Westermann provides a comprehensive, narrative of the contribution of German ground air defenses during WW2, with an almost exclusive focus of these capabilities as they were deployed in the defense of the German homeland. The chronological account details the numbers and types of German air defense guns, ranging from the heavy 128 mm and 88 mm to the lighter 37mm and 20 mm flak guns, along with the manner of their deployment in batteries and double batteries. Westermann extends his account to include the numbers and roles of searchlight batteries, the range of acoustic and radar acquisition and targeting capabilities; the constantly changing personnel employing the guns, radars, and searchlights, as manpower shortages forces upon the flak force to incorporate the home guard, workers, women, and even prisoners of war; employment of smoke generators--their contributions and drawbacks; impact of weather and day-night conditions on the force, the role of dummy targets deployed to confuse the allied bombers; and the success and failure of integration with German day and night fighters. Westermann provides even the most veteran historian of the European war with a wealth of knowledge, to include numbers of flak guns, allocation of resources to air defense materiel and munitions as compared to the total Wehrmacht effort; comparison of destroyed aircraft by flak versus aircraft, and the synergies achieved by combination of these two elements. I would have appreciated a bit more detail on warhead performance of the various types of gun munitions, but this is a very slight oversight.
I will take some issue with the metrics Westermann uses to evaluate the flak force. Westermann regards the primary German metric of aircraft shot down as understating the real contribution of flak. He argues that the principal contribution was the ground air defenses degrading allied targeting effectiveness. Flak forced the aircraft to higher altitudes; forced the aircraft to perform erratic maneuvers (as opposed to straight run) over the target to avoid search lights (at night) and gunfire; and increased the anxiety of the bomber crew over the target. Westermann admits this metric is hard to quantify. However, I believe Westermann has overlooked the obvious and real metric--were German defenses able to protect vital industrial, transportation, resource, and population centers so that Germany could sustain its war efforts. Answering this question also allows us to put in context the relative contribution to air defense of the ground forces compared with the air forces. At the end of 1943, despite the staggering blow Bomber Command inflicted on Hamburg, the Germans were successfully defending their vital targets, had inflicted a major defeat on Bomber Command in its offensive against Berlin, and forced the Americans to reconsider the viability of daylight bombing. However, with the introduction of American long range fighters (P-47 and P-51) the American Air Forces were able to initiate the successful battle of attrition in February 1944 with the so-called Big Week, during which the German day-light fighter force suffered irreplaceable pilot losses. With these fighters, the Americans could escort their bomber formations over occupied Western Europe, the Ruhr, and even to Berlin. With the German fighters effectively tamed, the allied bomber forces turned their attention to Operation Point Blank the effort to destroy German transportation capabilities in the West so that reinforcements would be fatally delayed arriving to the Normandy invasion force. Unfortunately, Westermann does not provide any details on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the flak forces to protect rail marshaling yards and other key nodes. With the allied ground forces secure on the beaches, the Americans quickly shifted to a more critical resource target--the synthetic oil plants. This campaign put the German air force in a vicious cycle--the planes had to fight to protect their oil resources; the American fighters, now working with better-trained pilots and excellent aircraft, could accelerate the war of attrition; and as the defenses crumbled, so did the synthetic oil factories. Reduced oil meant less fuel for pilot training, so that the Americans grew stronger in the air as the Germans grew weaker (and on the ground as well). When the fighter force was defeated, the flak force could not protect vital transportation nodes, synthetic oil plants, or the myriad of other targets the allied bomber forces attacked in the last months of the war. The flak guns could continue to bring down planes, but, without the fighters, they could not protect the vital sinews the German war machine.
So, Westermann has provided us with a detailed account of the German flak forces and their efforts to defend the German homeland, giving the reader sufficient to draw his own conclusion about the overall contribution of the flak force to Germany's war effort.
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