In 1936, Hermann created a secret reconnaissance unit. Violating international treaties and air space, his pilots flew over ‘enemy’ territory taking snaps of military bases and fortifications. Supplied with advanced aerial cameras they ranged across the fringes of the UK, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Their pictures were analysed by the Main Photo Centre which was attached to Fifth Branch, Luftwaffe Intelligence.
In the meantime, transcripts of tens of thousands of phone-calls, radio transmissions and telegrams were being processed by Hermann’s personal eavesdropping service, the FMT, during the pre-war diplomatic crisis which lasted from the Munich conference to the invasion of Poland. The airwaves were buzzing with chatter and Hermann was privy to every word.
All this information convinced him that a great deal could be achieved through negotiation. He was worried about triggering a wider conflict which Germany was not yet ready for: ‘I didn’t want war against Russia in 1939 but I was certainly anxious to attack them before they attacked us, which would have come in ’43 or ’44 anyway.’1 The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed on 24 August 1939, secured Soviet neutrality and allowed for a joint carve-up of Poland. Ignoring the agreement, Hermann’s reconnaissance planes entered Soviet air space several hundred times before hostilities began in June 1941.
Hermann’s other chief concern was the British. During 1939 he used his Swedish connections to explore a peaceful settlement. Hermann had known Axel Wenner-Gren, the head of Electrolux, for many years. Wenner-Gren had strong contacts with the Conservative Party and British industry. However, all he came up with was a self-penned twenty-year armistice plan which Hermann promptly binned.
Another Swede, Birger Dahlerus, who had spent a decade in England working for the likes of SKF, the ball-bearing manufacturer, and Ericsson, the telecommunications company, arranged a meeting at a remote farmhouse in Schleswig-Holstein between Hermann and seven English businessmen, one of whom reported the proceedings to the Foreign Office. There was good food, convivial chat, but nothing substantive. Hermann persevered with Dahlerus, who met both Halifax and Chamberlain. Fruitless exchanges continued until May 1940, seven months into the war.
Hermann’s caution clashed with Hitler’s aggression. It was a bruising experience: ‘Every-time I stand before the Führer my heart drops into the seat of my pants.’2 In March 1939 an inflammation of the jaw led to an abscess and he excused himself from Berlin and diplomatic errands in favour of a pleasure cruise aboard his yacht, Karin II, idling along the waterways of Germany and Holland, Wagner booming out of especially installed speakers.
Just days before Hitler took action against Poland, Hermann had tea in Berlin with Sir Nevile Henderson, still the British ambassador, and ‘made much of the horrors of a war between England and Germany. For instance, he would be compelled to have England bombed. Henderson replied that in that case he would probably die by Goering’s hand. If that was to happen, Goering said he would fly over to England in person and drop a wreath on Henderson’s grave.’3
Whatever Hermann’s reservations – ‘Everybody is for war, only I, the soldier and field marshal, am not’4 – once committed, he showed no mercy. On 24 September 1939, the Luftwaffe mounted a thousand-plane raid on Warsaw. After three days of bombing by high explosives and incendiaries that killed 10,000 civilians, the city surrendered. Norway followed, then the Blitzkrieg in the west, featuring the Luftwaffe’s devastation of Rotterdam, and the fall of France.
Conquering the UK presented a more significant challenge: ‘We knew literally nothing of amphibious operations . . . accounts of the campaigns of Caesar, Britannicus and William the Conqueror were being read.’5 A meeting on 15 November 1939 got preparations started. However, over six months later, there was ‘still only a plan’, that was ‘not yet . . . decided upon’.6
A report submitted to Hitler on 11 July 1940 was equally ambivalent: ‘Britain can be made to ask for peace simply by cutting off her import trade by means of submarine warfare, air attacks on convoys and heavy air attacks on main centres.’ Hitler agreed: ‘The Führer also views invasion as a last resort, and also considers air superiority a prerequisite.’7
* * *
Hermann could not resist the chance to prove that his air force was capable of delivering victory on its own. Any doubts about the outcome were assuaged by his conviction that the British would cave in after a good beating and by faulty intelligence from Fifth Branch. Their detailed assessment of the RAF’s readiness for battle concluded that the Luftwaffe was ‘clearly superior’ in all areas. They were wrong.
Other members of Fifth Branch were guilty of sloppy work. Operators of the top secret encryption and decryption device, the Enigma machine, frequently made errors which enabled the British at Bletchley Park to crack the Luftwaffe’s general purpose code key on 6 January 1940 and then repeatedly afterwards, with increased efficiency, until they were able to decode messages in ‘real time’, as they were sent.
This breakthrough gave an additional advantage to an air defence system developed since 1918 specifically to counter German bombers, which were regarded as the main European threat to British security. Advance warning and speed of reaction were the vital elements. The Observer Corps was set up in 1929. Ten years later 30,000 volunteers manned a thousand observation posts dotted across the country, each one equipped with maps, a height estimator and a telephone. Radio direction-finding, or radar, was developed from 1935. By 1939, there were twenty-one coastal radar stations, with an average range of eighty miles. Incoming data was processed at Bentley Priory in Stanmore and relayed to the waiting pilots in a matter of minutes.
The teetotal Hugh Dowding became head of Fighter Command on 6 July 1936. His philosophy was simple: ‘The best defence of the country is the fear of the fighter.’8 He divided the UK up into sections and assigned a fighter group to each one. They determined tactical response, when, where and with how many to engage the enemy. In the battle to come, 11 Group, defending London and the south-east and based in Uxbridge, would bear the brunt. Air Marshal Keith Park, a First World War ace, took command on 20 April 1940. He operated rotating squadrons to maximise his options and preserve his planes from unnecessary deployment.
Crucially Britain produced twice as many fighters in June 1940 as the Nazis and would continue to do so throughout the year, making a nonsense of Hermann’s boast to his Luftwaffe commanders: ‘Our first objective will be the destruction of the fighter force . . . This . . . will be attained within two or three days.’9
* * *
Hermann’s perception of air warfare was completely governed by his First World War experiences. Victory came down to the individual skill and bravery of the pilots: ‘Personal heroism must always count for more than technical novelties.’10 Aces were singled out for special treatment. Hermann gave medals, promotions, and celebrity to the highest-scoring heroes. Wealth and fame beckoned, as it had in his glory days. One ace was paid handsomely to endorse three different brands of cigar.
During August 1940, at the height of the battle, Hermann dismissed seven senior squadron leaders and replaced them with young aces. The top scorer, Werner Mölders, was invited hunting with Hermann. They were joined by another young ace, Adolf Galland, who had just received the prestigious Oak Leaves. Both pilots had learnt their dog-fight tactics in Spain.
As in the First World War, a competitive star system gave rise to false and exaggerated claims, but on a much larger scale due to the vast number of planes in action. For instance, between 10 July and 11 August, Luftwaffe pilots registered 381 victories. The reality was only 178. This degree of misinformation about RAF casualties had serious consequences. Nicolaus von Below, the Führer’s Luftwaffe aide, noted that, ‘Goering reported this fantastic success rate to Hitler: he calculated that the British must already be scraping the bottom of the barrel for aircraft.’11
In an effort to clear the way for a quick invasion, the Luftwaffe campaign began with attacks on coastal towns and the British Navy which lasted from 10 July until early August. While British fighters inflicted heavy losses, Bomber Command battered the French ports where preparations for Sealion were under way. Next, the Luftwaffe launched Operation Eagle, to crush the British by drawing them into mass aerial combat. Over five days of intense fighting the RAF established a kill ratio of 2:1.
The Luftwaffe switched focus again. Between 24 August and 6 September, the Germans concentrated on hitting airfields and their related infrastructure. This was the point at which Fighter Command was at its most vulnerable. Damage was considerable, but Hermann had already announced that, ‘It is doubtful whether there is any point in continuing the attacks on radar sites’,12 thereby taking the sting out of the operation.
After the first British raid on Berlin, Hermann changed tack. An all-out assault on the British capital was ordered: ‘Goering wants to use innumerable incendiary bombs . . . to create scores of fires in all parts of London.’13 For him, it was a battle of wills with the British people. He firmly believed they could not withstand the punishment heading their way. On 7 September, 350 bombers hit the East End docks. The next eight days were decisive. The Luftwaffe lost 298 aircraft, the RAF 120. During October 365 German planes were destroyed compared to 146 British. Sealion was postponed and in effect abandoned on the 12th.
The Blitz continued. Other towns like Liverpool and Portsmouth were targeted. Coventry suffered 3,000 incendiary bombs on the night of 14 November; 60,000 buildings were ruined. Historic parts of central London suffered firestorms over Christmas. The early part of 1941 saw a decline in attacks, followed by a massive push during April and May. By June Hitler was about to invade the Soviet Union and Britain had won a reprieve. Since the bombing began 40,000 civilians had been killed but Britain was no nearer to giving in.
* * *
The Luftwaffe’s defeat was not terminal. It was exceedingly costly in terms of skilled pilots – the Germans lost 2,698 – and bad for Hermann’s reputation, but he still longed to demonstrate the Luftwaffe’s value as a strike weapon. An opportunity arose thanks to Mussolini’s disastrous invasion of Greece, launched on 28 October 1940. By the end of November the Italians were back at their starting line in Albania, with the Greeks poised to counter-attack. Hitler decided to bail out his beleaguered ally. In order to intervene in Greece the Germans needed to use Yugoslavian territory. Hitler convinced the Yugoslav king to cooperate. High-ranking members of the Yugoslav Army denounced the agreement and staged a coup on 27 March 1941 in defiance of Hitler.
Retribution was swift. On 6 April, the bombing of Belgrade began, orchestrated by Baron Wolfram von Richthofen, the Red Baron’s cousin. Three days later 17,000 lay dead. Yugoslavia fell apart. On the 10th, pro-Nazi Croatian extremists declared independence. The day after, Slovenia did the same. British troops were sent to mainland Greece, but by the end of the month they were leaving for Crete.
General Kurt Student, Inspector of Paratroop Forces, had a plan for an attack on the island that would be spearheaded by a parachute assault on three airstrips. Once they were secured, Junkers transport planes would land and unload troops, artillery and supplies. Hermann liked the idea and proposed it to Hitler, who also approved. Hermann’s very own 7th Paratroop Division would lead the attack. It was formed in 1935 after the Prussian militarised police were absorbed into the Army and Hermann was allowed to keep a regiment for himself. The bulk in due course became the elite Hermann Goering Panzer Division. The rest began parachute training.
They dropped out of the skies over Crete on 20 May. The British were waiting for them. The Luftwaffe’s Enigma code had been broken again by Bletchley Park and details of Student’s plan were forwarded to Crete a week before the operation began. The British commander knew exactly what to expect; 2,000 men of the 7th Paratroop Division were killed in the first few hours, many before they hit the ground.
Student gambled to avert disaster. Hermann backed him. A transport plane crash-landed on an unsecured airstrip and spewed out reinforcements, followed by another, and another until a foothold was established after forty-eight hours’ fierce fighting. Between 28 May and 1 June the British abandoned the island. Though the Nazis’ objective had been achieved it was at a frightful cost. Hitler was unimpressed: ‘Crete proves that the days of the paratrooper are over.’14
Even so, a similar operation was contemplated against Malta, which had increased in strategic importance since Mussolini had become embroiled in North Africa. The Italians had invaded British-held Egypt from their Libyan colony and been swiftly routed. Tens of thousands were taken prisoner as the British advanced 400 miles in two months. During January 1941, a large Luftwaffe force arrived in Sicily and Rommel’s Afrika Korps soon started to appear in the desert. Until the spring Malta was subjected to remorseless raids. Temporary relief came when the Luftwaffe bombers were transferred to the Crete operation and then the Eastern Front.
They returned at the beginning of 1942 with the task of paving the way for invasion: ‘Goering has taken all the measures for the attack on Malta. In a few days the intensive air bombardments will begin, then it will be decided whether we can or cannot land.’15 Four months of terror followed. In March more bombs were dropped on Malta than on the UK during 1940. April was worse. Supplies of food, fuel, and ammunition were perilously low. Since January, thirty-one merchant ships had tried to reach Malta. Of the ten that made it, three were then sunk in the harbour. In June, only two got through out of eleven. August saw a convoy of fourteen merchant ships set out with a 100-strong escort, including two battleships. They were met by twenty-one U‑boats and 540 aircraft. Five supply ships and a sinking oil tanker got through, providing just enough to keep Malta alive. The Nazi invasion plan was shelved. Within weeks the Luftwaffe force based on Sicily was needed elsewhere, over El Alamein’s sand dunes and the snowy wastes of Stalingrad.
The Luftwaffe campaign against the Soviet Union had got off to a spectacular start. On 22 June 1941 a massive strike force attacked thirty-one airfields, destroying around 2,000 Soviet planes by lunchtime, three-quarters of which were sitting ducks. However, as fighting dragged on into winter, the strain was beginning to tell. Hermann was feeling it too. That summer he suffered from headaches, heart palpitations, and stomach upsets. He undertook a regime of rest and exercise, riding, swimming, walks, and the occasional game of tennis.
* * *
Continued military victory enabled Hermann to extend his economic empire. The Balkan nations were already closely tied to his armaments programme, supplying nearly half of its lead and aluminium requirements, plus 90 per cent of its tin. Romanian oil kept the Nazi war machine running. Hermann ordered his Four Year Plan office to carry out capital penetration in the usual manner and begin creating cartels to monopolise all Europe’s oil, textile, iron, coal and steel industries. By 1942 the HermannGoeringWerke had swollen to mammoth proportions. The coal, iron and steel block contained twenty major companies. The munitions block consisted of nine. A separate block dealt with the Soviet Union. Six commissars were needed to administer the Ukraine alone, handling a plethora of mines and factories.
Hermann saw his colonial aspirations as the only viable solution to the problems affecting the war effort. Labour shortages were chronic as the military sucked up more and more men and nothing was done to increase the number of women at work. Foreigners and prisoners of war were hauled in to plug the gap. During 1940–2, three million were sent to Germany. Hermann convinced Hitler to let them work on farms to increase food production. He was forced to raise taxes and reduce wages. But his measures had little effect on the economic crisis that was exacerbated by his own mismanagement. He critically failed to delegate or appoint talented people lest they might undermine his overall authority. Instead he promoted those whose weaknesses he understood and could exploit. Competence was not an issue. The Transport Ministry was run by two of his yes-men. In 1941 they produced only half of the locomotives and railway wagons needed.
Though Hermann wielded a mass of executive power, he was beset by rivalries and power struggles with the Nazi Party, the SS, the civil service and representatives of German industry, particularly the Ruhr magnates. He was overwhelmed by information. He had to make innumerable decisions on a diverse range of topics. Even if he had had the time, he lacked the patience for considered judgement and was easily diverted by trivial matters, getting involved in a dispute between the Army and Goebbels about a film that depicted a famous singer spending the night with a Luftwaffe officer. The Army said that was no way for an officer to behave, and wanted the film withdrawn. Hermann sided with Goebbels: ‘If a Luftwaffe lieutenant didn’t make use of such an opportunity, he simply wouldn’t be a Luftwaffe lieutenant.’16
His chaotic leadership bred inefficiency throughout the production system, severely undermining its ability to convert raw materials into finished weapons. In the crucial period of 1940–3, though the Nazi empire produced on average three times as much coal, three and a half times as much steel, and five times as much aluminium as the Soviet Union, Stalin’s factories managed to roll out 10,000 more planes a year, considerably more tanks, and staggeringly more artillery pieces.
Hermann’s beloved Luftwaffe was similarly affected by these limitations. Nothing was done to tackle the shortages of skilled labour and dire lack of specialised machine tools. There were no reforms to a manufacturing process that remained decentralised and workshop based. The complex connection between technological innovation and military necessity was befuddled further by the leadership of Udet, the ex-flying ace, drunkard and cartoonist, whom Hermann had leapfrogged into pole position at the Luftwaffe’s Technical Department. Totally unsuited to the job, he shot himself on 17 November 1941. General Wilberg, much respected by Hermann, and the fighter hero Werner Mölders were both killed in separate plane crashes on their way to Udet’s funeral.
The hard-headed, thoroughly capable Milch, who had constructed the Luftwaffe from scratch only to be marginalised by Hermann, reasserted himself in Udet’s absence. He endeavoured to return control back to the designers and manufacturers. He organised a ‘ring’ system, linking companies together to form a standardised production chain. His methods anticipated the sweeping reforms that Albert Speer would introduce once he had taken the reins of the economy away from Hermann.
On 7 February 1942, Fritz Todt, Minister For Ammunition and Armaments, was killed in a mysterious plane crash, creating a space that Hermann expected to fill. He was furious to discover that Hitler had immediately given the position to his building guru, Speer. The ambitious architect and embryonic technocrat moved quickly to out-manoeuvre Hermann. He secured Milch’s support and Hitler gave him full backing. On 3 March, at Karinhall, he got Hermann to sign off on the formation of a Central Planning Committee for the whole war economy which Speer would run. Hermann’s grip on power was beginning to slip.
A serious contender for Hitler’s affections had emerged in the shape of Martin Bormann, ‘the brown eminence’, described by Speer as ‘the maggot in the apple of the Reich’.17 Hermann was fully aware that Bormann hated him: ‘my mortal enemy, the man is just waiting for a chance to bring me down’.18
The son of a postal clerk, Bormann saw action at the end of the First World War before getting involved with the Freikorps and providing the gun used in a murder. He spent a year in jail and joined the Nazi Party in 1926. He was placed in charge of an aid fund for injured or sick SA men, which amounted to 3 million marks by 1932. A year later he was attached to Rudolf Hess’s Party Office which gave him direct daily access to Hitler. According to Hermann, ‘Bormann knew all about the Führer’s most personal affairs.’19 He took control of Hitler’s finances and began writing down his after-dinner thoughts. In the spring of 1942 he was appointed Secretary to the Führer. Now nobody could get to Hitler except through Bormann. Hitler remarked that he was ‘glad to have a doorkeeper like that, because Bormann keeps people off my back’.20
* * *
On 15 January 1941 RAF Bomber Command received a directive from the Air Ministry stating that ‘The sole primary aim of your bomber offensive . . . should be the destruction of the German synthetic oil plants.’21 Seventeen different targets were chosen representing 80 per cent of Germany’s oil production. Then another directive appeared in July which identified ‘the morale of the civil population . . . of the industrial workers in particular’22 as weak points. A broad campaign of bombing swept over the Ruhr, the Rhine valley and further afield, taking in towns like Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart.
Before the war, Hermann had given little thought to the defensive capability of the Luftwaffe, but in June 1940 he created Der NachtJagd, the night fighter arm, under Generalmajor Josef Kammhuber, who quickly took the situation in hand. Radar stations were established at thirty-kilometre intervals between Schleswig-Holstein and Liége, blocking the RAF’s routes to Germany, equipped with several types of radar, searchlights, and highly effective 88-mm flak/anti-tank guns. In the major cities, gigantic Speer-designed fortresses were built, each corner tower armed with a huge twin-gunned 128-mm Flakzwilling 40. However, maintaining the ‘Kammhuber Line’ created a major drain on men and material.
That autumn of 1941, Rommel was readying an offensive against the British with only thirty-five 88-mm guns at his disposal. Hermann’s anti-aircraft effort was using nearly 9,000 of them.
Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris was put in charge of Bomber Command’s next offensive. An Air Ministry directive of 14 February 1942 outlined a new strategy which targeted built-up areas. On the night of 28/29 March, the medieval town of Lübeck was laid waste by fire. A similar fate befell Rostock, another historic landmark. The Luftwaffe retaliated with raids on ‘cultural centres’.23 Bath, Exeter, York, Canterbury, and Norwich were all hit.
Bomber Command’s most destructive attacks of the war so far were a mere foretaste for the thousand-bomber raids that followed. The first, code-named ‘Millennium’, hit Cologne hard. Over 13,000 residential buildings were totally destroyed and 500 civilians died. Essen, Bremen, and Hamburg were next. Throughout the summer of 1942 a range of medium-sized provincial towns were bombed, turning ‘every square metre of our territory . . . into a front line’.24
The RAF suffered heavily, losing 503 planes between May and mid-August, but reinforcements were on the way in the shape of the Americans, whose armaments industry was beginning to gather a colossal head of steam.
The pummelling of the Reich soured relations between Hermann and his Führer. As Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below observed in his diary, ‘It struck me then that Hitler and Goering no longer talked together as they had done previously.’25
* * *
The turning point for the Nazis was Stalingrad. On Sunday 23 August 1942, Richthofen ordered a thousand plane raid on the Soviet city, marking the beginning of sustained carpet bombing which killed thousands in the first week. For the Red Army, the shattered remains acted as impenetrable cover as they defended every inch of ground. For General Friedrich Paulus’s Sixth Army it became a nightmare graveyard. While his generals urged retreat, Hitler would not dream of it. To survive, Paulus’s besieged troops needed an absolute minimum of 500 tonnes of supplies a day. Though Hermann knew the Luftwaffe could deliver a maximum of 350 tonnes, he recklessly promised Hitler they could land what was needed.
The supply operation was a ghastly farce played out in brutal winter conditions. Planes were buried in snow on the runways, pilots blinded by it in the air. Everything froze. The main airfield was within range of Soviet guns and aircraft, and host to hundreds of incoming wounded. Despite heroic efforts and Hermann’s reassurances, the Luftwaffe only managed to supply a daily average of ninety-five tonnes. By the end of January 1943 the Sixth Army had ceased to exist.
Such was the scale of the defeat, and Hermann’s ignominious role in it, that he was obliged to broadcast the news to the German people on 30 January 1943. Striking a mournful tone, he offered the hope of redemption: ‘A thousand years hence Germans will speak of this battle with reverence and awe . . . Stalingrad will remain the greatest heroic struggle of our history.’26