[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

I have now read Daniel Uziel's book and can highly recommend it to those interested in the German aviation industry. The chapter numbers are the ones provided by McFarland. Daniel's list to me is moved up one number for some unknown reason.

Chapter 1 provides the buildup of the German aircraft industry in the 30's. In perspective, Germany was in the throes of the great depression and, to add to its misery, still owed reparations to the Allies for WW I. Life, to say the least, was not easy. Hitler came into power in 1933 and virtually immediately ramped up the aviation industry. The period was the golden age for Germans working in the industry, with housing and other needs provided by the manufacturers. The improvement in worker's living standards was significant.

Chapter 2 basically gives an overview of the air war up until "Big Week". It hits the high points of key bombing raids affecting the industry. It ends with very short descriptions of the key aircraft. This chapter could have been expanded significantly and I was left with a feeling of wanting more.

Chapter 3, to me, is the heart of the book. Entitled "Reorganization of Aircraft Production", Uziel covers in detail the changes in the power structures during the last year and a half of the war as the general situation deteriorated. This is covered in the greatest detail that I have seen and yet, because of my interest, I wanted more. The last year is an especially difficult period to write about because of the difficulty of finding records. Having spent a year teasing out records at the NARA II and the NASM archives, not to lessen input from other sources, Uziel provides us with 426 references, the vast majority of them being primary material.

Chapter 4, "From Technological Expertise to Slave Labor", I began with great trepidation. One key point that Uziel makes is that Germany, even without the bombing, was short the required manpower to produce the aircraft it needed. With the war initiated, the meatgrinder of manpower became a fact of life. The war with Russia required repeated raiding of the country's manpower pools, including the aviation industry. Replacements for this lost manpower were brought in from other countries with 1-year contracts being provided. Also, efforts were made to utilize aviation companies in the conquered countries, but the results weren't all that successful. Heinkel was the first to consider the use of slave labor but, to do that, the SS had to be brought into the picture, as it was the last bastion of available labor. Himmler was only too happy to agree. And thus, the concentration camps became the source of replacement labor. As you might expect, treatment of this source of labor was pretty abominable, with long hours, little food, poor housing, and harsh treatment. With the SS guards, there was simply beastiality, beatings and ill-treatment for the slightest supposed rule infraction or failure to perform as expected. Uziel cites that treatment varied from deploable to passable. In general, treatment was better in auxiliary camps set up near the factories, while the worst generally occurred at the base camps.

Chapter 5, covering daily life in the factories, appears to be primarily from survivors' accounts. It does not cover production details, per se.

In both chapters 4 and 5, Uziel covers the treatment of concentration camp inmates with remarkable restraint. He provides the facts without doing what I would call "Nazi-bashing", just letting the situations speak for themselves without any particular color commentary.

Uziel concludes his book with a case study of the He 162. I know personally that the He 162 was particularly fascinating to him and thus he chose it, rather than the Me 262, as his case study. I have chided him in this, but he has argued that the Me 262 has been so heavily covered in other books that he wanted to put the focus rather on the He 162. As a matter of fact, this being my favorite topic, I was a bit chagrined that the Me 262 did not receive more attention. That isn't to say he has not covered it, but that the coverage is fragmented and rather incomplete. He also has taken an interest in the He 177 and goes into great detail on its long and difficult history.

It's an excellent book and will provide the reader with much background on the German aviation industry not found elsewhere.

Regards,
Richard