Stuart on the Luftwaffe

[1Big Rich]

Stumbled across this bit from Stuart in a discussion from the old board on the Luftwaffe in World War II. I don't remember why I saved it, but I did. I think it should be preserved here:

Strategy For Defeat is very good. The problem comes when trying to do something different.

The old saying "you can't get there from here" is seriously applicable. There's a lot that could be done to make the Luftwaffe a more effective air force but it couldn't be done in the kind of state the Nazis ran and it couldn't be done with the Germany that existed in the 1920s and 1930s. Improving the Luftwaffe beyond its historical levels requires a completely different economic system and a completely different type of government and if they were achieved, the country would almost certainly not be going to war in 1939 or indeed any other time.

The key isn't technology or pilot production or indeed anything else that's tangible when we study the Luftwaffe in isolation. To understand why the Luftwaffe was what it was, we have to look at German economics, the political programs of the Nazi Party and the grand strategy of the country that resulted from those two factors. The best way to do that is to read Adam Tooze's book "the wages of destruction". This makes it painfully obvious that Germany had lost WW2 in 1933 and nothing much was going to change that.

Basically, from 1933 through to 1945 Germany was skirting bankruptcy and only skirting (as distinct from plummeting into) national bankruptcy by some highly innovative financial maneuvers that would today get the country put under a trade embargo so fast it would make Hjalmar Schacht's head swim.

By 1939 Germany was in a massive financial crisis, This could only be changed by running highly profitable wars that would seize another country and loot it of its resources (and especially its gold reserves) before Germany's own pre-produced reserves of money and munitions ran out. Germany also had the manpower crunch that all countries that had been involved in WW1 had. To misquote the last but one verse of the Skye Boat Song

Many a young lad stood on that day
bravely their rifles to wield
When the night fell they silently lay
Dead on Flander's Field.

So, wars had to be cheap, fast, victorious and leave lots of the target country available for looting. Now, because Germany was so nearly bankrupt and it was already pushing the military production side of its economy far beyond the level that the country could afford, force structure arguments that involve additional production are illusory. At most, Germany could reorganize what it had but additional goodies were out of the question.

So, in that context, Germany's options are really limited. The number of aircraft they could build per year was limited. The number of aircraft engines they could build per year was limited. The limits were economic not production capacity and, again, Germany had already exceeded the economic limit and its economy was collapsing as a result. So, they had to allocate their aircraft production in order to achieve the best most acceptable results (no results were going to be satisfactory). They also had to balance size against requirements.

So, to look at training. Every trainer built by the Luftwaffe meant one less fighter or light bomber. So, bulking up the training capacity and producing more pilots means reducing the front-line strength of the Luftwaffe. Note that the Germans extensively used captured aircraft for training. BUT herein lies the problem. To win wars quickly and decisively requires up-front forces. If they do it right, the war is over before a shortage of pilots becomes apparent. More pilots can be trained in the period of peace before the next war. So, increasing training capacity is, by definition, secondary to front-line strength. So, training takes the hit.

Actually though, the training issue wasn't that bad. Not while Germany had the initiative. Look at it this way; when Germany went to war in 1941, the average German pilot had perhaps 100 hours of basic training and about the same on type. The average Russian pilot had about 20 hours of basic training and 15 hours on type. The kill rate was 9:1 in the German's favor. Jump forward to 1943, the average American pilot arriving in the UK had around 200 hours basic and 200 - 400 hours (depending on what he was flying) on type. The casualty rate was 4:1 in the Americans favor. It was the duration of the war that was decisive, not the training regime per se. The German training regime was designed for short wars, not long ones and that couldn't be changed without compromising the ability of the Germans to win those short wars.

Strategic bombers? Same argument applies. A real strategic bomber needs lifting capacity and that means four engines. Every four-engine aircraft means four less fighters or light bombers or two less medium bombers. So, its a non-starter from the get-go. Also, heavy bombers were then the tool of a prolonged, economic and production dominated war, the one thing Germany had to avoid at all costs. Once it came to that, it wouldn't be the allied armies that occupied Germany, it would be the bailiffs. However, there is a much deeper cause for rejecting the construction of a heavy bomber. Heavy bombers are the tool used to smash the industrial and economic resources of the target country. That hasn't changed, we can just do it a lot faster these days (like minutes instead of years). But it was those very economic and industrial resources that Germany was going to war to seize, Destroying them with a heavy bomber offensive was counter-productive to every operational strategic, grand strategic and economic objective Germany had. That is why the idea of a heavy bomber fleet was so soundly rejected. Not only would it have a crippling effect on the front line combat aircraft strength, using it would defeat the very objective for which Germany was fighting the war.

Nothing is really going to save the Luftwaffe; in fact it did as well as could be expected and probably better than it should have done. More trainers means fewer fighters, strategic bombers means a lot fewer fighters. More fighters means less training capacity. No matter which way one cuts it, they lose.

[warshipadmin]

Interesting, that is quite a radical rethink in my opinion. Here's a review of Tooze's book https://web.archive.org/web/20180205165 ... estruction