In this book Alfred Mierzejewski describes how the German economy
collapsed under Allied bombing in the last year of World War II. He
presents a broad-based, original study of German wartime industry
and transportation, and of Allied air force planning and
intelligence, including the first complete analysis in English of
the German National Railway.
The German industrial economy was extraordinarily dependent on the
timely, adequate distribution of coal by railroad and inland
waterway. The German National Railway in particular was the pivot
of the finely balanced armaments production and distribution system
created by Albert Speer. But Allied strategists did not immediately
recognize this. Only in late 1944, when Deputy Supreme Allied
Commander Sir Arthur Tedder built a new strategic consensus, was
this vital coal/transport nexus severed. The result was the rapid
paralysis of the Nazi war economy.
Mierzejewski measures the economic consequences of the bombing by
considering broad indices such as armaments and coal production,
railway performance, and weapons deliveries to the armed forces. In
addition, he shows how individual companies in each of Germany's
major economic regions fared. By drawing on previously unexamined
files of private German manufacturing companies, the Reich
Transportation Ministry, and Allied air intelligence agencies,
Mierzejewski creates a rare combination of economic analysis and
military history that provides new perspectives on the German war
economy and Allied air intelligence.