Arming the Luftwaffe

[edwest]

Dear Richard,


Thank you for the review, and your many years of hard work in the Luftwaffe research community. A few questions:

1) Does the book cover specific aircraft production such as dates, deliveries, numbers produced, including trials versions?

2) Does it mention specific materials shortages and replacements? Even in the case of machine tools, there is a report of the Germans secretly importing Wolfram (tungsten) from Spain.

3) Does it mention repair facilities, locations and details regarding numbers of aircraft serviced say, per month? Or by some other measure?


Kind regards,

Ed West

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Ed,

Simply, the answer is no to each of your questions. It is not that type of a book. What it does tell us about, and here I am focusing specifically on chapter 3, is the organizational structures and their changes, the people involved, the political infighting, and some details of the problems associated with some of the aircraft programs.

As an example, Milch retained say-so on aircraft production until early 1944, but was fighting a losing battle because he simply was losing priority versus Speer's armaments ministry which handled allocations for the other services. Since he and Speer were friends, he went to Speer and suggested they work together. This was after "Big Week" in Feb. 1944, which helped turn Speer's attitude in favor of giving more support to aircraft production. They both agreed, but Speer fell ill for a couple of months. So, in Speer's place, Saur was appointed. Milch attended a few of the meetings thereafter, but he was rather rapidly eased out of power and Saur, with his Jägerstab, had control essentially all to himself. Saur was not a particularly pleasant man, but he did get results.

That's a sampling of the sort of detail in the book. Uziel does discuss some of the aircraft programs, but not in the sort of detail that you have asked about.

Regards,
Richard

[edwest]

Dear Richard,


Thank you for your reply. I feel the title of the book is misleading. With all due respect for the author and his hard work, I think a title like "Slave Labor and the Luftwaffe" would have been more accurate. Internal rivalries are relevant but only as a side issue. The changing war situation was the driver that brought in the SS and their labor pool from the concentration camps. The decision to add detailed case studies on a few particular aircraft seems entirely out of place.

If the title was Arming the American Soldier in World War II, I would have expected a detailed list covering what was needed, who made it, how it was delivered, including the sinking of supply ships, for example, and how increased demand drove other named companies into providing more of whatever was required.


Regards,
Ed West