Arming the Luftwaffe

[Jukka Juutinen]

Why applaud a historian due to a referral to The Simpsons?

[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

[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

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Ed,

"Slave Labor and the Luftwaffe" would be a very inappropriate title for this book. Much of the book does not deal with the use of slave labor. The book does, however, focus heavily on the lack of available manpower and the various efforts to fill the gap, with slave labor being the last resort.

As for choosing the He 162 for his case study, Uziel's choice can be understood from the standpoint that it represented the final refinement in aircraft development and production management. Now, the use of the word "refinement" is somewhat misleading. If, for instance, this was not a wartime situation and Germany had the luxury to constantly improve the efficiency of its manufacturing methods, which is really what is going on in the world today, then his choice would be fitting. However, the whole cycle for the He 162 began about Sept. 1944 and the compression of the cycle was more a result of Germany's desperate situation. Planning for its mass production began long before the first test aircraft flew, meaning that modifications were constantly taking place in the production process, including retrofitting. It was a good example of how things were set up with limited resources in time, people, materiel, and transportation, although it appears that this and the entire production industry suffered from the collapsing transportation network.

The Me 262 might have been a better choice for illustration, although, while its gestation was rather long, it, too, entered service with much yet to be worked out.

As an aside, the work reported here reminds me of the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." In the movie, one of the Pythons in battle loses one limb after another, but continues to fight on, done so from a humorous standpoint. It was not so humorous for Germany, but the parallel is dead on. Germany's situation also parallels another movie from the early 1950's, "This Island Earth". Here, visitors from another planet try to enlist the aid of earth scientists to help them prevent the loss of their planet to an opponent. After establishing the premise and setting up a base here on earth, and urgent message comes from their home planet to come quickly, as the situation has become critical. The ship with the earth scientists arrives, but it is too late, as the visitor's planet is at the same stage of its war as Germany was in early May 1945. The crew of the ship does the honorable thing and returns the scientists to earth, their cause lost. The scenes of the losing war parallel what we have seen in newsreel footage of the last days of the Reich. The book intimately gives you the feel of the decline and desperate efforts to ward off the inevitable.

I would suggest that you buy the book, read it, then come back with your assessment. I've done my best to try to give everyone a decent idea as to what the book is about.

Regards,
Richard

[edwest]

Dear Richard,


I would not buy this book since it does not focus on the technical and manufacturing aspects I asked about earlier. For example, the luftwaffe leadership gave proposals to potential manufacturers late in the war for aircraft with specific characteristics such as range and and bomb load. It was also apparent that some manufacturers felt that proposals that used fewer strategic materials and wood, plus designs that would require fewer man-hours and unskilled workers, would be looked upon more favorably. There is also the issue of dispersal of production by the Germans.

It goes without saying that the Germans were in a desperate situation and their engineers and scientists simply kept on working. I think the United States would have done the same if it were in Germany's situation.


Regards,
Ed West

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Ed,

Some of the points you mention are, indeed, covered. As the book notes, the industry went from skilled labor to essentially unskilled labor and had to accomodate production because of this change. The hopes with utilizing contract labor were that some skill levels could still be brought to the tasks at hand. Even with the use of slave labor, initial efforts were focused on trying to go with those inmates that possessed skills.

Germany's conflicting goals of increased production and eliminating the Jews resulted, to a great extent, in treating concentration camp inmates as expendable resources, denying them adequate sustenance and care, literally working them to death. Add to this the brutality of their SS guards and Germany chewed up the one resource that they really needed. It was a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face, a self-inflicted wound.

I found the book full of insight. Whether you want to spend the $45 to gain a basic understanding of the background to production of all those aircraft is up to you. I find it all fascinating. My view is I want to get beyond just X number of aircraft A produced and understand the background behind the numbers. Was the effort, in retrospect, worth it? Did Germany fail to address issues that could have made a meaningful difference? How did the war in the east affect the aviation industry? How did Allied strategy affect German planning?

What if, trying to project the potential ramifications of its planned actions, Germany would have chosen different objectives that might have resulted in a different outcome? In reading the book, you get an armchair view of where mistakes were made. That's not to say they weren't going to make them anyway, but you do develop a much better understanding of how they ended up losing the war.

Regards,
Richard

[edwest]

Dear Richard,


I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the book. Certainly, a subject like this needs to be covered. I will just bring up one point: It's one thing working slave labor to death digging tunnels. The skill required to use a pickax cannot be compared to riveting or wiring or welding. Aircraft are tested before leaving the plant. All pilots need to make sure their instruments are working prior to takeoff - their lives are at stake. Sure, I suppose you could just take the prisoner who did a bad job out to be shot with the next one brought in to replace him. In any case, there were many factors that led to the capitulation.


Regards,
Ed

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Ed,

Slave labor was used on the production lines, not just in using pick axes.

Regards,
Richard