Soldaten

The technology of war plays only a very minor role in academic discourse, and in this book, too, we are primarily interested in perceptions beyond any sort of technology. Technical topics rarely occur in conversations between army POWs—not surprisingly since the equipment used by infantrymen barely changed in the six years of World War II. German soldiers at the end of the war still used the same standard-issue rifle, the K98, with which they had invaded Poland in September 1939. There were only two types of standard machine guns employed in World War II, and the situation was similar with other infantry and artillery weaponry. Tanks underwent the greatest innovation, but once soldiers had gotten used to new types of armored vehicles, their operation quickly became routine. A Tiger tank was a Tiger tank. The technological framework in the German army changed little. All in all, equipment remained constant, and infantry weaponry in particular consisted of mass-produced items that scarcely merited discussion. On the battlefields of Europe, the technical quality of rifles, tommy guns, and machine guns was quite comparable, with neither side enjoying a decisive advantage.

The situation was completely different in the Luftwaffe, where the quality of technology was far more important than in the army. Aerial warfare was a technological arena, and innovations came fast and furious over the course of the war. Improvements were made in all areas, from aircraft performance to navigation technology to onboard weaponry. The Messerschmitt 109 of 1939 had little to do with the same model plane in 1945.

Nighttime aerial warfare added a new dimension to the conflict. British Bomber Command perfected the technique of aerial bombardment in darkness, forcing the Luftwaffe to constantly develop new strategies for defending against such attacks. One result of this give-and-take was the rise of highly sophisticated radar and navigation technology.

In 1939 a race began to develop the fastest fighter jets, the most precise radar stations, and the most exact navigation procedures. In World War I, mistakes could be relatively quickly corrected. This was no longer the case in World War II, since the effort needed for development and production was so much greater. Huge amounts of resources—for example, 41 percent of armaments capacity in 1944—were invested in the air industry. By comparison, Germany invested only 6 percent of its resources in tank production in 1944.^{346} Nonetheless, in the course of 1942, Britain and the United States gained a decisive advantage over the Luftwaffe, and the German air force was never able to close the gap. With Germany losing ground both quantitatively and qualitatively, the Luftwaffe was deprioritized at the end of 1944. The consequences for the Wehrmacht were devastating and could be felt in every arena of the war.

Technology was a constant, unavoidable element in the lives of pilots, reconnaissance specialists, and aircraft gunners.^{347} In aerial warfare, whoever had faster, more maneuverable planes with better weapons survived, while those who fell behind technologically died, regardless of their skill as airmen. Technology thus determined the lives of Luftwaffe troops. It also dominated their perception of the war and the formation of their frame of reference.

The surveillance protocols reflect the importance of technology for each branch of the German armed forces. There is a lot of material of this sort in conversations between Luftwaffe men, somewhat less among German sailors, and only around a tenth as much in discussions between army soldiers. For that reason, this section will be primarily concerned with the Luftwaffe. Especially interesting is what the POWs discussed when they talked about technology, and how technology dominated and changed their perception of the war.

FASTER, FURTHER, BIGGER

One of the most important topics of discussion among the “artisans” of World War II was the capabilities of their aircraft. Just as automotive fanatics love to converse about the advantages of their cars, Luftwaffe pilots and crewmen constantly boasted about their planes’ superiority in three areas: speed, range, and payload. In 1940, a Luftwaffe lieutenant introduced his bunkmate to the Ar 196:

Airplane motors were objects of particular interest:

The engine was considered the most important element in a warplane, which is why the first thing Schönauer pointed out was that the Junkers 188 had a new BMW rear engine, making it superior to its predecessor the Ju 88. Luftwaffe POWs spent an enormous amount of time debating the merits of this engine vis-à-vis the Daimler-Benz inline motors DB 603 and 605 and the Junkers Jumo 213. Planes were only as good as the capacity of their engines, and by 1942 the POWs agreed that German motor development was lagging behind the enemy’s. They pinned their greatest hopes to the creation of the piston engine Jumo 222, which was supposed to have between 2,000 and 3,000 horsepower. “The Jumo 222,” First Lieutenant Fried raved in February 1943, “I have seen it myself, it is terrific… 24 cylinders.”^{350} And First Lieutenant Schönauer was also enthusiastic four months later: “The new Jumo engine—if it is a success, with 2700 hp. at take-off rating—what an engine!”^{351} But this miracle engine, which Luftwaffe POWs hoped would solve all their problems, never went into mass production.^{352}

Amid all the pride German POWs felt for their own equipment, there was grudging admiration for the British and later the Americans. Symptomatic in this regard were the judgments of a first lieutenant and squadron leader of a fighter wing who was shot down over England in September 1940:

The admission that, when battling at lower altitudes, German pilots had a “fear” of the RAF’s Spitfire shows the Luftwaffe’s great respect for their English counterparts at the high point of the Battle of Britain. Also in September 1940, another pilot even complained:

The POWs agreed that new, technologically improved planes would be needed to turn the tide of the air war, and the complaints about and grudging admiration for the capabilities of enemy aircraft never ceased. “I believe we have bitten off more than we can chew with regard to the G.A.F.,” First Lieutenant Henz opined in June 1943. “To be quite honest, we haven’t got anything to put up against the four-engined (bombers) at the moment. I have the feeling that we’ve been asleep for some time.”^{355} A year later, Sergeant Mäckle seconded that assessment: “The English have much faster air-craft: for instance, none of our aircraft can come up to their Mosquitoes; that’s impossible.”^{356}

Both airmen may have hit the nail on the head in terms of Allied technology, but neither named any reasons why Germany lagged behind. German pilots simply resigned themselves to the fact of the enemy’s technological superiority. In November 1944, First Lieutenant Hans Hartigs, an experienced member of Fighter Wing 26, received what was then the Luftwaffe’s most modern conventional fighter plane, the Fw 190 D-9. On December 26, he led a formation of fifteen fighters to support German ground troops as part of the Ardennes Offensive or, as it was known to the Allies, the Battle of the Bulge. American Mustangs engaged them in dogfights, and Hartigs was shot down. As a POW, the disappointed pilot remarked: “Even an outstanding pilot can’t get away properly from a Mustang by banking in that ‘190’; it’s out of the question. I tried it. It’s out of the question.”^{357}

Germans did not feel technologically inferior only in the second half of the war. Complaints of that nature began as early as 1939, although they became much more frequent as of 1943. All the more eagerly did pilots await the introduction of new planes that would give them the advantage they long craved over the enemy. POWs devoted long and intense discussions to the topic of fantastic new developments that would soon be making themselves felt on the front. In January 1940, a pilot and a radio operator drew some conclusions about where the Luftwaffe stood technologically. They agreed that Germany had “some really smart machines,” above all, the “fantastic” Ju 88 bomber.^{358} The radio operator said he had heard that his unit was soon to be equipped with the planes. And they expressed confidence that the new version of the Me 110 would shock the British once the planes were finished and came “buzzing like bees.”^{359} Six months later, two young officers who had been shot down over France discussed the Fw 190, which at the time was still in the test phase:

The “marvelous” Fw 190 was at that point in time, June 1940, nothing more than a prototype. Nonetheless, the news had already gotten around that it was easy to start and faster than the Messerschmitt 109 and had the advantage of a rear, or radial, engine. Knowledge about planes still in the developmental phase spread quickly in the Luftwaffe. British surveillance officers, of course, welcomed the Luftwaffe POWs’ need to exchange information about the latest planes and exploited this source in masterly fashion. The Royal Air Force knew specifics about each new Luftwaffe plane long before it was actually introduced into combat.

With new and improved planes constantly arriving on the front, airplane crews had a reliable supply of news to discuss. Sometimes the talk was reminiscent of fashion designers debating the merits of a new fall collection. For example, in October 1942, a Sergeant Breitscheid told a bunkmate, a bomber aircraft mechanic, that he could not wait to see what the autumn would bring in terms of new planes. The mechanic agreed that there would be much that was new, whereupon Breitscheid exclaimed: “The ‘190’ is not our last fighter.”^{361}

Promising performances by new aircraft always occasioned a flurry of talk. In August 1942, two bomber pilots discussed the speed of the Luftwaffe’s new heavy bomber, the Heinkel He 177:

This conversation took place six months before the He 177 was commissioned for battle, but German soldiers were already engaged in lively debate about technical details like its top speed. The POWs’ naïve enthusiasm for technology sometimes led them to formulate exaggerated expectations for new pieces of military hardware. The English would be “scared to death” of the He 177. It was “the most amazing thing so far produced” with “heavy armament and great speed.”^{364}

The He 177 was considered a miracle weapon, and rumors abounded as to the feats it had already achieved. Some POWs even claimed it had flown across the Atlantic. Midshipman Knobel had heard in mid-1942 that the plane had flown from the Luftwaffe’s test airstrip in Rechlin to Tripoli and Smolensk and back. Asked whether the He 177 had flown over America he replied: “Over CANADA, I think, not over AMERICA.”^{365} Another POW, a low-level officer, was far more confident when asked whether the He 177 really possessed that sort of range. “Of course,” he said. “I was told six months ago by people who know all about the aircraft that ‘177’ had already dropped leaflets over NEW YORK.”^{366} This story was repeated by a gunner from a Ju 87 dive-bomber in April 1943.^{367} The idea of being able to fly to New York and drop leaflets (or better still: bombs) was a bit of wishful thinking, whose appeal was such that the soldiers did not want to let reality disrupt illusion. No such flight ever took place, although rumors that it did survived even the war itself.^{368}

Similar stories were told in reference to Japan. Such a flight would have been technically possible, and there were indeed plans of this sort aimed at improving connections between Berlin and Tokyo.^{369} The fact that the flight never happened didn’t stop soldiers from talking about it. Sergeant Gromoll, for instance, reported that the Me 264 was to be used to shuttle diplomats and dispatches between Japan and Germany, flying across North America with 27,000 liters of fuel on board. A first lieutenant who was shot down over the Algerian coast in November 1942 went into similar detail: “The B.V. 222 flies to JAPAN. It has a cruising speed of 350 k.p.h. They refuel for the last time at PILLAU and fly by night across RUSSIA to JAPAN. The Russians have either no night-fighters or only very few.”^{370} We have no way of reconstructing how the officer arrived at this fantasy. It’s possible that he saw a BV 222 while training on the Baltic Sea and sought to explain the presence of the gigantic amphibious aircraft.

In any case, Luftwaffe POWs were particularly fascinated by large-scale airplanes. The latter were few in number, so any contact with one was something special. Anyone who could claim to have seen a six-engine BV 222 was assured of a rapt audience. The narrators of such stories reveled in details about the size and capabilities of the plane:

Schibors completely exaggerated the BV 222’s arsenal and payload capacity. He also substitutes its top speed for its cruising speed as a way of making his story more dramatic. But the plane obviously made a deep impression on him.

The warplane that elicited the greatest hopes was without doubt the Me 262 jet fighter. It began cropping up in POWs’ conversations as of December 1942. At first, the information passed on was vague and third-hand.^{372} For instance, in April 1943, Sergeant Rott from Bomber Wing 10 said he was convinced that big things were afoot at the Luftwaffe since during a visit, the commodore of another nearby wing had hinted that a new fighter jet was being tested.^{373} By late 1943, POWs were offering the first eyewitness reports on the miracle fighting machine.^{374} Lieutenant Schürmann can scarcely conceal his enthusiasm when he recounts: “They have a tremendous speed, it is amazing. It can only be estimated. When you see a Focke-Wulf fighter you estimate it is doing about 450 kph, but I estimated that that was doing 700 to 800 kph at least.”^{375} In spring 1944, speculation grew that the Me 262 would soon be actively deployed. A Lieutenant Fritz recalled a visiting general saying in March 1944 that the Me 262 was about to replace the Ju 88: “He said too that the whole production of those aircraft has been somewhat restricted and preparations were already being made for producing jet-propelled aircraft; that suddenly they would be used in onerous numbers and that we should thereby win back air superiority.”^{376} Similar rumors were circulated among the general German populace, which was increasingly feeling the hardships of the war. A Private First Class Maletzki reported: “The general morale is not so bad in GERMANY. I have heard people saying: ‘When the turbine-fighter comes, then all will be well.’”^{377}

None of the POWs seems to have doubted the capabilities of the Me 262 in the slightest. In June 1944, nine days after being shot down, a Ju 88 W/T operator predicted: “After that they’ll bring out the turbine-fighters. If they do manage to put large masses of them into operation the English can pack up with their four-engined aircraft. The GAF is on the up-grade again, it will take a little time yet, perhaps six months.”^{378} A Lieutenant Zink from Fighter Wing 3 entertained similar thoughts: “But the first group will be put into operations in a fortnight’s time. 1200 kph. They will suddenly appear over ENGLAND. It rises up to 1200 m in two minutes’ time. It climbs at an angle of 44° and at a speed of 800 kph. There is nothing you can do against it. It has eight cannon and can shoot down anything. You could fly about quite comfortably over here, even if a hundred fighters were in the air.”^{379}

Here Zink conflated the capabilities of the Me 163 rocket interceptor and the Me 262 jet fighter, but even so, this excerpt shows the important role that innovations played in the technological imagination and fantasies of the Luftwaffe POWs. The mass deployment of the aircraft was indeed to remain a fantasy. As of August 1944, the first Me 262s were used in a trial formation, and although pilots were enthusiastic about this “fantastic” new plane,^{380} the aircraft had no impact on the outcome of the war. The Me 262 had too many technical bugs that needed ironing out, and the Allied air forces showed that the plane was by no means invulnerable. The approximately two hundred Me 262s deployed during the war shot down some enemy 150 planes, while suffering 100 losses of their own.^{381}

When talking technology, the Luftwaffe POWs were right in their element. They were fascinated by the boost pressure of engines, speeds, onboard weaponry, and all the other innovations in new models of warplanes. They did not see these innovations in any sort of broader context. All they were primarily interested in was the next model and the next fantastic aerial battle. They did not ponder questions such as why Germany was no longer capable of producing 2,500-horsepower engines or why the Allies were much quicker to introduce centimeter-wave radar. But that was only to be expected. Just as engineers in car factories don’t usually consider global warming when designing automotive parts, and technicians in power plants don’t ruminate about the dominance of a few large companies in the energy sector, aerial warfare specialists did not relate their own equipment and expertise to a greater political, strategic, or moral context. Instrumental reason, fascinated by technology, is utterly indifferent to such contexts. This is part and parcel of the basic unsullied faith in technology and progress characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century. Utopian visions of what people could do dominated people’s thoughts. So it hardly appeared unlikely to them that a “miracle weapon” would decide the outcome of World War II.

MIRACLE WEAPONS

After the German military’s defeat at Stalingrad, Nazi propaganda tried to encourage Germans’ hopes for ultimate victory in World War II with hints that revenge would soon be at hand.^{382} In early 1943, German POWs first began mentioning rumors about a whole new category of weapons. In March of that year, a U-boat W/T operator prophesied:

In such excerpts, Hitler played the role of Germany’s savior, who would produce a last-minute super-weapon as decisive as it was terrible. For the speaker in this case, it was no doubt comforting to believe his country had a secret weapon up its sleeve. The second in command of the blockade runner MS Regensburg reported on April 11, 1943, that the official commentator for the supreme military command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) Otto Dietmar had said that “GERMANY would introduce a weapon against which even the strongest enemy troop concentrations would be useless.”^{384} The POW, navy First Lieutenant Wolf Jeschonnek, didn’t know any specifics, but speculated that the weapon in question must be an explosive device or bomb of extraordinary power. Once the bomb was detonated, the POW assured his listeners, everything would be “flattened.” Jeschonnek also expressed confidence that when the “new apparatus” was used, “the war will be over.” The miracle weapon he claimed had such a range that it would “smash everything up.”^{385}

Major Walter Burkhardt, a commander of a paratrooper battalion, offered up similar visions. If it were possible to deliver “enormous shells” over a distance of sixty to a hundred kilometers, he promised, “we could set it up in CALAIS and say to the English: Either you make peace tomorrow, or we shall destroy the whole of your ENGLAND. Those things have got a future.”^{386} Private Honnet of 26th Tank Division was equally confident of Germany’s ultimate victory: “If the reckoning comes like that, it will be terrible. They will be able to reduce the whole of ENGLAND to ruins within a few days, not one stone will be left standing.”^{387}

Within the space of a few short months in 1943, a consensus emerged that the rumored secret weapon had to be a long-distance missile. POWs speculated that it weighed as much 120 tons and carried a 15-ton warhead—ten times the capability of the V2, the missile Nazi Germany did in fact succeed in developing. Sergeant Herbert Cleff promised that it could destroy everything within a ten-kilometer radius of London.^{388} (For the British, Cleff proved to be an excellent source of details about the V1 and V2 missiles more than a year before they were deployed.) In March 1944, Hans Ewald, a U-boat W/T operator, said he believed that four such missiles could reduce London to rubble.^{389}

Other POWs were more modest in their expectations, predicting a zone of destruction between one and ten square kilometers around the point of impact.^{390} But their belief in the effect and imminent deployment of a miracle weapon was so great that many POWs interned near London felt themselves to be at personal risk and hoped they would soon be transferred to a more remote camp—preferably in Canada.^{391} The imprisoned soldiers were aware that the general German populace shared their high expectations. “I was in GERMANY in March,” Major Heinz Quittnat reported. “I can tell you the following: the majority of the German people placed their hope in the reprisal weapon. They imagined that when the reprisal weapon was sent into action, the morale of the English people would quickly be broken, and ENGLAND would be ready to come to terms.”^{392}

The soldiers did not ask themselves why Britain would suddenly capitulate, having weathered ten months of intense aerial bombardment in 1940–41. Notwithstanding technical speculations about the size, payload, and range of the missile, the POWs did not analyze what specific effects such a weapon could have on the war. Instead, they merely voiced their hope that the secret missile would miraculously turn Germany’s fate around. An army private first class named Clermont said: “Well, I certainly believe in our reprisals. The English mother-country will be wiped out.”^{393} Navy Lieutenant Armin Weighardt agreed: “The new weapon is going to win the war! I believe in it!”^{394} Likewise, Luftwaffe Lieutenant Hubert Schymczyk told a comrade in April 1944: “I believe absolutely in our reprisals. When it starts here, then it will be all up with poor old ENGLAND.”^{395}

The belief in a miracle weapon was rampant in all three main branches of the military, which says a lot about the illusions maintained by navy and Luftwaffe officers. Despite possessing technical expertise and despite having directly witnessed Britain’s extraordinary military and economic capacities, they never asked themselves how the decisive blow they imagined and hoped for could ever be achieved practically. It seems to have been unthinkable for such men that the war could be lost. For that reason, they believed in a utopian technology that would make everything turn out all right. On this topic, as with the POWs’ belief in the Führer, the wishes and emotions that soldiers had invested in the National Socialist project and the war were so powerful that they could not be overridden by any countervailing experiences. On the contrary, belief in a miracle weapon grew stronger the more illusory the prospect of German victory and a rosy future became.

In June 1944, shortly after the Allied landing at Normandy, the miracle weapon got its premiere. During the night of June 12–13, the first V1 missiles were hastily fired at London. The first time the weapon was used en masse was four days later, the same day that German propaganda began speaking of retribution. All told, 244 V1 missiles were fired as part of this action. Forty-five crashed immediately, and only 112 reached London.^{396}

On June 16, 1944, the Wehrmacht announced: “During the night and this morning, southern England and the London metropolitan area were hit by new explosives of the highest caliber. These areas have been under bombardment, with little interruption, since midnight. Heavy destruction is to be expected.”^{397} These few dry words seemed to announce the arrival of what tens of thousands of Germans had long been hoping for. The V1—the first of Germany’s miracle weapons—was finally being deployed. The newspaper Das Reich dubbed the occasion “the day that 80 million Germans have been passionately waiting for.” A report from the Security Service in Frankfurt read: “It was moving to hear how simple workers expressed their joy that their unshakable faith in the Führer had been rewarded. One older laborer remarked that the weapon of retribution would now bring victory.”^{398} It is interesting to note the tight connection between faith in the Führer and belief in a miracle weapon. They are two sides of one coin and manifest both the expectations for salvation Germans projected onto Hitler and the increasing distance of their perceptions from reality. In this case, though, there was no truth to the cliché that faith could move mountains.

By June 29, the Wehrmacht had fired the thousandth V1, causing not inconsiderable damage. The warhead unleashed a wave of pressure upon impact that could level parts of whole streets. And within the month of June, 1,700 British had been killed, and 10,700 wounded. The presence of the weapon of retribution also forced the RAF to maintain a defensive belt, consisting of antiaircraft gunners, barrage balloons, and fighters, south of London. But all of that was of little use to Germany, as the Allies kept bombing German cities, causing a far greater level of destruction and killing far more people. The actual military effect of the miracle weapon was much less than anyone would have thought possible.

The only real value the V weapons had was psychological. While they did not succeed in particularly frightening the enemy, their existence did boost the morale of the German populace and German soldiers. While bad news continued to rain in from the front lines, Nazi propaganda was able to maintain morale at home with euphoric reports about their weapon of retribution. The missile had been consciously named the V1 to encourage hopes that a V2 was on its way. Nonetheless the leadership elite in the Third Reich began to have doubts about the wisdom of stirring up expectations that would prove difficult to meet. In a letter to Hitler, the German armament minister Albert Speer wrote: “Ever since the populace has begun waiting for miracles from new weapons, doubts have arisen as to whether we realize we’re in a few-minutes-before-midnight situation and whether we are irresponsibly stockpiling and holding back such weapons. The question thus emerges as to whether this sort of propaganda serves its end.”^{399} Indeed, as people realized that the V1 was not having the desired effect, disappointment quickly followed.

The surveillance protocols document waves of hope and disappointment concerning the V missiles. For example, First Lieutenant Kostelezky, who was taken prisoner while defending Germany’s last foothold on the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, complained:

Since Nazi propagandists had no pictures of damage in London at their disposal, no one in Germany had much of an impression of the effect of the V1 missiles. While being transported to POW camps, which were all located near London, captured German soldiers all tried to get a look for themselves at their supposed retribution. Kostelezky is obviously disappointed at having seen so little destruction, and the generals who were interned at Trent Park in July and August 1944 felt the same way.^{401}

Still, the belief that the V missiles could change the course of the war took a while to die. Optimistic voices can be heard in the protocols until mid-July 1944,^{402} and fresh hopes soon arose concerning the V2. Expressions of soldiers’ expectations for that missile were almost word-for-word repetitions of the hopes for its predecessor. Lieutenant Colonel Ocker said in late August of that year: “It’s said, we’ll say, to have fifty times the effect of the ‘V1.’”^{403} Midshipman Mischke hoped to get transferred “to Canada. I like life too much. If they use the V-2 and we are still here, then we’ll all be killed.”^{404} Sergeant Kunz of Infantry Regiment 404 was also convinced:

Kunz added that he had witnessed the V2 being tested: “Where the thing has fallen the people were all as though pulverized. It is all as though frozen, that’s what it looks like, and if you touch the man, then he falls to pieces.” On the basis of his “observations,” Kunz concluded that the V2 functioned like a cold bomb that would freeze the enemy. And to back up his wishful thinking about the existence of a German doomsday weapon, Kunz cited a speech by Hitler: “If all should fail, then the most terrible weapon humanity could ever devise will be used. May God forgive me if I use that weapon.”^{406}

Kunz had been captured on October 22, 1944, in fighting around the encircled western German city of Aachen. The V2 had been in use since September 8, but he seemed unaware of this fact. The hopes Germans placed in the V2 remained unfulfilled, and for that reason, even its propaganda value was scant. The surveillance protocols contain very few mentions of the V2 being used.

Most of the soldiers who spoke of retribution weapons did so under the spell of not just a quasi-religious belief in Hitler but also a comparable faith in technology. They did not doubt for a second that Germany would succeed in developing a super-weapon to turn the tide of the war. Hopes of achieving victory against all odds were directly connected to the conviction that German engineers would make the decisive breakthrough. It was rare for POWs to utter doubts that this would be the case. General Wilhelm von Thoma was one of the few Trent Park inmates who engaged in skeptical reflections: “Let a secret weapon make its appearance; it may destroy a few houses, but that’s all—we’ve got nothing else.”^{407} A bit later in time, responding to a statement by Göring that retribution was nigh, Thoma was completely dismissive. “A couple of snorters will come across to ENGLAND,” he said, and that would be all.^{408}

Just as German soldiers failed to link technology with the way the war was actually progressing, they also largely ignored its deadly character. The concrete effects of weaponry were rarely mentioned. With pilots and crew members, the talk was more about shooting down planes and sinking ships, and targeting enemy “material.”^{409} “I saw myself how my Staffelkapitän, Hauptmann SUHR, brought down a four-engine aircraft with one shot of his 3cm over LINZ,” reported Sergeant Gromoll. “He targeted from the front. That’s the craziest thing I ever saw.”^{410} A remark by First Lieutenant Schlösser is nearly identical: “A 3 cm cannon firing an HE shell. If they hit four-engine aircraft they destroy it completely. There’s nothing left.”^{411} The airmen’s enthusiasm for new weaponry completely blotted out the fact that ten American soldiers lost their lives in the attack. That was typical of the POWs’ general disinterest in the lethal consequences of their actions.

In similar fashion, a bombardier from a Ju 88 proudly described sighting his target through a hole in the clouds over Bristol, England:

The more destructive the weapon, the more enthusiastically POWs talked about it. Sergeant Willi Zastrau, a radio operator aboard a bomber, for instance, emphasized the advantages of the new explosive used in 1,200-kilogram bombs: “Triolin is the best explosive in the world.”^{413} Other crew members were likewise enthusiastic about the latest bombs. “I tell you, those are something special,” Bomber Gunner Clausz of Bomber Wing 76 raved: “We completely wrecked Bari with them. When they fire into the water just beside a ship, then it goes up, like a fountain, like fireworks! We [destroyed] seventeen ships there, ammunition ships, how they blew up! We were at a height of 2000 m, but I watched it from my under fuselage tunnel, the flames were so high, we passed just over them.”^{414}

High-tech weapons weren’t the only ones that could produce results. Low-tech, dirty weapons also had their effect. A bomber pilot praised the new paths being blazed in bomb development:

The technology with which Luftwaffe and navy soldiers waged war decided whether and how they could carry out their assigned tasks. For that reason, technology was at the center of their own sense of self and exercised tremendous fascination.

If the technology was efficient, then soldiers had fun carrying out their missions. If equipment wasn’t available or was suboptimal, operations not only stood little chance of success, but were far more risky. The soldiers’ obsession with technology had dominated their everyday experience of war, and it remained one of their primary topics of conversation as POWs. Yet as incessantly as the men discussed questions of horsepower, cubic capacity, and radio frequencies, all the more rarely did they ask questions about the overall context. Specialists tend to apply their instrumental reasoning to the precise situation and task they have been given. The topic of military technology once again manifested the deep connection between modern industrial labor and the labor of war. World War II was a war of technicians and engineers, pilots, radio operators, and mechanics. The laborers in this war used what they saw as grand and fascinating tools. Technology was an arena men could both talk about and agree on for hours on end.