General Hans Jeschonnek was the Chief of the Staff of the Luftwaffe from Feb 1939 until 18 Aug 1943 when he committed suicide.

This excerpt is from a discussion with General Friedrich von Boetticher, the German military attache in Washington. Impressed with Boetticher’s detailed reports on the planned massive expansion of the USAAF and the danger this posed to Germany, Jeschonnek asked him to see Hitler in May 1942, a few weeks before operation Blau was to be launched.

Hitler dismissed the information and Jeschonnek ended his statement to Boetticher as follows: “Conflicting demands have been made by Hitler…We now no longer have any time… to provide ourselves with the weapons to fight the dreadful threat which you have predicted and reported to us. Then we will be covered from the air with an enemy screen which will paralyze our power to resist. They will be able to play with us!”

At the time of this conversation, there was only one group of heavy Bombers deployed in the MTO and nothing in the ETO. The USAAF appeared to be a tiny force.

However, Boetticher was quite aware of the capacities and plans of the American aeronautical industry. Many of these plans were not even secret. The AIRCRAFT BOOK OF 1941 was published by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce that year, and it described in great detail the massive expansion taking place in the aeronautical industry of the USA and the current and future aircraft ready to be manufactured.

Jeschonnek appears to be one of the first German commanders of high level that became fully aware of this serious threat.

He committed suicide only one and a half years later, one day after a powerful American armada bombed Schweinfurt-Regensburg. It is ironic to note that his suicide occurred after one of the great defensive victories of the war by the Luftwaffe, but we may speculate that he saw the writing on the wall.

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