An Alternate History Luftwaffe Victorious

by Mike Spick

Book Overview

At the outbreak of World War II the Luftwaffe was considered by many to be the world's most powerful air force. Driven by the new strategy of Blitzkrieg, or lightening war, in a very short time it... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0739451472
• ISBN13: 9780739451472
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Green Hill Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A different alternate.

There are no shortages of alternate military histories "out there". I imagine a bibliography of such would get to be quite hefty. The World War Two alternates seem to be predominant, for a variety ot reasons one could speculate about. This work is noteworthy in a number of respects. First it focuses predominately on the air war and particularly an alternate Luftwaffe. Second, this alternate Luftwaffe is constructed primarily by death of Hermann Goering early in the war. The argument is made that a more professional and technical Luftwaffe commmand and staff would have made all the "right" decisions to utilize airpower rationally in respect to tasks and resources and in so doing would have led the war to a stalemate in 1945 with only the Allied possositon of the atomic bomb breaking the balance. Although the author puts in place various Allied reactions to the correct utilization of German airpower, he never fleshes this out. As would be expected, Mike Spick has a sure grasp of the technical details of aircraft and a clear realization and explanation of the fact that airpower is about more than just fast airplanes. As long as you don't expect this to be some kind of exhaustive study and see it as the entertaining short essay it was meant to be, you will find it as thought provoking and insightful as I did. That being said, we all will find an item here or there we don't agree with. My concern was that I didn't believe the small strategic bomber force the realistically resource constrained alternate Luftwaffe was given could have had much affect on Russian armaments production. However, that's just nit-picking. No one can be perfect describing a history that doesn't exist !

A plausible, well written alternative history

Many alternative histories suffer either from the author's axe to grind, or simply an excess of determinism: X country lost due to lack of whatever. If they had "only" done something else, the outcome would certainly have been different. Most descriptions of war-losing mistakes by the Luftwaffe revolve around two, maybe three precepts: no development to production of a four-engine strategic bomber; lack of long range drop tanks for the Bf-109 lost the Battle of Britain (and by extension the war due to two fronts), and Hitler missed a golden opportunity by not accelerating production of the Me-262. These ideas are based either on what is known in the intelligence community as "mirror-imaging"; the tendency to see yourself in the actions or intentions of the enemy, or else on one book. Lack of a strategic bomber must have doomed the Luftwaffe's war effort as it could not strike at enemy warmaking because the Allies did so-and they won. Ergo, a strategic bomber was a must-even though strategic bombing did not do anywhere near the economic disruption claimed at the time, or postwar for that matter. Adolf Galland's bio "The First and the Last" was enormously influential in many historians' views of the Luftwaffe and its strategy. One of his claims was that if only his crew's had drop tanks they could have stayed with the bombers for a tactically significant time and inflicted unacceptable losses on the RAF. The second was that Hitler's bungling prevented the effective employment of the Me-262 which would otherwise have ended bombing raids over Germany. None of these theses take into account the old military adage that the enemy always has a vote, and the allies would have responded to each threat. "Luftwaffe Victorious" takes a less deterministic view based on research of the last 10 -15 years. In this story, nothing is truly decisive in and of itself. Four engine bombers are put in production, but due to actual economic conditions only a few hundred are constructed. They play key roles in the Battles of Britain and the Atlantic, plus the airwar in the East, but the Allies find countermeasures. Drop tanks are employed, but the actual problems with them, leakage and the tendency to hang instead of drop, are enough to keep single engined fighters from overcoming a flawed strategy. As far as the Me-262 is concerned it is immediately put into production, but is more effective as a low-level bomber over the invasion beaches than as a fighter. In essence, Hitler was actually correct! Such a revolutionary aircraft demanded changes to air combat tactics. Tactics take time to develop and teach, time the Germans just do not have due to overwhelming Allied numbers and increasing technological sophistication. The Allied response is to accelerate B-29 production and deploy their jet prototypes. This book is a pretty decent summation of the current views on the German Luftwaffe, and actually an interesting alternative history. Recommended.

Just a Few Changes in the Luftwaffe

It has always been fun to say what might have happened if a few decisions had been made differently during World War II. This novel is the story of some what if's in the Luftwaffe. What If: General Wever hadn't been killed and he continued his development of the B-17 like Do-19 UralBomber Goering had been killed during the early stages of the Battle of Britain The new head of the Luftwaffe - Kesselring - said that he couldn't support the Sixth Army at Stalingrad and von Paulus had broken out with his army intact The ME-262 jet aircraft in its ground attack role had visited Omaha Beach in strength on D-Day. All in all, not too many changes from what really happened but the outcome would have been dramatically. So dramatically perhaps that when "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" were dropped, might they have their destinations changed from reality.