ON the night of 27th–28th July, 1943, Hamburg became the first German city—and indeed the first city in history—to endure a firestorm. That is to say, so many tons of incendiaries fell on Hamburg during the R.A.F. attack, such an intense heat was generated, that individual fires fed upon each other, linked up and turned into a vast conflagration. This became a man-made tornado, a column of heated air more than two and a half miles high and one and a half miles in diameter. The Police President of Hamburg reported afterwards that the unique situation arising in a firestorm could be realised only by: “… analysing it soberly as a meteorological phenomenon: as a result of the sudden linking of a number of fires, the air above was heated to such an extent that a violent updraught occurred which, in turn, caused the surrounding fresh air to be sucked in from all sides to the centre of the fire area. This tremendous suction caused movements of air of far greater force than normal winds. In meteorology the differences of temperature involved are of the order of 20 deg. to 30 deg. C. In this firestorm they were of the order of 600 deg., 800 deg., or even 1,000 deg. C. This explained the colossal force of the firestorm winds.” On that awful night when the anger of Gomorrah fell on Hamburg, the firestorm could not be analysed soberly, scientifically or any other way; it simply exploded into life 21s a monstrous, writhing thing of flame, utterly beyond control. Great trees were uprooted and whisked away. People were sucked up into the inferno. Nothing, literally nothing, survived in the centre of the Hamburg firestorm; everything that would burn burned, and anything that would not burn melted.
To understand the importance of the fate that overtook Hamburg in July, 1943, it must be considered as a battle, for that is what the offensive became—the Battle of Hamburg. The first attack, on the night of 24th–25th July, was carried out by 740 aircraft of Bomber Command, and numerous large fires were started. Nevertheless, Hamburg rightly prided itself on having the most efficient system of civil defence in Germany, and by the following morning some sort of order was being restored. Then, unexpectedly, came the Allied hammer blows calculated to finish the job once and for all. The same day the U.S. 8th Air Force appeared over the still burning city and stoked up the fires; on 26th July, Bomber Command mounted a second raid which resulted in the firestorm, and completed the triple blow the following night with another force of over 700 bombers. A fourth R.A.F. attack on the night of 2nd–3rd August failed to achieve any measure of success, owing to adverse weather conditions. In the three main Bomber Command raids, over 2,350 aircraft dropped 7,200 tons of high explosive and incendiaries on Hamburg, and during the whole nine-day battle about 9,000 tons hit the target, just a little below Air Marshal Harris’s estimate of the tonnage needed to ensure complete destruction.
Harris was well satisfied with the results of Operation Gomorrah, as he had every right to be. When at last the huge pall of smoke hanging over Hamburg had cleared away sufficiently for aerial photographs to be taken it was seen that eight square miles of the city had been completely destroyed, the transport system paralysed and the port turned into a shambles of wrecked and burning shipping. 277,500 houses and 183 factories had been destroyed, all the dock installations seriously damaged, and 180,000 tons of shipping sunk in the harbour. In Air Marshal Harris’s own words, Hamburg after the battle presented “a scene of unimaginable devastation”—and all achieved for a loss to Bomber Command of only fifty-seven aircraft.
Unfortunately, the many aerial photographs taken during and after the raids could not be expected to reveal the human agony of Hamburg. Bodies were still being recovered from the masses of debris two months later, and not until 1957 did the city authorities arrive at a final total of 50,000 dead, including 7,000 children and young people. Conditions in the firestorm centre were so appalling that the access streets had to be sealed off with barbed wire until clearance could be affected, a horrifying task that took a long time. In this densely populated area, the tornado had exacted a terrible toll in human life; huge shelters and bunkers built to protect hundreds of people had been turned into ovens by the intense heat and were found to contain nothing but ashes. Pans and other cooking utensils carried into the shelters had melted; whole blocks of houses had been consumed by heat estimated to have reached temperatures of 1,000–1,500 deg. F.; and the streets and squares were choked with pitiful, charred remnants that had once been human beings. Twenty years later, the catastrophe of Hamburg has not been erased from the minds of those who survived the fearful days and nights of July, 1943, and a monument has been erected to the memory of the 55,000 people of the city who died as a result of aerial bombardment during the Second World War. With awful simplicity, the inscription reads: “May those generations who come after us be spared this. May this mass grave be a warning and exhortation to all who exercise charity towards their fellow men.”
Adolf Galland has called the destruction of Hamburg “the fateful hour of the Luftwaffe” and it is true that after Hamburg German air power rapidly fell to pieces. The summer of 1943 saw Goering lose his last opportunity to improve the air defence of the Third Reich and step up the production of fighters under the Milch programme, already falling behind schedule because of Hitler’s insistence on a large bomber force. The Reichsmarschall did, in fact, attempt to stop the rot by calling a conference of his generals at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia and informing them that, in his opinion, the Luftwaffe had served its purpose as an offensive air force and must now become a defensive arm, concentrated on the protection of the homeland. This proposal, so long overdue, was welcomed by all who heard it; even Peltz, the General of the Bombers, was prepared to agree that only a strong fighter arm could save the Reich. For the first time in many months, Goering and his commanders were of one mind. “It would be a tough job to reorganise the Luftwaffe in so short a time from an apparently strategic offensive arm into an effective defensive one,” considered Galland, “but none of us doubted that we could do it.”
Unfortunately, Adolf Hitler had the last word—and to the Fuehrer, any discussion on defence could be anticipation of defeat. Also, of course, Goering was already out of favour; Hitler was certain to be prejudiced against him. Nevertheless, the worried Reichsmarschall made up his mind to tell Hitler what had been decided and retired to the Fuehrer’s bunker, leaving his commanders still seated round the conference table. Later, when Goering emerged, it was obvious that something was seriously wrong; without a word he walked slowly past his leaders into an adjoining room. Then he called for Galland and Peltz, and they joined him. “We were met with a shattering picture,” writes Galland in his memoirs. “Goering had completely broken down. With his head buried in his arms on the table, he moaned some indistinguishable words. We stood there for some time in embarrassment until at last he pulled himself together and said we were witnessing his deepest moments of despair. The Fuehrer had lost faith in him. All the suggestions from which he had expected a radical change in the situation of the war in the air had been rejected; the Fuehrer had announced that the Luftwaffe had disappointed him too often, and a changeover from offensive to defensive in the air against the West was out of the question.”
Goering went on to explain that Hitler was giving the Luftwaffe a last chance to prove its mettle by resuming the air offensive against England on a large scale. The Allied terror raids would be countered by German terror raids; and the need for defence thus eliminated. It was all very simple, the way Hitler explained it. Goering talked on with growing confidence and Galland listened, aware that all his hopes were being dashed to pieces. The bombers would retain production priority; the night-fighter system—the famous “Kammhuber Line”—would deteriorate; and the day-fighter squadrons would be wasted away. And all to no purpose, all because one man refused to heed sound advice. Then Goering rose to his feet. “Oberst Peltz,” he said, “I appoint you assault leader against England!”
Peltz was a young, efficient and energetic commander, and he made a great effort to assemble a bombing force to strike at Britain. Eventually he managed to gather together from all fronts about 550 aircraft, including a few of the troublesome, unwanted Heinkel He 177s and a number of Junkers Ju 188s—improved versions of the ubiquitous Ju 88 bomber. Some fighter-bombers, mainly Me 410s and Fw 190s, were also pressed into service. This collection of assorted types of aeroplane, a far cry from the great air armada Goering had launched against Britain in 1940, was all that could be spared for Peltz, designated Angriffsfuehrer England for what turned out to be the last German bomber offensive of the Second World War. Also, Luftwaffe resources were at such a low ebb that preparations for the attack took a long time, and not until January, 1944, did the first raids, directed against London, take place.
Meanwhile, the Allied air offensive continued to hammer the Third Reich and its satellite countries with increasing vigour. In August, 1943, a force of 177 Liberators of the U.S. 9th Air Force successfully bombed the vast Rumanian oilfields at Ploesti—and at low level, in daylight, in the face of murderous flak and fighter opposition. Over fifty bombers were lost on this raid, considered by one writer to be “the worst catastrophe in the history of the U.S. Army Air Forces”. Two weeks later, a large formation of unescorted B-17s of the American 8th Air Force struck at Regensburg, home of the Messerschmitt industry, and a second force of B-17s bombed the vital ballbearing factories at Schweinfurt. Again success was achieved, but only at the cost of frightful losses. Later in the year the 8th A.A.F. returned to Schweinfurt, this time with 290 Fortresses, and dealt the ball-bearing works another crippling blow; the Luftwaffe rose in force and sixty B-17s failed to return. The German fighter arm—some two hundred Fw 190s and one hundred Bf 109GS of Luftflotte 3 and the Fw 190s of Luftflotte Reich deployed for the defence of the homeland—was flying and fighting as never before, and the American daylight air offensive was drifting into a war of attrition. General Arnold wrote afterwards: “No such savage air battles had been seen since the war began. Our losses were rising to an all-time high, but so were those of the Luftwaffe, and our bombers were not being turned back from their targets. Could we keep it up? The London papers asked the question editorially…”
Whether or not the Americans could stand the pace undoubtedly posed a leading air question in the summer of 1943, and one that would have to be answered in Washington before the end of the year. President Roosevelt had no desire to see the Luftwaffe vanquished by a Pyrrhic victory that left American air power so crippled that it was in no shape to tackle Japan—and the Mitsubishi Zero-Sen was already proving to be easily as good a fighter as the Bf 109 and Fw 190. It could be argued that, thanks to the remarkable Norden bomb sight, almost every daylight attack had been successful, thus vindicating the American theory of precision bombing; but behind locked doors it was admitted that the heavy losses in aircraft and trained crews could not be sustained. The concentrated fire-power of a B-17 or B-24 formation, though devastating, was simply not enough protection against determined fighter opposition.
As an intermediate solution to the American daylight bombing problem, a number of B-17s were converted as bomber escorts—literally flying fortresses—under the designation YB-40. These massive aircraft, carrying no bombs, but fitted with greatly increased armour and armed with twenty machine-guns and cannon of various calibres, were mixed into 8th Air Force formations on an experimental basis during the summer of 1943. By the end of the year, all YB-40s had been withdrawn from service for reconversion as bombers; they could not be shot down, but their great weight made them too slow to keep pace with the normal B-17s they were supposed to defend. Shortly after this failure, the B-17G, a version of the Fortress with additional defensive armament, was hurried into production, and the majestic formations of four-engined bombers continued to thunder over Germany with swarms of enemy fighters twisting and turning around them. The air battles that took place every day, even more savage than the great struggles over Britain in 1940, sometimes destroyed but never turned back the bomber squadrons; the courage of the B-17 and B-24 crews has been equalled but seldom surpassed. Four miles above the Third Reich, these men saw unforgettable sights; fighters plunging to earth in flames; huge bombera breaking into pieces; bodies tumbling through the air; and, always, the Fw 190s hurtling to meet the B-17s in suicidal head-on attacks, followed by the appalling impact of rockets and cannon shells crashing home. Then the long journeys back to base in limping aircraft, the targets successfully bombed, the bullet-riddled fuselages strewn with dead and wounded; and so many, many men who never returned at all.
Inevitably, the American air staff concluded that every bomber formation would have to be escorted all the way to the target and back by relays of long-range fighters—or the U.S. 8th Air Force would be annihilated. Unfortunately, the first American fighter type to enter operational service with the 8th Air Force was the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, a huge machine weighing some seven tons that not only lacked the range to penetrate deeply into Germany but also failed to match the performance of contemporary Luftwaffe fighters. Nevertheless, the P-47 was sturdy—it was actually the largest and heaviest single-seater fighter built during the war—and could be modified as a long range fighter by fitting a 200-gallon ventral drop tank, thus increasing its radius of action to over 300 miles. This was done, and once Thunderbolts so converted began to appear over Germany in strength bomber losses began to decline. This American introduction of long-range escort fighters led to an argument between Adolf Galland and Goering, who insisted that the Luftwaffe fighter arm should still concentrate on attacking the enemy bomber formations, avoiding battle with the escorting Thunderbolts. Galland, on the other hand, wanted the American fighters beaten and then the bombers destroyed, in that order. If the Americans could be persuaded to believe that their long-range fighters were no more successful than the abortive YB-40 flying battleships, they might revert to unescorted daylight raids—so reasoned Galland, with some justification. However, once again Goering had his way, with disastrous results for the Luftwaffe, which soon began to lose alarming numbers of day fighters.
The North American P-51 Mustang, which replaced the Thunderbolt as the principal American escort fighter, solved the daylight bombing problem once and for all. A very fast and highly manoeuvrable single-seater fighter, powered by a Packard-built version of the superb Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the Mustang arrived in the United Kingdom in November, 1943, and began to re-equip Thunderbolt groups of the U.S. 8th Air Force a month later. When fitted with detachable extra fuel tanks under each wing the P-51 was without equal as a strategic fighter; it had the range of a heavy bomber and the performance of contemporary Luftwaffe fighters above 20,000 ft. As a typical example, in March, 1944, Merlin-powered Mustangs escorted B-17 and B-24 bombers all the way to Berlin and back, a distance of 1,100 miles. Introduced just when it was most needed, the P-51 to a great extent guaranteed the ultimate success of the American daylight air offensive, although there would be many savage battles over Germany before the Luftwaffe admitted defeat.
Air Marshal Harris, with none of the problems that beset General Spaatz and Eaker to disturb his policy, hit hard at the Third Reich during the summer and autumn of 1943. On the night of 17th–18th August came the famous Peenemunde raid, of which more later. On the night of 22nd–23rd October the target for Bomber Command was Kassel, fated to become victim of the second German firestorm. Some 1,800 tons of bombs were dropped on Kassel in this single heavy attack, killing at least 5,000 people, leaving another 120,000 civilians homeless and crippling all the city’s industrial and commercial resources. During the November, Harris decided to concentrate laige bomber forces against Berlin, and by the end of the year the German capital, although heavily defended by night fighters and flak batteries, was fighting for its existence. The R.A.F. raids continued all that winter, and were, on the whole, successful; but Berlin was a very large city, and the weather was against the Bomber Command crews. In his memoirs Harris has commented: “In all, my Command made sixteen major attacks on the German capital. The whole battle was fought in appalling weather and in conditions resembling those of no other campaign in the history of warfare. Thousands upon thousands of tons of bombs were aimed at the Pathfinders’ pyrotechnic sky markers and fell through unbroken cloud which concealed everything below it except the confused glare of fires….”
The Battle of Berlin, often amounting to nothing more than blind saturation of the target area, typified aerial bombardment in its most primitive form, pitted against an efficient, if neglected, night-fighter and anti-aircraft defence organisation. It was a weary and often unrewarding struggle, but Air Marshal Harris, believing that Berlin was the key to the whole strategic air offensive, willingly accepted the difficulties. “We can wreck Berlin from end to end if the U.S.A.A.F. will come in on it,” he informed the Prime Minister. “It will cost us between 400–500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war.” But the Americans, who lacked the equipment and experienced crews to undertake long-range night operations and had not yet fully solved the problems of deep penetration in daylight, were reluctant to “come in on it”. The squadrons of R.A.F. Bomber Command consequently had to bear the brunt of the Battle of Berlin, the U.S. 8th Air Force not taking any part until March, 1944, when the offensive against the capital was almost at an end.
Germany remained desperately short of night fighters. According to Galland, the total number of twin-engined night fighters available for the defence of the Reich during 1943 never amounted to more than 350, and before the end of the year Kammhuber was powerless to prevent his small force from being steadily whittled away. For some time, the remarkable adaptability of Germany’s standard night fighter, the Ju 88, had caused Erhard Milch to be always calling upon the type for a host of other duties, and finally Kammhuber was left holding sections of his weakened defence line together with modified Me 110s, long obsolete and useless in almost any role. As for the specialised night fighter Kammhuber had urgently requested, this aircraft—the Heinkel He 219—continued to be dogged by opposition in high Luftwaffe circles. Goering had no interest in the He 219 because he failed to realise that night fighting was specialist work and thought that any aircraft would serve the purpose; and Milch favoured an improved version of the Ju 88, designated the Ju 188, which would be easier and more economical to build in large numbers. Several He 219s were transferred to Venloe in Holland for flight testing under operational conditions, and on the night of 11th–12th June, 1943, Major Streib, a leading German night-fighter pilot, destroyed five R.A.F. bombers. This successful debut of the He 219 was quickly followed by a number of other victories, including the destruction of six of the new and very fast De Havilland Mosquito light bombers, and Kammhuber requested mass production of some 1,200 machines. Milch agreed to authorise production of the He 219, but in fact he had already decided to introduce the slower Ju 188 (later Ju 388) into Luftwaffe service, to the detriment of the Heinkel type.
On 15th September, 1943, Kammhuber was ordered to disband his centralised command—Nachtjagdfliegerkorps XII—and place his night-fighter squadrons at the disposal of the area Luftflotten responsible for the overall defence of the Reich. Demoralised and embittered by this final blow to all his hopes, Kammhuber resigned his post in the November; like others before him he had been defeated in the end by the stubborn ignorance of Goering and the ruthless ambition of Erhard Milch. When Kammhuber left office, the German night-fighter command fell into a state bordering on disintegration, and the last chance of a specialised night fighter becoming available in large numbers went with him. “The story of the He 219 is the most unfortunate I have ever heard,” he told Ernst Heinkel, “but let those who were responsible for it take the blame.”
Without Kammhuber’s guiding hand, the Luftwaffe night-fighter system was open ground for anyone with the wildest ideas on dealing with enemy bombers to go ahead and try them out. A certain Major Hermann, an ex-bomber pilot, considered that the highly organised system of night fighting by radar direction as developed by Kammhuber was unnecessary, because the huge conflagrations invariably brought about by heavy bombing attacks often lit up the sky over the target area for many hours. Hermann reasoned that a fighter pilot could make use of this phenomenon to locate and shoot down an enemy bomber without the aid of radar direction or any other special equipment. His method of “daylight” night fighting, familiarly known as the “wild boar” plan, could be improved by using large numbers of searchlights; the fighters could then engage bombers coned in the searchlight beams. The idea—a development of Udet’s fighters-and-searchlights system—was a daring if somewhat unorthodox one to adopt at the height of the R.A.F. Bomber Command offensive, but its simplicity and ease of implementation impressed Goering. Also, of course, Hermann’s “wild boar” tactics utilised only single-engined fighters, which meant that fewer of the Reichsmarschall’s precious Ju 88 medium bombers would have to be modified as night fighters.
In due course, Jagdgeschwader (Wilde Sau) 300 was formed, commanded by Major Hermann and equipped with Focke-Wulf Fw 190s fitted with anti-dazzle screens and flame shrouds over the exhausts; later, this was expanded to three Geschwader, all using the same free-lance methods. Hermann’s tactics resulted in a considerable number of R.A.F. night bombers being shot down, but large numbers of German night-fighters were destroyed by their own anti-aircraft fire or crashed because they were hopelessly lost. While the “wild boar” pilots fought as they wished, and incidentally became considered as national heroes, the night-fighter organisation was thrown into chaos, without any real knowledge of what was happening and therefore unable to exert any control over the air defences. The onset of winter increased the heavy fighter losses, until only the courageous, if swashbuckling Hermann remained convinced that his methods could still bring success. Finally, when even he was frequently landing by parachute and German pilots were occasionally fighting each other instead of the enemy, the night-fighter losses rose until they were out of all proportion. With some reluctance, Goering brought the ridiculous situation to an end, and Hermann’s Wilde Sau Geschwader were dissolved.
After the failure of the “wild boar” scheme, the Luftwaffe reverted to radar directed night-fighting, using modified Ju 88s and Me nos. “It is not right that I should always have to be drawing on the bombers,” grumbled Goering. “Both day fighters and bombers are not one hundred per cent suitable as night-fighters.” This, of course, was only too true; but Goering bore equal responsibility with Milch for delaying production of Germany’s only specialised night-fighter, the He 219.
Peenemunde was a lonely little island in the Baltic, very close to the German mainland. In 1943 it was also the scientific experimental base for Hitler’s “miracle weapons”—the mysterious weapons which, Dr. Goebbels assured the world, would change the course of the war and exact a terrible retribution on Britain. The first of these secret ‘V weapons—V for “Vergeltung” or vengeance—was a flying bomb, powered by a single Argus pulse-jet engine and armed with a warhead containing 1,870 lb. of high explosive. The V.1 flying bomb, intended as a long-range guided weapon against London, had been designed by the aircraft firm of Fieseler, and successfully. launched for the first time at Peenemunde in December, 1942. Since that date, some seventy trial firings had been made, but it was still under development and remained temperamental. The second V weapon, the V.2 rocket—officially designated the A.4—was a true guided missile, perhaps the ancestor of all modern guided missiles. The result of a decade of German rocket development, the V.2 was a giant liquid-propelled missile, weighing over twelve tons and having a range of about 200 miles. Hurled straight up into the air with tremendous velocity, it could reach a height of sixty miles before falling out of the stratosphere faster than the speed of sound; the most efficient air defence was powerless against it. Surprisingly enough, the development of both these remarkable weapons had proceeded at first with only mild encouragement from Hitler, but after the destruction of Hamburg and other German cities the Fuehrer had approved of the work and ordered mass production at the earliest possible date. Simultaneously, the Goebbels’ propaganda machine went into action, arousing the weary German people to fresh vigour with promises that the V weapons would wipe out Britain and bring victory at the eleventh hour.
Rumours reaching Britain from neutral sources had indicated as early as 1940 that Germany was experimenting with secret weapons, including rockets and pilotless aircraft; but not until 1942 did reports from Allied secret agents working in Denmark establish beyond doubt that Hitler’s “miracle weapons” actually existed. The Photographic Reconnaissance Unit of the R.A.F. was therefore given the priority task of locating the home of the V weapons.
Evidence pointed more definitely to Peenemunde when a member of the Polish Underground movement, an engineer, named Kocjan, learned that some new weapons were being developed there. London urgently requested more detailed information and a number of Polish slave-workers employed in Germany managed to obtain transfers to Peenemunde. Their reports of “small, torpedo-shaped missiles fitted with wings” were soon verified by a wealth of aerial photographs, which also revealed the presence of A.4 rockets on the site. It was thus confirmed that Peenemunde was the experimental station for the German secret weapons. Mr. Churchill therefore instructed Air Marshal Harris to mount a heavy Bomber Command attack on the island, and on the night of 17th–18th August, 1943, in clear weather and bright moonlight, a force of 600 bombers arrived over the target. Too late, the defensive smoke screen billowed over Peenemunde; the surprised barking of anti-aircraft batteries mingled with the high-pitched scream of falling bombs. Extremely accurate marking of the three aiming points by the R.A.F. pathfinder force, the calm direction of an experienced Master Bomber and perfect visibility all combined to make the Peenemunde raid a great success. Within an hour, huge fires were sweeping the whole target area. The drawing offices, the assembly works and main administrative block were badly damaged, and the housing settlement for the Peenemunde engineers almost completely destroyed, while many other buildings were gutted before the flames could be subdued. Casualties were very heavy, 735 people being killed, including two prominent rocket scientists, Dr. Walter Thiel and Chief Engineer Walther. Forty-one Bomber Command aircraft were shot down, mainly by the German night-fighter force, which took advantage of the full moon to press home numerous attacks during and immediately after the raid.
Generalmajor Walter Dornberger, who was responsible for the V.2 programme, has stated that the attack on Peenemunde did not greatly delay development of the V weapons, but the loss of vital equipment and irreplaceable engineers, followed soon afterwards by the Anglo-American air operations code-named Crossbow—the systematic destruction of the V weapon launching sites—undoubtedly had some effect. Indeed, the V.1 flying bomb was not ready for use until the following May, and the first V.2 operations did not take place until September, 1944. If the V weapons could have been used at an earlier date, they would have brought more havoc than they did to London, and thereby fully satisfied Hitler’s craving for vengeance; but the Peenemunde raid and Crossbow operations denied the Fuehrer even that doubtful pleasure. As decisive weapons, the V.1 and V.2 were, of course, valueless. “In sum, what was the V.2?” says General Dornberger, in his book V.2. “It was by no means a ‘wonder weapon’. The term was in itself an exaggeration which did not correspond with the facts. By the middle of 1943 the military situation had long ceased to be such that by launching 900 V.2s in a month, each loaded with a ton of high explosives, over ranges of 160 miles, one could end the Second World War.”
Nevertheless, Goebbels had persuaded thousands of Germans that the V weapons would bring victory for the Third Reich, and not least of those who awakened to reality after the Peenemunde attack was the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, Generaloberst Hans Jeschonnek. The road to victory for Jeschonnek, that faithful servant of the Fuehrer, had always been a straight and narrow one, overcoming all obstacles to reach the goal; but by 1943 the road had become stony and pitted with disasters. For nearly three years, to Hans Jeschonnek—“the youngster”—Hitler and Goering had been the wise men who could neither speak nor hear any evil, and he had said “yes” to everything. Before the Battle of Britain, Jeschonnek had sincerely believed that Germany needed only large numbers of dive-bombers and twin-engined medium bombers; but even after the defeat of the Luftwaffe over England proved him mistaken he raised no objections to their continued production. He had stood by while the Luftwaffe was decimated over Malta, allowed Goering to transfer the fighters he knew would soon be urgently needed for the defence of Germany, first to Russia and then to the Mediterranean, and seen them wasted away there. Now, Mussolini had tumbled ignominiously from his throne; Sicily could not be held; and an Allied landing in southern Italy was only a matter of time.
The disastrous Stalingrad air lift marked the beginning of Jeschonnek’s downfall. Admittedly, he had dared to point out the difficulties of such a vast operation, but Goering had simply over-ruled him and Hitler had refused to listen to his objections. Afterwards, Goering had been only too anxious to find a scapegoat, and Jeschonnek found himself becoming a second Udet, blamed for every failure of the Luftwaffe. The situation was going from bad to worse. Hitler’s 1943 summer offensive on the eastern front had been defeated, with staggering losses; the Russians were advancing for the first time; and Goering was switching fighters and bombers from one sector to another at random.
After the 1,000-bomber attack on Cologne, Jeschonnek had been forced to face the wrath of Hitler alone, without a vestige of support from Goering. He had said “yes” once too often, abided by too many wrong decisions, and now he had to take the full responsibility for them. To whom could he turn for help? He had always treated Milch with contempt, and that feeling had been reciprocated. As for Goering, his curious way of life disgusted Jeschonnek; but he was the architect of German air power, and his word was law. Desperately, Jeschonnek begged for instructions that would bring some sort of order out of the chaos all around him. Finally, Goering refused to see his Chief of Staff at all for long periods, and Jeschonnek, the man who had always tried to obey orders without question, was left alone to do what he liked. Or to be more exact, to do nothing. On one occasion, when he transferred some Luftwaffe units on his own initiative, Jeschonnek had to listen to a shocking torrent of abuse from Goering; right or wrong, faithful or disobedient, he was the whipping boy, the successor to Udet.
The destruction of Hamburg was the last straw. In despair, Jeschonnek appealed to Hitler, begging him to take over command of the Luftwaffe, telling him that Goering was never available to make decisions. This strange request must have given Hitler considerable food for thought—he too despised Goering by then—but apparently he kept his peace and took no immediate action. Not so the Luftwaffe commander; when he heard that his scapegoat was turning against him he flew at once to headquarters. With icy calm, he informed his Chief of Staff that he could have him indicted for insubordination—unless, of course, Jeschonnek himself was prepared to find another way out of the situation he had created. The implication was there, and could not be ignored. Jeschonnek, the beast of burden, had rebelled against the yoke; he would not be given a second chance.
Jeschonnek, deserted by the gods he had served so well, clung to one last hope for the salvation of his beloved Third Reich. The V weapons were no myth conjured out of thin air by Dr. Goebbels; they existed, they were under development and, given time, they could win the war for Germany. So believed Hans Jeschonnek, as the reins of Luftwaffe organisation slipped from his hands, and so believed many others as they hurried to the shelters with the wail of sirens rising and falling around them. Then the bombs fell on Peenemunde. After that, who could say when, if ever, the amazing Vergeltungswaffen would be ready for use against England?
Two days after the Peenemunde raid, Hans Jeschonnek ended the last chapter of his life. On 19th August, 1943, at his headquarters in East Prussia, he remained behind when his staff strolled out into the sunshine to report for the customary morning conference. Then, alone in the little bunker he used as an office, Jeschonnek took out his service pistol and shot himself. “His death means a particularly cruel and painful loss to all the services,” commented the Volkische Beobachter next day. “The Luftwaffe loses an outstanding soldierly personality who prepared the way for great military victories in many campaigns. As the closest and most loyal colleague of the Reichsmarschall, Generaloberst Jeschonnek, occupying a post of the highest responsibility, gave his life for Fuehrer and Fatherland…. Even an insidious malignant disease was totally unable to paralyse his inexhaustible energy up to the very last moment…. The name of our tried and trusted Luftwaffe Chief of Staff will never be forgotten.”
With this highly coloured, typically German, and largely untruthful tribute, Goering rid himself at last of his “closest and most loyal colleague.” Jeschonnek’s simple policy had been to satisfy his superiors to the exclusion of all else, to say “yes” and “no” as required, and this one fault had destroyed him. During the last few months of his life he had tried to make amends, but like Udet he had drifted too far along the road to disaster. Even the abruptness of his end was not allowed to shock the Nazi rank and file; the eloquent pen of Dr. Goebbels was, as always, at hand to provide the sugar coating for yet another bitter pill in the Luftwaffe box.