marat, the propaganda that credited him alone for a two-bomb strike, and the cannon-armed Ju 87G Stuka he flew at terrifyingly low altitude to hit tanks where their armor was thinnest.

The episode then follows Rudel beyond the war: surrender to American forces in May 1945, escape via a rat line with a fake Red Cross passport, and life in Argentina as a friend of Juan Peron, founder of a relief network for war criminals, and associate of Josef Men ...