Who supports who?

I think Stevn O. and myself should open up a new thread just on bodenplatte to set the record straight. give us some time to look over existing materials through the excellent new book by Pütz and Manhro and personal interviews. In my opinion one of the stupidest and ill-planned late war missions performed by the Luftwaffe. will tell you that JG 3 smacked Eindhoven pretty dang hard, while JG 11's attack on Y-29, Asch was a total disaster as the US P-51's from the 352nd blue Nosers took it to them...........

 

oh what the heck..........

47 % lost to Allied AA
23 % lost to Allied fighters
5 % to German flak
5 % lost in accidents
5 % either Allied AA or fighters
3 % from technical failure
1 % from fuel starvation
11 % due to unknown causes

271 Bf 109's/Fw 190's lost
65 Bf 109's/Fw 190's damaged

143 pilots KIA
70 pilots taken prisoner
21 pilots wounded

For the Allies some 305 Allied a/c lost and 190 damaged...........

more later

 

Well, that is interesting. Not at all what the book I read about it said. It was an old book, & many of the books written in the 50's had flawed data.

 

1 - What matters is not how well missions start, but how they end
2 - The important part was minerals, tungsten mainly. Also my mother never forgave her uncle for selling "green-grey coloured" textiles to Germany, which makes me a collaborator by affinity!
3 - This is not Waikiki, but there's some fine windsurfing on the west facing coast

I'd forgotten about this angle. Wonder weapons are no good without average pilots at least, something that wasn't available any longer.

No. Public opinion was monopolized by a media (radio and papers) controlled by a single-party state, which isn't really a happy place for different views. The idea was to repeat the same lie as often as it took to make it the truth. And the mastermind of this system was IMHO the most competent mind that worked for the III Reich, Goebbels. He was good! So damned good most of the myths he created are still in place.

Yes Erich, please do create a thread for Bodenplatte. But my bone of contention is how important was this permanent or temporay loss of 500 a/C was, that is, the German losses were justified or were they simply a criminal waste for no significant damage to the enemy. How long it took for the units to be brought up to strength from depots, especially if the loss was mainly hardware, no pilots.

[ 06. July 2004, 04:42 AM: Message edited by: Za Rodina ]

 

Thanks for the correction on losses Erich. I know we went over this, what, about a year and a half ago in detail....

 

First, we are discussing German crimes. It is absolutely irrelevant what the Soviets, Brits, Americans, Japanese or Mongolians did! Have nothing to do with each other and are no excuses.

It's fair to condemn them all for at least one thing: passiveness and of apathy. Germany (as a whole) voluntarily jumped into the abyss. And abyss of which has not yet come out entirely…

We all agree that nazism meant suicide for Germany. Not just suicide in a way of physical destruction, death of millions of Germans or the destruction of Germany as a state. It also meant the destruction of German culture and science.

Germany might be the 2nd industrial power in the world and the engine of European economy nowadays. But German people is no longer the most advanced socially, culturaly, artistically, technologically.

All that because their pasiveness and apathy —along with a lot of co-operation and enthusiasm— brought the nazi course upon them. And they gladly accepted it and made it their own.

 

Well, the post originally was, who do you support? So I think the behavior of any participant nation is valid. That is "not" an excuse for what went on in Germany. My point is that man's inhumanity to man is not unique to germany.

As for German pilots being turned out in 44 being little more than cannon fodder,that is an overstatement. JG 2 shot down 18 allied fighters on D day for the loss of 2 190's. Next day JG 26 claimed 12 allied planes for loss of 3 pilots. Not exactly a spent force. They were still capable of inflicting heavy losses.

 

Yes, and capable of getting shot down in droves too...

A few 'aces' flying about with an arial bodyguard is gonna cause losses but it aint gonna help.

18 allied fighters aint exactly alot to the Allies is it... And you cant just base the 1944 quality of manpower on two incidents. Sure they could give out losses, but on the whole German pilot quality declined late war.

 

Za Rodina. Sure media was controlled & dissenting opinions squashed. But Nazis were voted into power before they had complete media control. Millions of Germans supported them with of without media control.

 

war is hell anyway you look at it. Think the thread has been totally diluted now but will add two more cents since Chrome brought this up. For D-day there were 37 Claims for Allied a/c. 6 of these a/c were at night. 12 of these were B-24's whcih were flying a mission over Ploesti.
17 Allied fighters fell to staffeln of JG 2. a pilot from a ground attack unit....III./SG 4 calimed a P-51 over Mortain area. a pilot from 2./JG 26 claimed 1 P-51 near Caen. that is it. The Luftwaffe fighter force was in no way prepared for the onslaught of the day as the units were moving to new bases and accepting new pilots and a/c. but in the days ahead there would be a continued bloodletting especially of the Luftwaffe till august's end and besides over the Normandy beaches deep into the interior of the Reich at altitudes of 25-32,000 feet.

my quoted inforamtion on Lufwaffe claims comes from the Freiburg Film chef für Ausz. und Diziplin: C. 2027, N/Teil II

E ~ and to back Fried up yes the German folk were complacent and let their own government rule over them or I should say dupped the GErman people in such a way that they were overpowered by a few.........yes there was constant fear of the Gestapo, and in fact such paranoia even exists today with folk living close to the old Eastern German borders. that fear of Soviet ears.........

 

I'm not basing it on 2 incidents, my point is that they could still inflict losses. I agree pilot quality declined dramatically in 44-45 & war was irretievably lost. But allied bomber losses were still high in 44.

 

Yes very true, but not enough losses...

 

you might find this of note that der Führer wanted to sack Göring and the whole Luftwaffe after the diabacle of 2 November 1944 when the Fw 190A-8 Sturm units II.Sturm/JG 4 and IV.Sturm/JG 3 attacked bomber formations and claimed somewhere in the realm of 35 bombers for the loss of at least 24 Fw's and 17 pilots KIA. JG 27 alone could only calim 7 P-51's for a loss of 38 Bf 109's and 27 pilots KIA. Pretty grim stats as Hitler in conversation with Büchs/Christian blew a gasket on 6 November 1944. The big blow to the Luftwaffe was evident but Hitler couldn;t see what was reality.........everything was closing in. Too many looses of good aircrew and young inexperienced replacements to just add to the loss tallies, my cousin being one of these on 26 November 44/ JG 301's black day ! did the unit JG 7 with the vaunted Me 262A-1a, bring the victories that were needed ? hardly but if anything it was a form of psychological hope for a doomed regime.........

 

Erich,

Ouch... JG27 had a very bad day...

How do night fighters compare for losses to victories?

What I mean is, were the nite fighters more effective per aircraft? Losses of 24 vs 35 dont seem very good to me, although that is a loss of fighters vs Bombers so i guess it could be argued that a Bomber is worth far more than a fighter...

I also imagine that the tight constraints placed on fuel had a lot to do with the downfall of the Luftwaffe as it did with the armoured formations...

Very interesting Erich.

 

Um thread has shifted, which is fine, I just wanted to mention a book entitled; German resistance to Hitler by history professor Hans Rothfels. He fought in ww1 for Germany & was involved in politics in Germany in 20's & 30,s He was forced to leave Germany in 1930.A valuable document on the subject by someone who was intimately involved with it.

 

I found a book on a similar subject as I was packing about resistence to Hitler and the attempts to kill him...

Now which of the 20 boxes of books is it in...

I wonder how many Germans left Germany pre-war? If it contained a number of intellectuals maybe this had something to do with it all. After all, im sure the NAzis were keen to get anyone who opposed them put of the country asap.

 

And millions did not.

"...in the July 31, 1932 elections the Nazis won 230 seats with 37% of the vote and became the largest German party, but dropped to 33% in the Nov. 6 elections... " in http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude03.html

Then Hitler got himself appointed Reichskanzler in Jan 1933, and even then in the March 1933 elections the Nazi party got 43.9% of the vote.

Of course six months later there was the Reichstag firer, and the Nazis had a free run from then on.

I find it sad that democracy served itself to the wolf in a platter

 

I will tell you guys something else. In the 50 or so night fighter crew interviews that I have done since 1980 I have not found no-one who believed in the Führer's ideals. All of them, every single one said they flew at night because it was a thrill and they wanted to defend their homeland from the carnage of the Allies.

No as to nf losses greater than 25 on a single night. usually it was between 10-15 maximum, and this was not necessarily due to combat damage either from Allied bombers or fighters. many times landing crashes.

The date that my cousin was killed, JG 301 alone suffered some 50 Fw 190's destroyed with another 20 damaged. 38 pilots were killed in action. I do not discredit the US losses in terms of American aircrew killed as it was a sickening day for both sides. Guess my point is that by late 44 through 1945 Luftwaffe fighter crew personell had more things to do than to listen to delivered speeches and preached the Jewish hate propaganda. Again not all knew of the camps, it was not going to achieve anything if it did. the primary concern of the Luftwaffe was to protect the homeland and it was at Görings request this be done if even the German crews were overwhelmed in the skies. It was a tribute to these crews not serving under the Austrian but that they did what they could to protect Germany from total annihaltion. Tried they did with their might but to no avail..........

 

Yeah… so did Von Manstein denied his orders "to crash the Jews" in the fifties in his memoirs.

Unfortunately, Erich. You were not there nor was I to interview this very same brave men in 1940 or 1941 when Germany was victorious and unstopped, and when they had just joined the Luftwaffe, right from the Hitlerjugend…

 

All of em were Nazi scum Fried just like you imagine.........enough from me.