Hitler and Air Strategy

Abstract

Hitler's personal role in the German air effort and in the planning and execution of air strategy is one of the few areas of the history of the Second World War that can fairly be claimed to be underresearched. Yet there is no doubt about the importance of this role. Hitler was overall commander-in-chief and hence finally responsible for placing air power within the context of a wider strategy. Throughout the war he insisted that the final decision should rest with him. This was true not only for the large strategic questions but also for minor problems and issues concerned with tactical and technical affairs. In fact on occasion, and increasingly after 1943, decisions about the use of air forces were taken by Hitler at his Supreme Headquarters without consulting the Luftwaffe commander-in-chief first.' His personal views on the use to which aircraft should be put and what aircraft should be produced contributed substantially to the kind of airforce that Germany developed. His championship of the Blitzkrieg combination of aircraft and armour that was so central to the military planning of the pre-1939 period, pushed the Luftwaffe in the direction of tactical support and left it to concentrate on the dive-bomber and mediumbomber instead of machines that would have made alternative German air strategies possible. Yet both during the war and in subsequent historiography the blame for the misfortunes of the German air force have been laid unambiguously on the broad