http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/17220245

Luftwaffe a history

"At the beginning of World War II the German Air Force was considered the finest in the world. But was it? The Treaty of Versailles had condemned the German Air Force to a clandestine, embryonic life until 1933. But in 1935 the Nazi propaganda machine publicly acknowledged the Luftwaffe's existence. And in only six years the charismatic Hermann Goering organized an officer corps and equipped an air force which managed to terrorize the other nations of Europe. Germany's bloodless conquest at Munich was achieved largely through fear of Goering's bombers, and the Luftwaffe's triumphs in Poland, Norway, Holland and even against the French were scored against feeble opposition. Advancing into Russia, the Germans made the critical discovery that their air force had no reach. They had created a tactical, not a strategic, air force that could do little to interrupt their enemies' production and recovery. Deficiencies in equipment and leadership on the Western Front (particularly during the Battle of Britain) brought disaster to the Luftwaffe, and turned its short-lived glory into a precipitous decline. The historic irony in the Allies' miscalculation was that the Luftwaffe had reached its peak of effectiveness before World War II began. In this fascinating book we are taken into the strange, self-defeating world of the Luftwaffe high command with all its colorful characters and the destructive interplay of its personalities and rivalries. The book draws heavily on primary sources, much of it coming from World War II debriefing statements from former Luftwaffe generals and captured Luftwaffe documents and diaries and photographs"--Jacket.

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