Berlin 1945 Illustrated by Castle Rock Publishing

Author:Castle Rock Publishing
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

To this attitude must be added Hitler's growing mistrust of the generals. He could not help but feel the opposition of the experts. Persons of his entourage with selfish designs not only made much of it but also shifted it from the professional to the political side.

In this manner the Supreme High Command made serious mistakes of decisive importance which essentially influenced the outcome of the war. To give a detailed account of them would require a report of a larger scope.

When speaking of the Supreme Command in a broader sense, Goering as Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe must be included. He was called to his post for political reasons. The most conspicuous trait of his character was a brutal determination. Although he was an excellent fighter squadron commander (Jagdstaffel-fuehrer) in the First World War, he nevertheless lacked training for higher military command. He was unable to analyze logically the problems of the strategy of air warfare which, at that time, were an unexplored field for the entire world. Although he would have been more easily approached by an adviser than Hitler, there was none of any importance. The best mind of the German Luftwaffe, General Wever, had become the victim of an airplane accident long before the war. The chief of the new Air General Staff was indeed a man of high intellectual level, but he was young and lacked adequate experience. The result was that wrong theories concerning the conduct of air warfare were formed, as a consequence of which the organization of the Luftwaffe was based on wrong ideas. The German struggle for air supremacy was unbalanced and therefore could not produce a decisive success. [16] The catastrophic error in placing the output of fighters far behind that of bombers was recognized by wide circles of the Luftwaffe (for example, General Galland) and the Army as early as 1942. Goering remained adamant. He did not concern himself with this question until spring of 1944. At the time of the Ardennes offensive (middle of December 1944) we did succeed in mustering 2,400 fighters (Jaeger), the largest number the German Luftwaffe ever had. The pilots were, however, not sufficiently trained and largely inexperienced in battle and therefore unable to play any important role whatsoever. If the conversion had been started as early as 1942 when bombers had stopped flying over England, as had been recommended repeatedly, approximately 3 to b,000 well-trained fighter pilots (Jaeger) would have been available by the middle of 1944, the majority of them equipped with the most modem planes.

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