Combat Fatigue

[Larry deZeng]

Herr Stadler wrote in part:

.......My question here is in regard to how the Luftwaffe and other air forces treated psychiatric casualties.

The Luftwaffe did not treat combat fatigue or exhaustion as something other than as an expected outcome for most. A pilot or other combatant who went to his unit M.D. and said he had arrived at the breaking point was immediately sent home on leave or to an Erholungsheim (convalescent facility, sanitarium) run by the Luftwaffe. This was not held against the individual. However, speed of treatment was a qualitative call based on the individual's rank and perceived value to the Luftwaffe, i.e., a hotshot fighter jockey would be attended to much more quickly than an Unteroffizier from the ranks who cleaned Bf 109 windshields and kept the cockpit tidy.

There is a huge body of study on this subject that was done during the several years following the war by Allied medical and academic personnel. Twenty years ago it was all available at the U.S. Army Library in the Pentagon, but since then it may have been moved elsewhere, possibly to the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. You can also check this 5-volume work that includes quite a bit on the subject:

Fischer, Hubert, Der deutsche Sanitätsdienst 1921-1945. 5 Bde (Osnabrück, 1982-1988).

Additionally, I recall seeing at least one scholarly article on the topic in the outstanding quarterly journal Militärgeschlichtliche Mitteilungen (an official publication of the Militärgeschlichtliche Forschungsamt in conjunction with the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg). IIRC, it was back in the 1980's.