God's Peace

Gottfried P. Dulias was born on 25 June 1925 in his family home in Germany during the start of Adolph Hitler's rise to power. As a young boy, he had a relatively normal upbringing in Konigsberg, the capital of the former German Province of East Prussia. Although his mother was a kind soul who kept Dulias and his three sisters centered, his father was a former Prussian military officer who raised his children with a firm hand and a demand for perfection. When he was about five years old, Dulias received a large kite as a birthday present. Playing with the kite ignited a love of all things related to flight, and it was from that early experience he developed a passion to become a pilot. By the time Dulias turned ten, Hitler had secured his place as the leader of the Third Reich, and Dulias became an obligatory member of the group commonly known as the Hitler Youth Group. In 1943, at the age of 18, Dulias was summoned to Munich for rigorous testing to determine his eligibility for military service. His efforts were rewarded with induction into the Luftwaffe. His three-month military training course passed quickly, and soon he was a trainee at the German Air Academy. By the early fall of 1944, he was a full-fledged fighter pilot assigned to Jagdgeschwader 53rd Squadron. Flying his Me-109G against Allied bomber-escort fighters, he soon scored two shoot-downs.