Die Illusion der Wunderwaffen: Die Rolle der Düsenflugzeuge und Flugabwehrraketen in der Rüstungspolitik des Dritten Reiches by Ralf Schabel

Abstract

642 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE to secure the input of technical experts. The Academy’s transport commission studied axles, couplings, and other weak links in rail transport, and recommended changes in manufacture to fight this source of accidents. Yet even these scientific studies were subjected to the criticism that their authors were “limiters,” that is, individuals who created mere scientific obstacles to the superhuman targets which the party had set. Superhuman “Stakhanovites,” workers who set new production norms, were expected to show the “wreckers” the right way to work. Unfortunately, Soviet Rail Transport lacks a comparative perspec­ tive that would enable the reader to understand how technical and political debates over the chosen path of railway development re­ flected peculiarly Stalinist influences rather than issues faced by eco­ nomic planners and railway specialists elsewhere. What can railroads tell us about Soviet technological style? The Soviet economic and technical debates that Rees recounts remain hidden in long lists of names, appointments and reappointments, figures on tonnage and wagons, and bureaucratic reorganizations. Passive voice abounds. Decisions were made; tonnage increased; construction was acceler­ ated. There is little flesh and blood to this story. It may be that Rees allowed the rich Russian archival sources to speak for him. But the result is that his chapters lack analytical verve. Subheadings interrupt constantly. Chapter 3, for example, which covers the period 1932-33, has eight main headings and fifteen sub­ headings in twenty-five pages. Perhaps these problems derive from Rees’s attempt to weave a history around an evaluation of debates in Sovietology. He asks whether a totalitarian, institutional-pluralist, or corporatist perspective best explains the Soviet political system under Stalin. Rees’s story of conflict among expert, political officer, and worker; among competing economic ministries; and among competing visions of the best way to achieve the Stalinist technologi­ cal utopia has greater texture than Sovietological analysis allows. Paul Josephson Dr.Josephson is working on a political and cultural history of the Soviet nuclear age. Die Illusion der Wunderwaffen: Die Rolle der Dusenflugz.euge und Flugabwehrraketen in derRustungspolitik desDritten Reiches. By Ralf Schabel. München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1994. Pp. 316; illustrations, fig­ ures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. DM 78.00. Since 1945, Germans and non-Germans alike have been fascinated by the revolutionary military technologies the Third Reich deployed in the waning months of the war.Jet fighters, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and antiaircraft missiles appear to have come onlyjust too late to change the war’s course. The myths attached to these weap­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 643 ons have been remarkably persistent; only in the last two decades have scholars begun painstakingly to dismantle them through archi­ val research. Now Ralf Schabel’s Die Illusion der Wunderwaffen has done this valuable service for the Luftwaffe’s turbojet and rocket aircraft. Schabel’s most important contribution is finishing off two oftrepeated myths about thejets. The first is that turbojet development was slowed between 1939 and 1942 by the Air Ministry’s disinterest and, in particular, by a “development stop” order in 1940 that halted all work not leading to immediate results. He shows defini­ tively that no such order existed and that Ministry officials began pushingjet engine development as soon as they became aware of it in 1938; in the process they created a sensible program of research and production. Delays were caused by the challenges of developing a revolutionary technology under war conditions. Schabel also demolishes the “Blitzbomber” myth, namely, that Hitler delayed the combat appearance of the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter in 1944 because he ordered it to be converted to a fighterbomber , thereby losing an opportunity to regain air superiority over the Reich. He shows that (1) at the urging of Willi Messerschmitt and others, the Me 262 was planned from the outset to have bomb­ carrying capability; (2) Messerschmitt himselfobstructed Me 262 de­ velopment by intervening with Hider to keep the Me 209 project alive, then lied about it later; (3) Hitler’s concept of a fast strike aircraft to attack the Allied invasion beachhead was entirely reason­ able; (4) Field Marshal Erhard Milch and other leading Air Ministry officials ignored the Fuhrer’s...