Werner Baumbach, one of the most striking figures in any Air Force in the Second World War, was thirty-four years old when this book was written. At the end of the war he had attained the rank of colonel—and held the post of General of the Bombers. He was born on the 27th of December, 1916, in the little town of Coppenburg in Oldenburg. He came to the Luftwaffe via gliding.
Scapa Flow, Firth of Forth, Narvik, Dunkirk are the first steps in his unexampled career as a dive-bomber pilot. After a lengthy period of service in the east he was employed as commander of the bomber fleet in northern Norway, scene of the attacks on the Arctic convoys, and subsequently in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
Through his friendship with Jeschonnek, the Chief of Staff, and Udet, the Quartermaster-General (Air), he, with a number of other junior front-line officers, was able to bring about a reorganization of the bomber arm. For his services in action he was awarded—the first to be so honored—the Oak Leaves with Swords to the Knights Cross, the highest distinction to be given to a bomber pilot in the Second World War. He was subsequently commissioned to test new weapons, such as guided bombs. In that capacity he was in almost daily contact with the men at the top. He became a close personal friend of Speer, the Minister of War Production.
In the last phase of the war, in conjunction with Speer, he was able to avert appalling destruction in Germany by his skill in argument, his personal integrity and courage in conferences with Himmler, Goring and Goebbels. At the Nuremberg trials Speer said when giving evidence, “Baumbach, Colonel Knemeyer and I were able to make certain that the latest technical developments in air warfare were brought to the West and their exploitation by the Soviets prevented.”
The capitulation found Baumbach in Flensburg-Miirwik. In August, 1945, he was brought to England. He spent nearly six months in an English interrogation camp. He was told
That he would be charged as a “war criminal” on the ground that he had fired on shipwrecked people and had been the commander of No. 200 Bomber Group. After unending cross-examination and investigation Baumbach was able to prove conclusively that throughout the war neither he nor any unit under his command had committed any violation of the Hague Convention.
In February, 1946, after further inquiry by Amercan Headquarters, he was released. Professor Dr. Bruce C. Hopper, the Harvard University historian, asked him to assist him in his work. For a whole year they laboured together on studies on the course of the Second World War. Then Hopper suggested to Baumbach that he should write this book.
It was thus that this airman, who since schooldays had had a passion for history and writing, became an author. He was helped by the fact that he had performed the deeds of which he writes so graphically at an age at which “a young company officer hardly dared open his mouth at mess,” as Bernard Shaw once put it.
In the spring of 1948, with Allied permission, he emigrated with his wife and son to South America and became technical adviser to industrial firms.
His many-sided activities during the war have given rise to many legends, rumours and conjectures about him, particularly after the war ended. The English Press called him “the German Lawrence of the Second World War.” The only true element in them all is that in all his work and actions Baumbach regarded the human side as the only one that mattered, and both during and after the war spoke his mind without regard to any consequences to himself.
When a German reporter called him after the war he remarked, “I am still an enthusiastic fiyer, but only for pleasure. I loathe war and will never drop a bomb again. My military ambitions are a thing of the past.”
His ideas about the future development of armaments and war in the air made him one of the accepted international experts on air strategy.
In the Argentine Baumbach pursued research into the problems of remote-controlled flight. During an experiment in an obsolete aircraft he crashed and was drowned in the Rio de la Plata. The Argentinian Government sent his remains to his home town of Coppenburg in Oldenburg, Germany. At the time of his death Baumbach was thirty-six years old.
World History
