Hitler's Engineers by Blaine Taylor

Author:Blaine Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027100
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781935149774
Publisher: Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2010-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

German General of the Fighters Adolf Galland in 1944. Noted Professor Speer: “Two of the most successful Air Force officers—[Werner] Baumbach and Galland—worked with me during the last days of the war developing a weird plan for laying hands on the most important members of Hitler’s entourage and preventing them from committing suicide.” Despite Speer’s postwar assertions, their joint plans came to nothing. (CER)

In May 1944, Hitler met with his Luftwaffe chiefs, Speer, Milch, Karl-Otto Saur, Colonel Petersen and several others involved with the Me 262, but not General Galland. Discussion moved onto Saur’s production program for the Me 262 fighter. Milch had gambled, believing that only this plane could save the air war. Hitler was furious to hear that the planes were being produced as fighters, not fighter-bombers, after his decision of the previous year, and that his orders had been disobeyed by his most trusted officials. On the spot, the Führer modified the plans for the plane. His officials were shocked, but Milch tried once more to persuade him. A row ensued, which essentially ended Milch’s career. On May 29, Göring ordered the plane transferred from Galland’s office to that of the head of the Bomber arm.

The Me 262 affair clearly shows up the fact that by this time, Göring no longer stood up to Hitler. Hitler was criticising the Luftwaffe severely, and Göring’s reaction was to simply submit to his wishes, which in the end doomed the Luftwaffe. Athough Göring agreed with Galland and Milch as to the potential of the plane, he was reluctant to commit to the Me 262 as a fighter. He was eventually persuaded to protest to Hitler, but the orders of late May 1944 show that he was defeated. He then would have had to mediate with the unhappy parties who believed in the Me 262 as a fighter. As a result of the affair, Göring’s prestige within the Luftwaffe was damaged.16

By June 1944, the Luftwaffe was desperate to use the new aircraft against the bombers, but Hitler was still refusing to let them be used as fighters. The General Staff also had been counting on the new fighter to make a difference in the air war, and so “everyone who could claim any knowledge of the subject at all put in a word and tried to change Hitler’s mind: Jodl, Guderian, Walter Model, Sepp Dietrich, and, of course, the leading generals of the Air Force.”17 Eventually Hitler forbade any further discussion on the topic.

Galland, with the support of Speer, had continued very small-scale tests of the Me 262 as a fighter. At last, in October 1944, Göring ordered him to form a jet fighter unit from the test commandos. The suggestion had come from Himmler, and his support was needed for Göring to be able to put it into action. The successes of these fighter units finally persuaded Hitler that the plane was an excellent fighter.

The following March, however, Hitler ordered that the fighter-bomber Me 262 be rearmed as a fighter as quickly as possible.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.