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The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1330-1331



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Fighting the Bombers: The Luftwaffe's Struggle against the Allied Bomber Offensive. By Adolf Galland, Josef Kammhuber, Willi Messerschmitt, et al. Edited by David C. Isby. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Greenhill Books, 2003. ISBN 1-85367-532-6. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Tables. Charts. Glossary. Pp. 256. $34.95.

As American and British forces occupied the western reaches of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945, they swept up hundreds of thousands of Luftwaffe and aviation industry personnel as POWs. Most of these men were rank and filers of no great interest, but among the sardines a school of "big fish" was also netted, ranging from former Luftwaffe commander in chief Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering through several field marshals, generals of various ranks, a host of upper-echelon staff officers, and civilian aviation types. These movers and shakers represented a potential treasure of intelligence about the inner workings of the German air war, and the Allies immediately began to interrogate many of them in a hunt for information and insights not generally revealed in documents.

The debriefing process went on in a variety of locations through 1945 and into 1946, yielding a diversity of returns. The time frame and circumstances are noteworthy, for as the editor rightly says, the debriefs were gleaned while memories were fresh, yet unaided by reference to official documents. In many cases, the German detainees apparently were simply directed to prepare an extended written précis on their duties, equipment, tactics, and operational experiences; in other cases, the interrogations took the form of questionnaires resembling extended legal depositions. Having been handed around among interested parties on the Allied side, the transcripts found their way into military intelligence files, then eventually vanished into the Public Record Office (PRO), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and what is now the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA). Scattered and often badly catalogued as they were, however, finding any of them amounted to a needle-in-the-haystack proposition.

Editor Isby has retrieved nineteen of the German postwar debriefs for publication in Fighting the Bombers. Of these, ten originated with general officers or higher ranks; one with Dr. Willi Messerschmitt; one with OKL staff; and seven with operations officers, fighter controllers, or unit commanders [End Page 1330] at the grade of Major (these last rather more like lieutenant colonels in the USAAF). Besides Messerschmitt, some very famous Luftwaffe personalities echo here: General der Flieger Josef Kammhuber, father of the so-called "Kammhuber line" of night fighter defense; General der Flieger Wolfgang Martini, Chief of Signals Troops; Generalmajor Hans-Detlef Herhudt von Rohden, chief of history on the OKL staff; Generalleutnant Joseph "Beppo" Schmid, commander of I. Jagdkorps and later of Luftwaffenkommando West; and Major Wolfgang Schnaufer, highest Luftwaffe night fighter ace. In stark contrast with these celebrities are several faceless but operationally crucial figures such as Major Heinrich Ruppel, said to be "the best fighter controller in the Luftwaffe" (p. 9). Thus, overall the book has the distinct flavor of the ops room and not of the cockpit.

Given its elusive and useful content, Fighting the Bombers prima facie begins with high promise, but editorial and publishing ineptitude and corner-cutting—if not sloth—have completely derailed its execution. The book, for example, has a glossary but lacks a bibliography, selected readings, or citations; worse yet, not a single provenance for any of the "contributions" is cited, making finding or verifying the originals impossible! The orphan documents also have been left to speak for themselves without annotation or even editorial uniformity—the resulting mishmash of formats, styles, translation practices, and English usage is off-putting in the extreme. The rough-cut texts are hardly improved by an amateurish mixture of serif and sans-serif typefaces, and slovenly printing. Most of the book's several dozen graphs, maps, and charts seem to have been lifted straight from United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USBSS) reports, but none are credited and the reproduction is uniformly small and poor...

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