Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and
the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as
Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the
thundering darkness. Such "cinematic" scenes, played out with
increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more
than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann
reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of
the German war effort that has yet to get its full due.
Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air
campaigns, German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently
dismissed by American, British, and German historians (and by
veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that
wasted valuable matriel and personnel resources desperately needed
elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees
with that view and makes a convincing case for the significant
contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft
defenses.
During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well
over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland,
killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000, and
destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential
structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired
countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive
and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defense of its own skies. By
contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact
that they employed more than a million men and women, were
responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses,
forced Allied bombers to fly far above high-accuracy altitudes, and
thus allowed Germany to hold out far longer than it might have
otherwise.
Westermann's definitive study sheds new light on every facet of
the development and organization of this vital defense arm,
including its artillery, radar, searchlight, barrage balloon, decoy
sites, and command components. Highlighting the convergence of
technology, strategy, doctrine, politics, and economics, Flak also
provides revealing insights into German strategic thought, Hitler's
obsession with micromanaging the war, and the lives of the members
of the flak units themselves, including the large number of women,
factory workers, and even POWs who participated.
General
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