Strategy For Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933-1945 [Illustrated Edition]

Williamson Murray

• Publisher: Tannenberg Publishing
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781786257703
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Includes the Aerial Warfare In Europe During World War II illustrations pack with over 200 maps, plans, and photos.
This book is a comprehensive analysis of an air force, the Luftwaffe, in World War II. It follows the Germans from their prewar preparations to their final defeat. There are many disturbing parallels with our current situation. I urge every student of military science to read it carefully. The lessons of the nature of warfare and the application of airpower can provide the guidance to develop our fighting forces and employment concepts to meet the significant challenges we are certain to face in the future.

CHAPTER I—THE LUFTWAFFE: ORIGINS AND PREPARATION

Since World War II, American and British advocates of “strategic” bombing have criticized the Luftwaffe as being “in effect the hand maiden of the German army.”{9} Such a view does not do justice to the complexity of the rearmament problem faced by the Third Reich in general and the Luftwaffe in particular. It also misses entirely the fact that a significant body within the Luftwaffe’s high command were converts to the doctrine of “strategic” bombing before the outbreak of World War II. That Germany was not able to wage a successful “strategic” bombing campaign in 1940 reflected merely the fact that German air strategists in the prewar period, like those in other nations, had considerably overestimated their ability to inflict punishing strategic damage with the weapons at hand. Before the war, the same trends that marked the air forces of Great Britain and the United States also were present in the officer corps of the Luftwaffe. But an important geographic consideration, the fact that Germany was a continental power, had an additional impact on German strategic thinking. In any conceivable conflict involving the military forces of the Reich, Germany faced the probability of land operations at the outset of hostilities. Thus, it would scarcely improve Germany’s strategic position if—at the same time that the Luftwaffe launched aerial attacks on London, Paris, and Warsaw—Germany’s enemies defeated the Wehrmacht on the border and overran Silesia, East Prussia, and the Rhineland.

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM

Constraining and guiding the course of German rearmament throughout the 1930’s was an economic situation considerably different from that which determined British or American rearmament.{10} The only raw material possessed by Germany in any abundance was coal.{11} All other raw materials required for the continued functioning of the German economy, not to mention the successful prosecution of war, had to be imported to one extent or another. Imports of oil, rubber, aluminum, and other critical materials necessary for the continued functioning of the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht were all subject to blockade. Moreover, in peacetime the Germans had to use a substantial portion of their industrial production to export goods in order to earn the foreign exchange necessary to pay for these strategic raw material imports needed for rearmament.

Symptomatic of this German economic vulnerability was the situation in the petroleum industry. In order to maintain an increasingly motorized economy and to cut down on dependence from foreign sources, the Germans pushed construction of synthetic fuel plants (i.e., plants that used coal to make petroleum products).

Nevertheless, in spite of substantial investments in a synthetic fuel industry, synthetic production never caught up with demand during the 1930’s. While the percentage of synthetic fuel in terms of consumption steadily increased in this period, Germany imported more fuel in 1937 than she had at the beginning of the decade.{12} Demand had simply increased faster than production.{13} The fuel situation in the summer of 1938 reflects the extent of the problem. In June of that year, supplies in storage tanks could cover only 25 percent of mobilization requirements—on the average, four months of full wartime needs. Supplies of aviation lubricants were as low as 6 percent of mobilization requirements.{14} This was, of course, a reflection of Germany’s inherent inability to meet petroleum requirements from her own resources and her considerable problem in earning foreign exchange to pay for strategic raw material imports.

In fact, the most serious constraint on German rearmament in the 1930’s was the lack of foreign exchange. Without hard currency to cover imports, German industry could not reach the level of armament production demanded by the Wehrmacht and Hitler. Indeed, the Reich experienced increasing difficulties in acquiring these raw materials required for military production. A series of more difficult economic crises, caused by a lack of foreign exchange, marked the course of German rearmament throughout the 1930’s.{15} Beginning in 1930, a worldwide depression had caused a sharp dropoff in the value of German exports that continued through 1934. Thereafter, only a marginal recovery took place. As a result, holdings of foreign exchange steadily dwindled, and this shortage of hard currency in the thirties set definite limits on the level of raw material imports available to support rearmament.{16}

As early as the fall of 1934, the German cotton industry held reserves for no more than two weeks’ production, rubber plants for two months, and the petroleum industry for three to three and one-half months. Moreover, foreign suppliers already were becoming doubtful as to the liquidity of the German economy and, as a result, would not deliver on credit.{17} By 1935, this situation had caused significant portions of German industry to draw down stockpiles. From March to December 1935, stockpiles of major industrial raw materials fell dramatically; and for the remainder of the 1930’s, the German economy lived a hand-to-mouth existence, scratching to find sufficient foreign exchange to pay for imports.

By 1937, the German economy was suffering serious shortages of steel because of a lack of ore imports, while the industry itself was operating at barely 83 percent of capacity.{18} These economic difficulties affecting rearmament most likely played a role in pushing Hitler into the confrontations of 1938. Here again, despite substantial financial gains made by the Anschluss with Austria, efforts to expand the rearmament program, to build up synthetic and munition industries, to begin the massive construction of the Westwall project, and to mobilize for the Czech crisis severely strained the German economy. In November 1938, Hermann Göring admitted that the German economic infrastructure had reached a point of maximum economic distress.{19} As a direct result, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the German armed forces high command, made major reductions in steel and raw material allocations to armament production.{20} Continuing difficulties led Hitler to announce to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, that Germany must wage an “export battle” (Exportschlacht) to raise foreign exchange. Simultaneously, he announced further reduction in Wehrmacht allocations: steel, 30 percent; copper, 20 percent; aluminum, 47 percent; rubber, 14 percent.{21}

Problems stemming from both insufficient foreign exchange and raw materials guided the course of the German rearmament. Neither were available in sufficient quantity to build a massive “strategic” bombing force. Moreover, the army, given Germany’s strategic position as a continental power, laid claims to resources that any rearmament program had to meet. Finally, the country’s doubtful access to foreign supplies of petroleum products raises the question as to whether Germany could support an independent “strategic” bombing offensive. Thus, it is clear that definite economic constraints limited German air planners in the creation of the Luftwaffe, and the force they molded both before and during the war was influenced by different strategic factors than those guiding either the British or the Americans.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LUFTWAFFE, 1933-39

The Germans faced considerable difficulties in the creation of an air capability with the onset of rearmament in 1933. Given the fact that no German air force survived from the Great War except as a camouflaged planning staff within the army and that the capacity for civil aircraft production was largely inadequate for military purposes, the development of the Luftwaffe was an enormously complex and difficult task. Considering the fact that within six and a half years this force would go to war and render vital support in the early campaigns, the Germans were most successful in their efforts.

The first strategic problem on Hitler’s ascension to power in January 1933 was the perception that a still disarmed and vulnerable Reich faced the possibility of a preventive war, waged by her neighbors to stop the resurrection of Germany as a military power. As Hitler told his generals shortly after he had come to power, if France possessed any statesmen, she would wage war in the immediate future.{22} Thus, whatever theoretical advantages might accrue to Germany through the possession of a “strategic” bombing force in the late 1930’s, the Third Reich faced the possibility of an imminent war. Future “strategic” bombing capabilities would do nothing for present military difficulties, while the tactical potential of a less sophisticated, more conventional air force would be more quickly realized for utilization in a contemporary military confrontation.

German interest in a “strategic” air weapon goes back to the early days of the First World War. Frustrated at the imposition of a distant blockage in 1914 by the Royal Navy, German naval strategists looked for a means to strike at the British Empire. As early as August 1914, Rear Admiral Paul Behncke, Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, urged that the navy’s Zeppelins attack London, the heart of the British Empire. Such attacks, he argued, “may be expected, whether they involve London or the neighborhood of London, to cause panic in the population which may possibly render it doubtful that the war can be continued.”{23} Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz noted in a letter of November 1914 that:

The English are now in terror of the Zeppelin, perhaps not without reason. I contend here....I go for the standpoint of “war to the knife,” but I am not in favor of “frightfulness”….Also, single bombs from flying machines are wrong; they are odious when they hit and kill old women, and one gets used to them. If [however] one could set fire to London in thirty places, then what in a small way is odious would retire before something fine and powerful.{24}

When the Zeppelin campaign failed, the Germans attacked London with the heavier-than-air bomber. That campaign, even if it did not achieve great material damage, did lead to the creation of the Royal Air Force.{25}

The defeat of 1918 and the conditions of the Versailles Treaty eliminated aircraft from the German arsenal. Not only was Germany denied access to new technology as represented by the submarine, the airplane, and the tank, but the peace also severely limited the size and capability of Germany’s military services. The victorious Allies, however, could not prevent the Germans from thinking about their experiences and the weapons of the last war.

Hans von Seeckt, father of the Reichswehr, insured that the miniscule army left to Germany included a small body of officers (180) who had had experience in the conduct of the air battles in the Great War. As was the case with the development of motorized/mechanized warfare, Seeckt showed considerable prescience with respect to airpower{26} and saw to it that its advocates possessed at least some voice within the army.{27} Limitations imposed by Versailles forced German aviation into a narrow framework. Nevertheless, extensive subsidies to civil aviation contributed to the survival of Germany’s aviation industry, and preparations for air rearmament during the Weimar Republic played a significant role in the establishment of the Luftwaffe during the Nazi period.{28} Ger...

Table of contents

• Title page
• CHAPTER I-THE LUFTWAFFE: ORIGINS AND PREPARATION
• CHAPTER II-THE EASY WAR: GERMANY TRIUMPHANT, SEPTEMBER 1939-SEPTEMBER 1940
• CHAPTER III-THE TURN TO RUSSIA
• CHAPTER IV-ON THE BRINK: JANUARY-OCTOBER 1942
• CHAPTER V-ATTRITION ON THE PERIPHERY: NOVEMBER 1942-AUGUST 1943
• CHAPTER VI-ATTRITION OVER THE REICH: SEPTEMBER 1943-MARCH 1944
• CHAPTER VII-DEFEAT: APRIL-SEPTEMBER 1944
• CHAPTER VIII-CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX 1-THE PREWAR DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN DOCTRINE AND AIRPOWER
• APPENDIX 2-EFFECT ON A 10,000-AIRCRAFT FORCE STRUCTURE OF A 3.6-PERCENT LOSS RATE
• APPENDIX 4-EIGHTH AIR FORCE, PERCENTAGE SORTIE LOSS RATE (HEAVY BOMBERS)
• BIBLIOGRAPHY