KAMPFFLIEGER: BOMBERS OF THE LUFTWAFFE Vol 4 1943-1945

By 1944, when this fourth and last volume picks up the story of the Luftwaffe's bomber force from the earlier volumes, the tide of war had turned against the Nazis throughout Europe. On the Western Front, invasion was imminent and, once the Allies had landed in June 1944, their advance across northern France and the Low Countries was decisive. In the East, the Russians were advancing inexorably across the territory captured by the Germans in the early days of Operation Barbarossa and, in Italy, the Allied forces were again marching towards victory. The struggle that faced the increasingly war-weary Luftwaffe by 1944 was therefore a very different beast to that of four years earlier. Gone were the bombing missions against Allied cities and in support of Blitzkrieg offensives, in favour of more defensive action. Increasingly, defence of the Reich and its ability to maintain its means of production were all-important and this, inevitably, was reflected in the composition and tactics of the bomber squadrons during this last and decisive phase of the war.