by Unknown
The Me 262s were soon inflicting crippling losses on the daylight bomber raids, but the main German goal was to build up an effective force of Me 262s before the daylight bombers could carry out their campaign against the oil and transportation industries on which Germany’s war economy depended. Galland again decided to emphasize the principles of mass and concentration for an improved version of the “Big Blow” before the bomber offensive started inflicting substantial damage.
The jet-powered version of the Big Blow followed the successful pattern of the first, concentrating on an 8th Air Force raid on oil refineries at Leipzig, generating several thousand sorties, and destroying several hundred American bombers. However, only the superior performance of the Me 262 made this Luftwaffe victory possible, for the piston-engined German fighters found it increasingly difficult to hold the Allied fighters, now based on the continent, at bay. But with the Me 262/R4M weapons system, the Germans had the counter to B-17/B-24 class bombers flown in tight formation. It combined speed and lethality in a way none of the piston-engined fighters, single or twin engined, had done. At night the Me 262B night-fighter was highly lethal, regularly shooting down the Mosquito pathfinders that Bomber Command depended on for its increased accuracy.
The Final Effort
With Germany resisting into 1946—the additional resources made possible by the defeat of the bombers kept the Russians on the Vistula and Romania and its oil in the war—the Allies were forced to reinvent the strategic bombing campaign yet again. The U.S. strategic bombing forces in Europe were largely rebuilt with modified Boeing B-29s, diverted away from the Pacific War. Meanwhile, the first of the massive six-engine piston B-36s and four-engine jet B-45s were coming into service.
Some of the new U.S. bombers also went to veteran RAF Bomber Command units. This was significant because the British war economy could no longer keep up after years of near total mobilization, so the Bomber Command became less of a factor in the 1946 campaign, despite the introduction of Avro Lincoln and Vickers Windsor heavy bombers. Britain had invested so much of its resources in the previous bomber offensives there was little more to give, and the RAF was increasingly reliant on what the United States could transfer.
It would now be a high-altitude war, with bombers operating at 30,000 feet or more, above the reach of the flak. To deal with the German jets, there were large numbers of piston-engined fighters that, if individually noncompetitive with the Germans, were still effective in operating against their bases.21 But U.S. industry was also able to produce large numbers of P-80 and P-84 jet fighters, which joined RAF Meteors and Vampires. Though these lacked range, their use of forward bases was supplemented by increased work on British-developed midair refueling techniques.
To meet this challenge, the German war economy—still fully functioning—was able to field the first of the “secret weapons” made possible by the rational reordering of research and development priorities. Me 263 rocket fighters provided high-altitude point interception capability, and the first Wasserfall surface-to-air missiles supplemented increasing numbers of 105mm and 128mm flak guns for high-altitude defense.
Though the Germans were still able to challenge the bomber offensive as the Allied armies pressed at the borders of Germany in the spring and summer of 1946, there was one element of the Allied investment in technology they were unable to counter. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Berlin, followed a few days later by one on Dresden. It took a further ten bombs—all the United States had—over the spring and summer of 1946 to finally bring about victory through airpower. The Soviet Army was able to push over the Vistula. Romania switched sides. The Western Allies were able to push bridgeheads over the Rhine.
This finally brought about the collapse of the German war economy, though it required an additional five months of often bitter broken-back conflict before German unconditional surrender was forthcoming.
Conclusion
The Luftwaffe’s triumph against the combined bomber offensive proved to be Germany’s disaster. All Germany won from the heroic struggles of its defenders was primacy on the atomic targeting list above Japan. There was nothing the Luftwaffe could do to stop the inexorable development of atomic weapons. What their victory over the bombers provided was an extension of the war that enabled the revolutionary impact of these weapons to have the final, decisive impact on the war in Europe.
The German military of the Second World War was good at securing operational success—winning a major battle or campaign—but could not convert this to a lasting solution to Germany’s fundamentally insoluble strategic problem of fighting a multifront war against enemies with much greater resources. Only where the opponents lacked the time or space to deal with German operational success, or the flaws in their war-fighting capability prevented their resources from being effectively used—as in 1940—were the Germans able to gain a strategic success. But even this—like the Luftwaffe’s success in 1944—proved transitory.
The Reality
The “might have been” shows the significance of the Allied bomber offensive against Germany. Its counterfactual absence suggests that its impact cannot be easily “disaggregated.” The effects of the most effective phase of the bomber offensive—72 percent of the total tonnage was dropped after D-Day—were integral with other effects on the German capability and will to resist. Postwar conventional wisdom, that the bomber offensive could not reduce German industrial production nor crack civilian morale, and that its impact was limited to keeping German fighters and flak at home rather than in Normandy, is largely contradicted by more recent writing.
I have been guided by Max Weber’s 1905 suggestion that counterfactuals should change as little as possible. The second-order impacts of changing the values, goals, and contexts in which decisions were made are impossible to predict. It is often difficult—or irrelevant—to treat them properly, especially in the type of causation that evolves along the “for want of a nail” path of impact escalation.22 Friedrich Engels’s posited that history was a “parallelogram of forces” and that to move one corner would affect parts of the figure far away and in unintended ways.23
The Allies proved on a number occasions in both world wars to be as committed to doctrinal solutions as those that led to the defeat of the bomber offensive in this scenario. The cult of the offensive and the self-delusion by numbers were all too real. However, the U.S. strategic bombing offensive in Europe actually proved to be very good at learning.
The German changes to their fighter force and industrial program that could lead to victory in 1944 are generally those identified, with the benefit of hindsight, by Adolf Galland in postwar interrogations, as among those omissions that cost Germany the war. The “Big Blow” was a Galland project in 1944 that was never implemented.
Bibliography
Avant, Deborah D., Political Institutions and Military Change. Lessons from Peripheral Wars (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1994).
Boog, Horst, ed., The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War (Berg, New York, 1992).
Clodfelter, Mark, The Limits of Airpower (The Free Press, New York, 1989).
Davis, Richard G., Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (GPO, Washington, 1993).
Evans, Richard J., In Defense of History (Norton, New York, 1999).
Galland, Adolf, et al., The Luftwaffe Fighter Force. The View from the Cockpit (Greenhill Books, London, 1998).
Gooderson, Ian, “Heavy and Medium Bombers: How Successful Were They in the Tactical Close Support Role During World War II?”, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, September 1992.
Isby, David C., Fighter Combat in the Jet Age, (HarperCollins, London, 1997).
Konvitz, Josef W, “Bombs, Cities and Submarines: Allied Bombing of the French Ports 1942-43,” International History Review, vol. 14 no. 1, February 1992.
McFarland, Stephen, America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing, 1910-45 (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1995).
Miller, Stephen,
ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1985).
Murray, Williamson, Strategy for Defeat (Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, 1983).
Overy, Richard J., The Air War 1939-45 (Europa, London, and Stein & Day, New York, 1980).
Paret, Peter, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1985).
Posen, Barry R., The Sources of Military Doctrine (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1984).
Price, Alfred, The Last Year of the Luftwaffe, May 1944 to May 1945 (Arms & Armour, London, 1991).
———, Luftwaffe. The Birth, Life and Death of an Air Force (Macdonald, London, and Ballantine, New York, 1970).
Rosen, Stephen Peter, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1991).
Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1970).
Stephens, Alan, ed., The War in the Air, 1914-1994 (Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, 2000).
Van Evera, Stephen, “Why States Believe Foolish Ideas: Non-Self Evaluation in Government and Society,” paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting, 1988.
Weber, Max, “Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation in Historical Explanation,” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Free Press of Glencoe, Glencoe, Ill., 1949 [1905]).
Werrell, Kenneth, Who Fears? The 301st in War and Peace (Taylor, Dallas, 1991).
Zisk, Kimberley Martin, Engaging the Enemy.” Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation 1955-91 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991).
Notes
1. On the time frame, see Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 239.
2. Murray, Strategy for Defeat, 103, 134.
3. Price, Luftwaffe, 94.
4. Quoted in Galland, The Luftwaffe Fighter Force, 215.
5. See generally: Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change; Rosen, Winning the Next War; and Zisk, Engaging the Enemy.
6. On strategic airpower theory in general, see: Overy, The Air War 1939-45, 5-25; and MacIsaac, David, “Voices From the Central Blue,” in Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy.
7. See generally: McFarland, America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing, especially 182-86.
8. Konvitz, “Bombs, Cities and Submarines: Allied Bombing of the French Ports 1942-43,” 40-43.
9. The USAAF was less likely—or able—to fall into this type of problem than its successor, the USAF, which has been the subject of several case studies on this type of bureaucratic behavior. See generally: Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower.
10. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, 50.
11. See generally: Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” in Miller, Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War; also Van Evera, “Why States Believe Foolish Ideas.”
12. On the tendency to look at tonnage rather than results, see the Spaatz quotation in Werrell, Who Fears?, 83.
13. Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 61.
14. Overy, 15. Murray, “The Influence of Pre-War Anglo-American Doctrine on the Air Campaigns of the Second World War,” in Boog, The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War, 238-40.
15. On the “Big Blow,” see Galland, op. cit., 176-80.
16. On the competition between German industrial hardening and the Atlantic Wall, see Overy, “World War II: the Bombing of Germany,” in Stephens, The War in the Air, 1914-1994, pp. 123-25.
17. Gooderson, “Heavy and Medium Bombers: How Successful Were They in the Tactical Close Support Role During World War II?”
18. Gooderson, 367.
19. On the impact of bombing on German morale, see Overy, 208, and Murray, Strategy for Defeat, 300. While some sources hold that the bombing stimulated German morale, the weight of the evidence is that it took a considerable toll.
20. Price, The Last Year of the Luftwaffe, May 1944 to May 1945, 176.
21. Isby, Fighter Combat in the Jet Age, see chapter 1 generally.
22. Weber, “Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation in Historical Explanation,” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, 164-88.
23. Quoted in Evans, In Defense of History, 118.
Hitler’s Bomb
Target: London and Moscow
Forrest R. Lindsey
“As for my participation in making the bomb, there was no choice. The original discovery that made it possible was made in Germany, and we had believed that the German scientists were ahead of us in the development of a nuclear weapon. I shudder to think what would have happened if Germany had been first to acquire the weapon.”
—Eugene Wigner, physicist
The Beginning of the End
Professor Heisenberg was startled and more than a little bit uneasy when he was summoned in the middle of the night. It was unprecedented for anyone to summon him to anything, since as the top theoretical physicist in the country and a Nobel Prize winner, he was used to some degree of deference. Nonetheless, when the black-uniformed SS officers came for him at his home, he dressed quickly and quietly got in the car. In Hitler’s Germany, you did what you were told when the SS came for you.
He was led to a large darkened building up a wide stairway to the last office in a hall. When the door opened, he was seated in a dimly lit and sparsely furnished office whose main features were a very large desk and a portrait of the Führer centered behind it on the wall. His escorts left him there alone, and for several minutes all he could hear was his own breathing. For a second he closed his eyes and thought of what he might have done to be brought to this room. His meeting with Niels Bohr the previous month1—was that seen as something treasonous? Were some of his conversations with his fellow scientists overheard? He opened his eyes and stared across that giant desk into the unblinking gaze behind the flat, round-rimmed glasses of Heinrich Himmler.
“Good evening Herr Professor,” the Reichsführer said without expecting an answer. “I understand that you have made some exceptional contributions to our Fatherland in the field of atomic fission.” Heisenberg was surprised that this was what the Reichsführer wanted to talk to him about, yet this was hardly a secret. “We need a weapon that will decisively crush our enemies, and you and your department have the best chance of giving Germany this weapon,” Himmler continued. A flash from Himmler’s glasses dismissed the reflexive shrug from Professor Heisenberg that was meant to say that he did not think an atomic bomb was possible yet. “The SS under my direction is taking over the leadership of this project as of this moment. You will be given everything and anything that you will need. You will have the highest priority for funds, materials, and workers.”
Himmler paused for a second to make his final point as clearly as possible. “You will continue the leadership of your department as a member of my SS with full authority to lead as you choose. You will have any scientists, engineers, and technicians that you choose—including any that may be prisoners of the Reich.” He paused again to let that last item fully sink in—he was allowing Heisenberg to recruit Jewish prisoners from the concentration camps. “You must succeed at any cost. The British and the Americans are working to have the same weapons, so we must have them first. When you succeed, you will have done great service to your Fatherland and your Führer and you will be amply rewarded. If you fail, the price will be beyond your imagining. Good night, Herr Professor.”
After the SS car had dropped him off, Heisenberg spent a long time sitting helplessly on the steps in front of his home. He felt like a man who had been standing in the water at the beach when a large ocean wave struck and carried him along, tumbling and choking, powerless.
It was clear to him that he had no one to appeal to, no power above the Reichsführer to avoid his future. He had quietly advocated a passive resistance to bomb development among his scientific community, and even hinted that he would not help the Nazis
get one during his meeting with Bohr in Copenhagen, but that was over now. He knew only too well that the man in that darkened room meant exactly what he said, and that he had all the power he needed to make Heisenberg do what he wanted. After a long while, Heisenberg opened his door and went inside.
