The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe by Hermann Hauptmann

Author:Hermann, Hauptmann [Hermann, Hauptmann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Published: 2012-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Hitler and Göring definitely wanted an independent air force that would win the war speedily and without disrupting the economic life. They also wanted this for political reasons. They wanted the Nazis to win the war not the army. The Luftwaffe is their weapon. The army is a weapon that was in existence long before anybody heard of Hitler.

Hitler and Göring had heard something about air strategies and also about Douhet, and they wanted “something like Douhet.”

But although a modification of the Douhet plan was adopted by the Nazis, somehow his fundamental ideas and directives as to how his theories should be put into practice were never followed up. In only one case did the Nazis follow Douhet implicitly. And in that one case Douhet was wrong. I am referring, of course, to the Italian’s deduction that civil ’planes could be converted into heavy battle ’planes to crush the enemy’s material and moral resistance from the air. The Nazis believed they could use or convert the excellent transport ’plane, Ju 52, into a heavy bomber.

But they never succeeded in fulfilling Douhet’s postulate that among the three services the operative air force had to dominate. On the contrary. The Nazis had their hands full trying to keep the all-powerful army from taking over the air force and using it as an auxiliary weapon.

But most important of all, the pièce de resistance of Douhet’s theory, the almighty heavy bomber, the bomber that could get through to its goal in the heart of the enemy’s country — this weapon without which the whole Douhet theory disintegrates into thin air — this heavy bomber was never built.

To come back to the army and the General Staff:

We have seen how the General Staff after its investigation of the causes of the defeat of 1918 came to the conclusion that blitzkrieg was the only possible way to wage the next war or wars. In order to make such a blitzkrieg possible, certain political conditions had to be fulfilled. There had to be secret rearmament in order to make a surprise attack possible. This meant suppression of the parliament, of the freedom of the Press — indeed, the introduction of dictatorship in one way or another. In order to avoid wars on many fronts or against a world coalition, it was necessary to sign many treaties, to divide the world into many camps, and then to destroy one country after another through separate blitzkriegs or campaigns. Such a scheme would make it possible for the German armies and all the armed forces to have a rest after a relatively short war, to recuperate and to start all over again. Thus a war of attrition, dreaded by the General Staff because it was one of the reasons for the defeat of 1918, would be avoided.

A blitzkrieg, furthermore, needed certain psychological prerequisites, as far as the human material was concerned. It needed aggressive men who were willing to stake everything on one card, to fight at least for some time against overwhelming odds — panzer spearheads.

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