Goering program

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The Göring program (also: extended air force program) was a failed German plan in World War II of June 23, 1941 to quadruple the German air force within two to two and a half years to fight the Western powers . It was based on a planned shift of the armaments focus from the army to the air force and navy . After the failure of the Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union in the Battle of Moscow , it had to be abandoned.

The plan

For Operation Barbarossa , the "Armaments Program B" was issued on September 28, 1940, which provided for the "provision of armaments for 180 field and corresponding occupation divisions by spring 1941". With the decree on the "extended air force program" of June 20, 1941, two days before the attack on the Soviet Union and directive No. 32 of July 14, 1941, Hitler ordered the focus of armaments to be shifted from the army to the air force.

On June 23, 1941, the Goering program was available. The first step, the so-called “Elk Program”, envisaged a doubling of aircraft production from 1200 aircraft to 2400 aircraft per month. On June 1, 1942, 3,000 aircraft were to be produced per month.

The plan had three cornerstones.

  1. The construction of three new aircraft factories and an aircraft engine plant with a capacity of 1000 engines per month.
  2. Light metal production doubled from 531,000 tons per year thanks to the light metal expansion plan.
  3. Increase in the production of aviation fuel from 160,000 t per month to 390,000 t through the aviation fuel expansion plan.

The light metal expansion plan envisaged an increase in production mainly in Norway because of its rich energy sources. The bauxite was mainly to be transported from Hungary .

The jet fuel expansion plan, headed by the chairman of the IG Farben supervisory board, Carl Krauch , provided for the delivery of 4 million tonnes of oil per year from the Soviet Union via a pipeline from Odessa to Silesia and Brix in the Sudetenland . Several large oil processing plants were to be built for processing. General Georg Thomas said:

"Without possession of the Caucasus , there is no longer any point in pursuing Krauch's aviation fuel program"

implementation

According to Rolf-Dieter Müller , "the efforts to change direction in favor of the Air Force" "fizzled out more or less ineffectively" On October 22nd, in a conversation between Erhard Milch and General Thomas, it was established that a changeover had not yet taken place. On November 10, 1941, the Armed Forces and Armaments Office found that the Army released "practically no significant capacities and workers".

The Fuehrer's order "Armament 1942" of January 10, 1942 put the armament focus on the army. The retrofitting and the Goering program had thus finally failed. In January 1943, Hitler issued the Adolf Hitler tank program to quadruple the production of armored vehicles.

evaluation

For Bernhard R. Kroener , the conversion failed due to technical difficulties, to convert entire branches of production at short notice and to the "bureaucratic and political obstacles and friction losses" that resulted from the National Socialist polycracy . According to Kroener, developments in the East “completely” “canceled all premises that formed the basis of this order”. For the Marxist historian Dietrich Eichholtz, however, it was primarily “the military events on the German-Soviet front” caused by the “heroic Resistance of the Soviet people ", which let the plan fail, and less the lack of concentration of regulatory power, which for him arose from the" competitive legality of the system ".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Decree on the "Increase in Armament". Printed in Erhard Moritz: Case Barbarossa . Berlin 1970, p. 212 ff.
  2. ↑ Printed as a facsimile in: Karl Drechsler: Germany in the Second World War . Volume 2. Berlin 1976, p. 99.
  3. ^ Printed in: Walther Hubatsch : Hitler's instructions for warfare 1939–1945 . Bonn undated, p. 136 ff.
  4. ↑ The presentation of the Goering program is taken from: Dietrich Eichholtz : History of the German War Economy . Berlin 1985, Volume 2, p. 11 ff.
  5. ↑ Eichholtz, p. 17.
  6. ↑ MGFA (ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War . Stuttgart 1990, Volume 5/1, p. 612.
  7. ↑ The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 5/1, p. 932.
  8. ↑ Eichholtz, p. 34.
  9. ↑ Printed in: Percy Ernst Schramm (Ed.): War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht . Bonn undated, Volume 2, 2nd half volume, pp. 1265 ff.
  10. ↑ The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 5/1, p. 931 f.
  11. ↑ Eichholtz, pp. 18 and 40.