Engines of Desperation: Jet Engines, Production and New Weapons in the Third Reich

Abstract

This article uses the case of the production of jet engines during the Second World War to challenge how historians think about the Third Reich’s relationship to new weapons. Far from wonder weapons, Germany’s jet engines, first deployed in July 1944, were engines of desperation, unreliable but well fitted to the conditions of production in the National Socialist war economy. Despite the chaos of late war weapons production in Germany, Albert Speer’s Armament’s Ministry oversaw the manufacture of large numbers of jet engines, exploiting in particular the Mittelwerk weapons factory. The jet did not allow Germany to regain air superiority, but jet engines optimized for production enabled the regime to produce aero-engines as efficiently as possible with its remaining resources. Great Britain also deployed jet aircraft in mid-1944, but its government de-emphasized short-term engine production in favour of a broad development programme. Comparison of the different paths followed by the two nations to jet engines highlights how the design and production of jet engines in the Third Reich reflected a compromise typical of the regime's last years: manufacturing masses of inferior weapons, whose virtue lay in the fact that they were easy to build.