Based on first-hand accounts, original documentation and unpublished images, this is a highly illustrated history of the Flak-Artillerie in World War II. Until the late 19th century wars were fought on land or at sea, but the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 saw the first use of hot-air balloons and aerial warfare was born. The Prussian Army sought a way to counter this development, and introduced the Krupp-built 3.7cm Ballon-Abwehrkanone – the first anti-aircraft weapon, and the source of all future German Flak-Artillerie. In this new study, German armour expert Thomas Anderson traces the story of German anti-aircraft artillery through the rapid advances of World War I, though the interwar years to the rise of Nazism, German rearmament and World War II. Drawing on after-action reports, original wartime documents and rare and previously unseen photographs, he traces the development of increasingly sophisticated self-propelled anti-aircraft weapons through to the fully armoured Flakpanzer culminating in the Kugelblitz, the Flakpanzer 341 built on the PzKpfw V Panther chassis.