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Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses, 1914-1945 Paperback – November 12, 2001
| Edward B. Westermann (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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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 material 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.
- Print length408 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity Press of Kansas
- Publication dateNovember 12, 2001
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
- ISBN-100700614206
- ISBN-13978-0700614202
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I will take some issue with the metrics Westermann uses to evaluate the flak force. Westermann regards the primary German metric of aircraft shot down as understating the real contribution of flak. He argues that the principal contribution was the ground air defenses degrading allied targeting effectiveness. Flak forced the aircraft to higher altitudes; forced the aircraft to perform erratic maneuvers (as opposed to straight run) over the target to avoid search lights (at night) and gunfire; and increased the anxiety of the bomber crew over the target. Westermann admits this metric is hard to quantify. However, I believe Westermann has overlooked the obvious and real metric--were German defenses able to protect vital industrial, transportation, resource, and population centers so that Germany could sustain its war efforts. Answering this question also allows us to put in context the relative contribution to air defense of the ground forces compared with the air forces. At the end of 1943, despite the staggering blow Bomber Command inflicted on Hamburg, the Germans were successfully defending their vital targets, had inflicted a major defeat on Bomber Command in its offensive against Berlin, and forced the Americans to reconsider the viability of daylight bombing. However, with the introduction of American long range fighters (P-47 and P-51) the American Air Forces were able to initiate the successful battle of attrition in February 1944 with the so-called Big Week, during which the German day-light fighter force suffered irreplaceable pilot losses. With these fighters, the Americans could escort their bomber formations over occupied Western Europe, the Ruhr, and even to Berlin. With the German fighters effectively tamed, the allied bomber forces turned their attention to Operation Point Blank the effort to destroy German transportation capabilities in the West so that reinforcements would be fatally delayed arriving to the Normandy invasion force. Unfortunately, Westermann does not provide any details on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the flak forces to protect rail marshaling yards and other key nodes. With the allied ground forces secure on the beaches, the Americans quickly shifted to a more critical resource target--the synthetic oil plants. This campaign put the German air force in a vicious cycle--the planes had to fight to protect their oil resources; the American fighters, now working with better-trained pilots and excellent aircraft, could accelerate the war of attrition; and as the defenses crumbled, so did the synthetic oil factories. Reduced oil meant less fuel for pilot training, so that the Americans grew stronger in the air as the Germans grew weaker (and on the ground as well). When the fighter force was defeated, the flak force could not protect vital transportation nodes, synthetic oil plants, or the myriad of other targets the allied bomber forces attacked in the last months of the war. The flak guns could continue to bring down planes, but, without the fighters, they could not protect the vital sinews the German war machine.
So, Westermann has provided us with a detailed account of the German flak forces and their efforts to defend the German homeland, giving the reader sufficient to draw his own conclusion about the overall contribution of the flak force to Germany's war effort.
To say that this work stands virtually alone (in books published in English, anyway) in covering this critical aspect of World War II is in no way an understatement. The have been thousands of books written about the air war in World War II, but apart from some primarily pictorial books showing the German Flak or ones analyzing specific weapons (primarily the German 88mm anti-aircraft gun), I know of no book that shows how the German anti-aircraft defenses were developed, operated, and discusses in detail these defenses' efficacy.
The author shows the cost, year by year, both in marks and in the number personnel assigned, that the Germans devoted to this effort, and provides an analysis of the number of aircraft shot down by flak vice those shot down by German aircraft in defense of the German Reich, and shows how Flak helped make the fighters much more effective by dispersing and damaging enemy aircraft. He also touches upon other things the Germans were developing, such as anti-aircraft missiles and improved warhead fusing. He even shows how much the Germans were spending to bring down an aircraft versus what it cost the Allies to construct one.
The author implys that the German flak defenses did not consume a disproportionate share of the German war budget, although he shows it cost upwards of 25 percent of their armaments and munitions budgets during the war years. It would have been helpful if he had provided information showing what the other major powers were expending in their antiaircraft defenses as a comparison, although some of this would be like comparing apples and oranges, as the Allies were on the attack, thus spending more of their resources on strategic bombing rather than strategic air defense. He also shows that while the manpower used to man the flak defenses were substantial, a large portion of this was overaged men, teenagers too young to be drafted, foreign labor, POWs, and women, none of whom were eligible to serve in the front lines anyway, so the manpower drain wasn't as bad as it might appear.
This is an outstanding book that shows the real impact of the German's flak defenses on their battle to win the war in the air over Germany. As such, it belongs on your shelf if you're a serious student of World War II. Five stars.
One quick aside: While this book describes the evolution and effectiveness of the active German anti-aircraft defenses, it doesn't touch much on the passive defenses like shelters and underground factories. There is an excellent short book by author Stephen Zaloga titled "Defense of the Third Reich 1941-45" that focuses more on the nuts and bolts on how Flak batteries were physically deployed, as well as personnel and factory shelter construction. It does not discuss the battle in the skies over Germany, so it is a great complementary companion book to this work.
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If you are interested in this subject it is the book to buy.

