Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

LESSONS BEFORE WOR .D WAR
The Heinkel He-111 bomber.
Much of this thought remained internal to military circles, as Hitler and his
political leaders saw a different use for the Luftwaffe in the diplomatic
arena outside of war.h5
From the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 through the
Munich agreement to dismember Czechoslovakia two years later, Hitler’s
deft use of the Luftwaffe’s potential to reduce Europe’s great cities to rubble
and kill large numbers of civilians quieted foreign opposition to a whimper.
Germany’s rumored air strength became a vital partner in Nazi
diplomatic initiatives. Most of it was bluff, but it worked. Despite two years
of warning from French military attaches in Berlin, senior French air officials
drew conclusions from personal observation at maneuvers and visits
to German factories. Their view was based not on statistics, but visual
proof of superior German aviation technology. Yet, as one German general
admitted years later:
In addition to the systematic bluff at top levels. there was also the willing selfdeception
of the foreign air observers, who simply refused to believe what their
eyes saw and insisted on assuming that there was still more hidden behind it. They
had no way of knowing that many of the gigantic hangers they were shown were
either completely empty or filled with ancient, dust-covered aircraft.hh
In general, a pacifistic West believed the chimera of Hitler’s air armada
largely because of its own psychological and material unpreparedness to do
otherwise. In a strange twist to post-World War I1 deterrence, the Luftwaffe
of the late 1930s effectively countered any Anglo-French notions of
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