In one, three of the flyers who have been shot down behind enemy lines make their way back to the German position, finally succeeding after one of them manages to talk a French unit into capitulating.

[5] In the other, a shell-shocked flyer whose doctor has prescribed "a profound experience" recovers the will to fight when he hears "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" during a performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung at the Bayreuth Festival.

"[15] Howard K. Smith wrote more disapprovingly in Last Train from Berlin: "It was a ... film about a bunch of obstreperous adolescents who dive-bombed things and people.

[18][21] The squadron members represent a range of types and backgrounds,[22] from various different parts of the Reich, shown united; additionally, in the flying scenes the pilots' faces are photographed with a metallic greyish cast to suggest how they have become one with their aeroplanes.

"[28] Smith, on the other hand, dismissed it as "monotonous",[8][16][17] and modern critics regard it as a poor film, completely lacking in "elegance"; the non-combat sequences include a rowdy humour that was characteristic of the director's work,[27] and David Stewart Hull in his 1969 overview of Nazi cinema summed it up as "[having] all his worst vices: blatant propaganda, slapdash production values, crude editing, and a terrible script.

[31] On the other hand Erhard Schütz, in a piece published in 2008, regarded the structural focus on attack sequences as "the film present[ing] itself as an experience of audiovisual intoxication with suggestively intensified repetition.

[32] Stukas is classified by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation as a Vorbehaltsfilm (controlled film), meaning that in Germany it may only be screened under specific conditions for educational purposes.