Lessons Learned – The Luftwaffe Over the Reich 1942

This Fw 190A-3, “brown 12,” saw long service in II./JG 26. Here it prepares to roll out under the close supervision of a large ground staff.

As winter 1942/43 set in, both the Luftwaffe and USAAF worked feverishly on equipment and tactics. Armorers on every American bomber base in England improvised fittings in the noses of their B-17s and B-24s to accommodate various additional machine guns. New formations and tactical doctrines, most stemming from the fertile mind of the 305th Bomb Group commander, Colonel Curtis LeMay, were established throughout the Eighth Air Force. The staggered 18-plane combat box, known to the Germans as a Pulk (bunch), was but one of his ideas.

The Bf 109 and Fw 190 models reaching the Luftwaffe at the end of 1942 differed only in detail from those of 1941. Both fighter designs showed unmistakable signs of reaching maturity. Weights continued to rise, and engine power had to be increased to keep pace. Barred from major increases in engine compression ratios by Germany’s chronic shortage of high-strength, high-temperature metal alloys and high-octane aviation fuel, engineers sought chemical additives to increase the energy of the detonations within the existing engines’ cylinders. The Bf 109G-1’s DB 605A engine had introduced nitrous oxide (GM-1) injection as a means of temporarily boosting engine power at altitude. The Bf 109G-4 was based on the G-1, but lacked the earlier fighter’s complicated cockpit pressurization system, and was equipped with a new radio, the FuG 16Z, which had multiple channels and homing capabilities. The Fw 190A-3 had a new BMW 801D-2 engine with greater power than its predecessor. Cooling louvers cut into the cowling finally solved the Focke-Wulf fighter’s overheating problem. The Fw 190A-3 was succeeded in late 1942 by the A-4, which had the FuG 16Z radio. While flying at their preferred altitudes the Bf 109G-4 and Fw 190A-4 were equal in performance to the best RAF fighter, the Spitfire IX.

Most of the new fighters arriving at JG 2 and JG 26 bases at the end of 1942 were Bf 109s. Kurt Tank’s Fw 190 was now in chronic short supply. Having overcome most of its original problems, it was now in great demand on all of the Luftwaffe’s widespread combat fronts, for reconnaissance and ground-attack duties as well as in its original air-superiority role. If someone had to give them up, the two Kanalgeschwader were the most logical choices, as the performance of the Fw 190 dropped off markedly above 7,500 meters (25,000 ft.), which happened to be the altitude flown by the B-17 formations. On the other hand, Willi Messerschmitt’s latest fighter, the Bf 109G-4, was in its element above 9,000 meters (30,000 ft.). By the spring of 1943, III./JG 26 was equipped exclusively with Messerschmitts, while I./JG 2 and II./JG 26 were flying a mixture of Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. Mixed equipment did not prove satisfactory at the Gruppe level, and these two Gruppen were allowed to turn in their Messerschmitts for more Focke-Wulfs, remaining Fw 190 units until the war’s end.

When II./JG 2 returned from North Africa it was re-equipped with Bf 109s. Each of the two Kanalgeschwader now had two Fw 190 Gruppen and one Bf 109 Gruppe. The Bf 109 was an excellent dogfighter, especially at high altitudes, and later played a useful role as high cover over Germany, taking on the Allied escort fighters while the Fw 190 units concentrated on the bombers. However, the fighters of Luftflotte 3 rarely had time to form up for such coordinated attacks, and the Bf 109 and Fw 190 Gruppen were forced to attack the bomber formations independently. The Fw 190A-4’s armament mix of two MG 17 light machine guns, two MG FF 20-mm cannon, and two MG 151/20 20-mm cannon was considered effective against all targets. However, the Bf 109G-4’s standard armament of two MG 17s and one MG 151/20 was too light to do much damage to B-17s and B-24s. In the next model of the Messerschmitt fighter to enter service, the Bf 109G-6, the MG 17s were replaced with heavier MG 131s. Plumbing for yet another chemical additive, MW 50 (methanol–water), was added to increase low-altitude performance, but most pilots noted instead the deterioration in maneuverability resulting from its increased weight. They gave it the derisory nickname “Beule” (boil) for the bulky fairings covering the MG 131 breeches.

The Bf 109 was always notorious for its fragile construction. All in all, the Fw 190 was a much more survivable aircraft, and was the mount preferred by most of the western Jagdflieger (fighter pilots) in 1942–3. Erich Schwarz, an experienced Kanaljäger (Channel fighter), quoted a favorite saying in JG 26: “When a Focke-Wulf crashed, Professor Tank made the broken parts thicker. When a Bf 109 crashed, Professor Messerschmitt made the parts that had held together thinner.” In Schwarz’s opinion, “The Bf 109 was a good airplane, but could not compare with the Fw 190. The Bf 109 had great success in the east, but the enemy there did not have the technically developed arsenal that we faced in the west.”

General Galland kept the pressure on Major Oesau and Major Schöpfel. Their percentage of successful interceptions had to be sharply increased; only then might the new threat be nipped in the bud. At year’s end Galland was working on a set of detailed tactical regulations prescribing the methods of attack on heavy bombers. In his post-war interrogation he summarized their content as follows. Fighter units were to fly on a course parallel to and on one side of the bombers until about 5 km (3 miles) ahead of them. They were then to turn in by Schwärme and attack head-on. They were to aim at the bombers’ cockpits, open fire at 800 meters (875 yards), and maintain a near-level course, passing above their target after ceasing fire. The second approved attack method was from the rear, which required concentrated attacks; the fighters were to attack by Schwärme in rapid succession and at high speed, and pass over the bombers after ceasing fire.

In Galland’s mind, one key to success with these tactics was for the fighters to maintain formation, or at least visual contact, in order to permit repeated concentrated attacks. Keeping position above the bombers was essential—and yet, from now until the end of the war, the German pilot’s favorite method of ending an attack from either front or rear was with a split-S, which left him far beneath the attacked formation, and alone. Many pilots facing the hailstorm of defensive fire felt an irresistible urge to break off their attacks too soon. Although the bombers’ guns did not bring down many German fighters, their streams of .50-inch tracers did in fact form an extremely effective defensive shield. Despite Galland’s wishes, German formation attacks were rarely carried out exactly as prescribed. Some pilots would invariably break away prematurely, and the rest would pass through the bomber formation at whatever angle and orientation promised the best chance for survival. The formation leaders found it difficult to reassemble the scattered fighters, and each successive attack could be counted on for no greater than half the strength of the one preceding it.

The Luftflotte 3 fighter commanders, apparently on their own initiative, were themselves working to improve the efficiency of their interceptions. Attack formations were to be increased in size, and tactics were to be modified. On December 20, most attacks had been made from dead ahead—12 o’clock level, as viewed from the bombers. The bombers were in effective firing range for only a fraction of a second at the closing speed of roughly 900 km/h (550 mph), and the flat angle of attack and the high altitude made range estimation extremely difficult. Pilots could not help but worry about the possibility of colliding with their target, and many broke off their attacks far too soon. JG 26 veteran Karl Borris has stated that, after experimentation, the optimum attack angle was found to be from dead ahead as before, but from ten degrees above the horizontal. A constant angle of fire could be maintained, similar to that practised often against ground targets. The proper lead was attained by keeping the Revi’s crosshairs on the nose of the bomber. Distance estimation was simplified, and even the less experienced pilots could score hits. Thus was born the form of attack most feared by bomber crews—from 12 o’clock high.

The year ended with the great German offensive aspirations in south Russia and the Mediterranean in tatters. A growing night-bomber offensive against the Reich’s industrial and population centers demanded build-up of the integrated radar, Flak, and night-fighter defenses. Yet the upper Luftwaffe leadership still maintained that offensive air action was the best way to keep the Reich’s enemies far from its borders. Bomber production continued at a high level throughout 1942, and Luftwaffe research and development teams pressed ahead with the next generation of offensive air armament.

A recent student of German air defenses has concluded, “By the end of 1942, the USAAF may have been in the war, but from a German perspective it appeared to make very little difference.” The Eighth Air Force had been blooded in combat, and the German fighter pilots and command staffs from Luftflotte 3 and Lw Bfh Mitte accorded the new enemy considerable respect. Yet the measures taken to strengthen the daylight defenses against this new threat remained piecemeal and counterproductive. The needs of the combat fronts took precedence; fighter deployments in Luftflotte 3 had to divide their efforts between air defense and a number of other operational tasks, and the few regular fighter units in the Reich territory had to be buttressed by training units. Yet the Reich itself was virtually inviolate by day in 1942, and the existing defenses seemed to be holding their own against Anglo-American daylight strikes into the occupied western territories. Jeschonnek definitely summed up the prevailing wisdom when he told one of his staff officers, “Galland can take care of the [daylight] defense in the west with one wing.” 1943 would see this attitude put to a most severe test.

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union which began on 22 June 1941 was waged on an extraordinary scale across a front of 1,000 miles. The war was Hitler’s inspiration. Following the success of German forces in 1939 and 1940 he finally decided in December 1940 to launch a quick strike at the Soviet Union using the same war of movement and concentrated armoured/ air fighting power that had succeeded until then. Divided into three army groups, North, Centre, and South, three million German and allied forces drove against the unprepared Soviet armies in a series of devastating pincer movements which brought them to the edge of Leningrad and Moscow in four months, and to the economically rich Donets Basin in the southern Ukraine. The winter weather prevented the quick victory Hitler wanted, but the following spring German forces moved forward again in the south to try to capture the whole of the southern industrial and oil region and to swing behind the remaining Soviet forces to the north to complete one final annihilating encirclement. By September German forces had reached Stalingrad on the Volga and the edge of the Caucasus mountains.

The German attack was a model of operational skill and tactical efficiency, but by the late summer of 1942 there were clear signs that the momentum was lost. In November the Soviet armies on either side of Stalingrad inflicted the first major defeat on the invading force. The encirclement and capture of 300,000 men of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad in January 1943 was regarded world-wide as the point at which the tide turned against the aggressor states. The German defeat has often been blamed on Hitler himself, who had taken over direct command of German armies in December 1941. While it is certainly the case that he led his forces into a campaign where they became vulnerably overstretched across the steppe of southern Russia, few German generals even in the autumn of 1942 thought that Soviet forces were capable of very serious resistance in the south. The roots of the German problem go deeper than this. During the first eighteen months of the conflict the German forces underwent a gradual process of ‘de-modernization’. The numbers of aircraft and tanks were constantly reduced through high battle losses and the diversion of resources to other fronts. Production in the Reich failed to keep pace. At the end of very long lines of communication the maintenance and repair of vehicles and planes became a logistical nightmare. The severe climate—bitterly cold in winter, hot and dusty in the summer—took a heavy toll of vehicles. Armoured divisions began the war with 328 tanks apiece; by the summer of 1943 they averaged 73; by the end of the war the figure was 54. The German army fell back on the use of horses. During 1942 German industry turned out only 59,000 trucks for an army of 8 million men, but the same year 400,000 horses were sent to the Eastern Front. The German forces concentrated their air and tank power on a few élite divisions; the rest of the army moved like those of the Great War, by rail, horse, or foot.

The Soviet forces experienced entirely the opposite process. From a feeble platform in 1941 Soviet armies and air forces underwent an extraordinary programme of reform and modernization. Soviet military leaders set out deliberately to copy the success of their enemy. Air forces were concentrated in large air armies, centrally co-ordinated for the most flexible response to problems at the front line, and with great improvements in radio communication which made it possible to give effective support to ground forces. Armies were reorganized to match German practice, with a core of heavily armoured and mobile divisions. Small improvements, such as the installation of two-way radios in tanks, supplied from the United States as aid, produced a radical change in fighting power. Stalin gave high priority to supply and logistics, and by 1943 the number of aircraft and tanks produced began to overhaul German production by a wide margin, while the technical quality improved remarkably in the course of two years. The most significant reform came in the attention paid to operational skills. Stalin devolved responsibility for organizing operations to the general staff and his exceptionally talented deputy Marshal Zhukov. Under his leadership the Soviet forces proved capable of planning and executing operations involving millions of men, a feat quite beyond Soviet generals in the early stages of the war.

The effects of these far-reaching reforms were demonstrated in the largest and most significant set-piece battle of the war, at Kursk in July 1943. In an effort to stabilize their front- line German generals planned to lure the Soviet forces into a huge pitched battle on the Kursk steppe where they hoped to encircle and capture the core of the revived Red Army. Zhukov prepared a defensive field of such depth and sophistication that the German armoured spearheads were only able to move a matter of miles before annihilating Soviet counter-offensives broke the German line and drove the invading force back beyond the Dnieper River. In the following eighteen months Soviet offensive tactics succeeded in driving back what had been regarded until then as the finest army and air force in the world. German forces swung on to the defensive, concentrating on using tanks as mobile defensive artillery, and switching to the mass production of anti-tank guns and heavy defensive armament. The growing imbalance of forces in favour of the Red Army disguised the extent to which the balance on the battlefield began to swing back to the defender. In the gruelling advance into Germany both sides suffered extraordinary losses. It was here that the Second World War was won and lost. The Red Army destroyed some 607 divisions of German and allied forces between 1941 and 1945. Two-thirds of German tank losses were inflicted on the Eastern Front.

June 1941 - the largest invasion ever mounted - Babarossa - and the great conflict that ensued....

HERBSTNEBEL – Special Forces

Otto Skorzeny

As the Allies approached each other from east and west, the strain on this unholy alliance would grow insuperable. Canada, he predicted, would be the first to yank its troops from the theater. “World historical events have their ups and downs,” the Führer declared.

Rome would not be thinkable without a Second Punic War.… There would be no Prussia without the Seven Years’ War.… The palm of victory will in the end be given to the one who was not only ablest, but—and I want to emphasize this—was the most daring.

Toward that end he had a plan, originally code-named WACHT AM RHEIN, Watch on the Rhine, but recently renamed HERBSTNEBEL, Autumn Mist. This he would now disclose on pain of death to any man who betrayed the grand secret.

It had come to him as in a fever dream, when he was bedridden and yellow with jaundice in September. Brooding over what Jodl called “the evil fate hanging over us,” the Führer had again been hunched at his maps when his eye fixed on the same unlikely seam through the Ardennes that German invaders had already ripped twice in this century. A monstrous blow by two panzer armies could swiftly reach the Meuse bridges between Liège and Namur, carving away Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in the north from the Americans in the south, and eradicating the enemy threat to the Ruhr. Destroying thirty divisions in the west would wipe out a third of the Anglo-American force, requiring Churchill and Roosevelt to sue for peace; conversely, exterminating thirty Bolshevik divisions in the east, among more than five hundred, could hardly deal a decisive blow. Therefore Germany’s destiny must, he proclaimed, be “sealed in the West.” As for the offensive’s ultimate objective, Hitler in a conference with his senior generals had abruptly blurted out a single word: “Antwerp.”

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Crows or starlings might have been mistaken for German parachutists near Spa, but more than a thousand actual airborne troops were due to be dropped north of Malmédy on Null Tag to further disrupt American defenses.

Nothing went right for the enemy. Airdromes designated for training proved not to exist, half the Ju-52 pilots had never flown in combat, and many paratroopers were either novices or had not jumped since the attack on Holland in 1940. “Don’t be afraid. Be assured that I will meet you personally by 1700 on the first day,” General Dietrich had told the mission commander, Colonel Friedrich von der Heydte. “Behind their lines are only Jewish hoodlums and bank managers.” After confusion and blunders delayed the jump for a day, a howling crosswind on Sunday morning scattered paratroopers up to fifty kilometers from the drop zone. Two hundred jumpers were mistakenly dropped near Bonn, and American gunners shot down several planes. With a single mortar, little ammunition, and no functioning radios, von der Heydte rounded up three hundred men, who stumbled into a losing firefight before fleeing in small groups for the Fatherland; the colonel surrendered after briefly hiding outside Monschau. Two-thirds of the original thousand were killed or captured. That was the end of what proved the last German airborne operation of the war.

Operation GREIF, or “condor,” proved no more competent. Under the flamboyant Viennese commando officer Otto Skorzeny, 2,000 men had been recruited into the 150th Armored Brigade for behind-the-lines sabotage, reconnaissance, and havoc. Their motor fleet included a dozen Panthers modified to resemble Shermans, German Fords painted olive drab, and a small fleet of captured U.S. Army trucks, jeeps, and scout cars. Some 150 men who spoke English—only 10, mostly former sailors, were truly fluent in the vernacular—would lead raiding parties X, Y, and Z to seize three Meuse bridges. They were issued captured or counterfeit identification documents, as well as GI uniforms, many of which had been purloined from American prisoners under the pretext of disinfection. To mimic American cigarette-smoking techniques and other mannerisms, the men studied Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

All for naught. Sixth Panzer Army’s troubles on the north shoulder disrupted Skorzeny’s timetable, and a set of GREIF orders discovered on a dead German officer alerted the Americans to skullduggery. First Army MPs on Monday, December 18, stopped three men in a jeep near Aywaille who were unable to give the day’s password; a search revealed German pay books and grenades. Four others on a Meuse bridge in Liège included a GI imposter who carried both the identification card of a Captain Cecil Dryer and the dogtags of a Private Richard Bumgardner. He and his comrades were found to be wearing swastika brassards beneath their Army field jackets. In all, sixteen infiltrators were swiftly captured in American uniforms and another thirty-five were killed without effecting a single act of sabotage on the Meuse. Most of Skorzeny’s brigade eventually was dragooned into battle as orthodox infantry near Malmédy, where inexperience and a lack of artillery led to heavy casualties. Skorzeny himself suffered a nasty head wound.

The sole accomplishment of GREIF was to sow hysteria across the Western Front. A voluble, imaginative German lieutenant captured in Liège claimed to be part of a team sent to kill Eisenhower. Colonel Skorzeny, he said, had already infiltrated American lines with 60 assassins. The ostensible figure quickly grew to 150, and rumors flew that they could be posing as GIs escorting several captured German generals to SHAEF headquarters. Soon hundreds of jeeps carrying suspected killers and blackguards had been reported crisscrossing France; more than forty roadblocks sprang up around the Café de la Paix in Paris, where Skorzeny and his henchmen were expected to rendezvous. Police bulletins described Skorzeny as six feet, eight inches tall—a considerable exaggeration—with “dueling scars on both cheeks,” supposedly incurred while brawling over a ballerina in Vienna. It was said that some infiltrators carried vials of sulfuric acid to fling in the faces of suspicious sentries; that many spoke English better than any GI; that they recognized one another by rapping their helmets twice, or by wearing blue scarves, or by leaving unfastened the top button of a uniform blouse. It was said that some might be costumed as priests, or nuns, or barkeeps. The Army official history dryly recorded that “Belgian or French café keepers who for weeks had been selling vin ordinaire, watered cognac, and sour champagne to the GIs were suddenly elevated by rumor, suspicion, and hysteria to captaincies in the Waffen SS.”

MPs at checkpoints sought to distinguish native English speakers from frauds with various shibboleths, including “wreath,” “writhe,” “wealth,” “rather,” and “with nothing.” Some asked the identity of the Windy City, since an intelligence report advised that “few Germans can pronounce Chicago correctly.” Other interrogatories included: What is the price of an airmail stamp? What is Sinatra’s first name? Who is Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend? Where is Little Rock? Robert Capa, burdened with a Hungarian accent and an ineradicable smirk, was arrested for failing to know the capital of Nebraska. Forrest Pogue, when asked the statehouse location in his native Kentucky, carefully replied, “The capital is Frankfort, but you may think it is Louisville.” When the actor David Niven, serving as an officer in 21st Army Group, was asked, “Who won the World Series in 1940?” he answered, “I haven’t the faintest idea. But I do know that I made a picture with Ginger Rogers in 1938.”

Cooks, bakers, and clerks were tutored in the mysteries of bazookas, mortars, and mines. Trigger-happy GIs gunned down four French civilians at a roadblock, and an Army doctor was shot in the stomach after answering a sentry’s challenge with, “You son of a bitch, get out of my way.” Promiscuous gunfire could be heard in Versailles near the Trianon Palace, now entombed in concertina wire, and a fusillade behind Beetle Smith’s house one night brought the chief of staff out in his pajamas, cradling a carbine. “We deployed into the garden and began shooting right and left,” Robert Murphy, a visiting diplomat, later recounted. “The next morning a stray cat was found in the garden riddled with bullets.”

With Skorzeny and his cutthroats presumed to be still at large, Eisenhower reluctantly agreed to move from the St.-Germain villa to smaller quarters near his office. Each day his black limousine continued to follow the usual route to and from SHAEF headquarters, but with the rear seat occupied by a lieutenant colonel named Baldwin B. Smith, whose broad shoulders, prominent pate, and impatient mien made him a perfect body double for the supreme commander.

Prussian Disaster I

Officers of the élite Prussian Gardes du Corps, wishing to provoke war, ostentatiously sharpen their swords on the steps of the French embassy in Berlin in the autumn of 1805.

In the summer of 1806 Europe was temporarily more or less at peace, or, at least, experiencing a period of ‘phoney war’. Technically speaking, both Britain and Russia remained at war with France, and there was some fighting in both Italy and the Balkans. At sea and in the wider world, too, operations went on unabated: the Royal Navy kept watch on Europe’s coasts; a British expeditionary force seized Buenos Aires; and French commerce raiders based in ports as widely spaced as Brest and Mauritius raided the sea lanes and on occasion achieved considerable success. Serious peace negotiations, however, were in place, and, although these soon broke down, it is difficult to see how anything comparable to the campaign of 1805 could have been revived. Neither the Talents nor any other British administration could possibly have committed themselves to major land operations on the Continent without the support of at least one of the great powers, and in the wake of Austerlitz this seemed a long way away. Austria was out of the fight; Prussia in the French camp; and Russia at best resolved on a defensive policy. Yet, in a development that was expected by nobody, and, least of all it seems, Napoleon, the autumn saw the Continent once more plunged into full-scale military operations and a resumption of coalition warfare. Pushed to the limit by the emperor, Prussia went to war against France and, like Austria before her, secured the active support of Russia. But the results were no better than in 1805. In a series of operations that took the grande armée to the very frontiers of Russia, the emperor broke one enemy army after another and truly made himself master of Europe. At no moment, indeed, was the power of the French imperium greater, and Napoleon’s sense of exaltation knew no bounds. As he proclaimed to his army on 22 June 1807:

Frenchmen! You have been worthy of yourselves and of me. You will return to France covered with laurels after having obtained a glorious peace which carries with it the guarantee of its duration. It is time our country should live at rest, secure from the malignant influence of England.

As we shall see, these were hollow words. Even before the fresh round of fighting broke out, it could be argued that Napoleon had committed a cardinal error in reorganizing Germany in a manner hostile to the interests of Austria or Prussia. But far more damaging were the events that followed in the course of the next twelve months. Not content with the challenge he was already mounting to Russia in the Balkans, Napoleon established a Polish state and thereby struck at the very heart of Russia’s pretensions to be a great European power. And in the Continent as a whole the emperor conscripted each and every one of its inhabitants into a great self-denying ordinance that sought to close its ports to British trade and in the end bankrupt London into surrender. As Fouché observes, this was a man who was giddy with triumph: ‘The delirium caused by the wonderful results of the Prussian campaign completed the intoxication of France . . . Napoleon believed himself the son of destiny, called to break every sceptre. Peace . . . was no longer thought of . . . The idea of destroying the power of England, the sole obstacle to universal monarchy, became his fixed resolve.’

The long-term consequences of these developments - in essence, a guarantee of further conflict and, more particularly, direct police action on the part of France - will be looked at in due course. What is of concern here is why Prussia should suddenly have opened hostilities on her own when a year earlier she could have done so in the company of a powerful coalition. In brief, Frederick William suddenly discovered the limits of Napoleon’s friendship. Trouble began with the very agreement that Haugwitz had signed with Napoleon after Austerlitz at Schönbrunn. In the first place, there was the issue of Prussia’s international obligations, for under the terms of the treaty of Basel of 1795 Prussia was actually a guarantor of Hanoverian independence. In the second there was Prussia’s neutrality, the latter’s restoration clearly being of the utmost importance. And in the third instance there was that of the future: if Hanover was to be taken over by Prussia, the British subsidies that might one day become necessary to Prussia would clearly not be forthcoming. Amidst much anger, then, Haugwitz was sent back to Napoleon to suggest a number of amendments to the treaty, one suggestion being that Hanover was not to be annexed but rather simply occupied and held as a bargaining counter that might be returned to its ruler in exchange for a variety of other territories at the end of the war. This, however, did no good at all. On the contrary, Haugwitz was confronted with terms that were even worse than before. Hanover would not only be Prussian, but Potsdam would now have to close her ports to Britain’s trade. Failure to accept these terms, it was hinted, would lead to war and, with Prussia in no condition to fight - for reasons of cost, the army had immediately been demobilized - on 9 March Frederick William ratified the new agreement and thereby, to all intents and purposes, declared war on Britain.

The consequences of this act were very serious. Hardly a shot was exchanged between the British and Prussians, but such was the loss of customs revenue that the state’s income fell by 25 per cent. As if this was not bad enough, Prussia also experienced a period of unparalleled humiliation. Thus, in July 1806 Napoleon organized his new Confederation of the Rhine without any reference to Prussia. To add insult to injury, the emperor suggested that Frederick William should form a confederation or even an empire of his own in northern Germany, while at the same time either inciting states that might have been involved in this scheme to reject the whole idea (Saxony and Hesse-Kassel) or making it clear that he would not evacuate them (Hamburg and Lübeck). Still worse, it then transpired that the abortive negotiations with the Talents had seen Napoleon offer to return Hanover to Britain. To the dismayed Frederick William, it really seemed that the end of Prussia was at hand, especially as there were persistent rumours of French troop movements to the south and west. As he wrote to Alexander I, ‘[Napoleon] intends to destroy me.’ On 9 August, then, the Prussian army was mobilized, and on 1 October this step was followed by an ultimatum calling for France to agree to withdraw all her forces from Germany by 8 October or face war. Even then some question remained whether Frederick William was really in earnest, however. There were certainly voices in Prussia calling for war, but the king himself was almost certainly bluffing. Such at least was the opinion of Ferdinand von Funck, a cavalry officer who became a close adviser of the King of Saxony in the wake of the battle of Jena:

All circumstances point clearly to the fact that Frederick William III . . . always cherished the secret hope that Napoleon would shirk a struggle with the erstwhile military prestige of Prussia, and, as soon as he saw things looking serious, negotiate for the repurchase of Prussian friendship either by the restoration of the Franconian provinces ceded in exchange for Hanover, or perhaps of the territories of Westphalia sold at the peace of Lunéville, or by the free-will offering of part of Saxony. By this means Frederick William would have silenced the malcontents in his own country by the prestige of fresh and cheap aggrandizement.

Also interesting here are the memoirs of General Muffling. Sent to join the staff of the Duke of Brunswick, Muffling discovered that the newly appointed Prussian commander-in-chief was anything but enthusiastic: ‘I found the duke, as generalissimo, uncertain about the political relations of Prussia with France and England, uncertain about the strength and position of the French corps d’armée in Germany, and without any fixed plan as to what should be done . . . He had accepted the command in order to prevent war.’

At this point it might be asked what intentions Napoleon had with regard to Prussia. Such was the manner in which Potsdam was goaded that it would be logical to assume that the emperor wanted war and was intent on its instigation. A new land campaign was by far the easiest means of winning fresh laurels and such a venture was all the more tempting in view of the presence of the grande armée in southern Germany (following the Austerlitz campaign, it had gone into cantonments along the river Main). At the same time there was also the issue of Potsdam’s flirtation with the Third Coalition, and the two issues together have certainly led some historians to argue that there was a blueprint for a march on Prussia. This, however, is almost certainly not the case. Intent on establishing the Confederation of the Rhine, the French ruler - at least in the short term - had no desire to destabilize the situation in Germany. According to Talleyrand, he was, as Frederick William hoped, afraid of Prussia. ‘It was not without secret uneasiness that the emperor went for the first time to measure his strength against [Prussia’s],’ wrote Talleyrand. ‘The ancient glory of the Prussian army imposed upon him.’ But this is most implausible. Much more to the point is the fact that he had other schemes on his mind - the conquest of Sicily; the dispatch of an army to Portugal to end British access to the vital port of Lisbon; and conceivably even a new attempt to invade England. As for Prussia, the reality seems rather to be that he regarded her not at all. There being no evidence whatsoever that Prussia would ever go to war, the emperor in consequence had no compunction about riding roughshod over her interests. To quote a letter the emperor wrote to Talleyrand on 12 September 1806, ‘The idea that Prussia could take me on single-handed is too absurd to merit discussion . . . She will go on acting as she has acted - arming today, disarming tomorrow, standing by, sword in hand, while the battle is fought, and then making terms with the victor.’ What we see, then, is a typical mixture of contempt and over-confidence. Napoleon did not want a fresh war in 1806, but at the same time he simply did not know what was required to keep the peace. Truly it was a most revealing moment.

Whatever Napoleon’s motives, the result is not in dispute: at the end of the first week of September Prussia’s forces entered Saxony en route for the river Main. For Frederick William, this was an act of desperation that was embarked on in a spirit of the utmost fatalism. As his confidant, Lombard, wrote:

The king . . . was unfortunately not a born general. He had long known as well as anyone that he would have to draw his sword whether he liked it or no, but always he . . . had flattered himself that some catastrophe independent of his own decisions would solve the difficulty. At last . . . he yielded, but quite against his will, of that I can assure you.

That said, there were many voices in Prussia clamouring for war. Eager to supplant Haugwitz, Hardenberg was in the forefront, as was Frederick William’s queen, Louise, a fiery young woman who had increasingly come to hate Napoleon. Bizarrely, a shaken Haugwitz had also privately joined the war party, although he hoped to postpone the breach long enough to get the army fully ready for action and secure assistance from Britain and Russia. And there were, too, many bellicose army officers. ‘France’, wrote General Blücher, ‘means honestly by no power, least of all by your Royal Majesty . . . Whoever represents France’s conduct to Your Royal Majesty in any other light, whoever advises Your Royal Majesty to continue making concessions and remain at peace with this nation is either very indolent [or] very shortsighted, or else has been bought with French gold . . . Each day gained in declaring war against France is of the greatest advantage to Your Royal Majesty . . . One successful battle and allies, money and supplies are ours from every corner of Europe.’ So great was the pressure in the officer corps that the king, who had before him the example of the murdered Paul I of Russia, may genuinely have feared for his position. Some officers - Blücher is a good example - genuinely believed that the prestige of the Prussian army and state alike were at stake; others looked to war as an opportunity to justify arguments for reform; and still others were simply anxious for glory after eleven years of peace in an age of general warfare. Something of their frustration comes over from a letter written by the future military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz: ‘War is necessary for my country. Moreover, when all is said and done, it is war alone that can make me attain happiness.’

Thanks to Napoleon, such vainglory could be dressed up in the garb of German patriotism: on 25 August a considerable stir was caused in Prussia and elsewhere by the execution of a Nuremberg bookseller named Palm who had made the mistake of printing and distributing an anonymous pamphlet lamenting Germany’s prostration. As for victory, it was assured. ‘When I draw a conclusion from all the observations that I have occasion to make,’ opined Clausewitz, ‘I always arrive at the probability that it is we who are going to win the next great battle.’ ‘Unconscious of danger,’ wrote the Countess of Schwerin, ‘the army, in all the glory and order of a grand parade, went to meet its destruction. Unconscious, too, did the leaders seem, for the enemy circled us round about and no one had any news of him. In Naumberg, when already outflanked by the French, the court continued to live the careless life of Charlottenburg and Potsdam.’ Another witness of the army’s over-confidence was the Baron de Marbot, a young cavalry officer sent to Berlin bearing dispatches for the French embassy: ‘The officers whom I knew ventured no longer to speak to me or salute me; many Frenchmen were insulted by the populace; the men-at-arms of the Noble Guard pushed their swagger to the point of whetting their sword blades on the stone steps of the French ambassador’s house.’

To return to the Countess of Schwerin, her remarks are redolent of the hindsight that has often surrounded discussion of the Prussian decision to go to war in 1806. At the time the outcome did not seem so clear-cut on either side of the battle lines. What is true, though, is that Potsdam was in no way ready to take up arms against Napoleon. Prussia stood entirely alone. Despite her secret pact with Russia, no arrangements had been made for military cooperation, and the Russians were sceptical as to whether Prussia would actually do anything. With Britain there had been no contact whatsoever, and the emissary that Haugwitz dispatched to negotiate a treaty of subsidy as soon as war seemed likely could have hoped to achieve very little even had he been granted more time. Grenville mistrusted Prussia at the best of times and was convinced that in the current circumstances all she was out to do was to secure further ‘compensations’ in Germany, while he was disposed to do nothing at all for her unless he received a guarantee that Hanover’s independence would be restored, and saw clear proof that Prussia had exerted herself as far as her own resources would permit. According to Lady Holland, Grenville was none the less ‘very warlike’ - she implies, indeed, that he welcomed the Prussian declaration of war - but in general hostility to Prussia was rife in Britain. The Earl of Malmesbury, for example, wrote:

The six months I was with the Prussian army in 1794. . . fixed in my mind the opinion . . . that the military defence of Prussia was, like its geographical position, a rope of sand, which would fall to pieces when brought into action, or vigorously opposed. The two succeeding kings to Frederick [the Great] hastened the dissolution of this baseless fabric. Féderique Guillaume [i.e. Frederick William II] . . . was enervated by debauchery and . . . without any of those substantive virtues necessary to govern so helpless a kingdom such as that over which he reigned. He exhausted the public treasure, and . . . every act or measure of his went to . . . weaken the monarchy. His son, also Féderique Guillaume, began by shedding tears, not for the loss of his father, but from the labour and trouble a crown brings with it, and this, not from philosophy, but from an indolent, sleepy, selfish, torpid mind. He is wilful and obstinate, yet without a system or opinion.

Nor were the states that might have supported Prussia in northern Germany any more forthcoming. It did not help that the Prussians opened the campaign by pouring into Saxony. Brunswick, Hesse-Kassel, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz all declared their neutrality, while the court of Dresden only joined Prussia because it was that or go to war with her (not that Saxony was especially impressive as an ally, her army numbering a mere 20,000 men). As for the Swedes, Gustav IV rightly suspected that Potsdam had designs on the territorial enclave that Stockholm still held on the coast of northern Germany and therefore remained aloof.

Everything, then, rested on the shoulders of Prussia’s own soldiers, but this was to ask too much of them. So precipitately did Prussia go to war that there was not time to call up all the reserves - in contrast to most of the armies of Europe, the bulk of Potsdam’s soldiers were reservists who were only mobilized in time of war - and Frederick William therefore took the field at the head of a field army of only 150,000 men, when the number might have been at least 200,000. By the same token there were neither magazines for the field army, nor adequate stocks of food in any of the country’s fortresses. As for the quality of the army, the ordinary soldiers were well drilled enough, but their efficacy was undermined - as with Austria in 1805- by a piecemeal series of military reforms that, though well meant, had made things worse rather than better. Thus the army had for the first time been organized into divisions in the French style, but they were, on the one hand, too big and, on the other, very poorly put together. The cavalry were mixed in with the infantry, as had been the case in the French army in the 1790s, and each division was also given too much artillery, the result being, first, formations that were difficult to manage and, second, a considerable dilution in the striking power of horsemen and cannon alike. Finally, in face-to-face conflict with the French, the infantry would certainly be at a disadvantage. There were a number of specialist light-infantry battalions - a few of them riflemen and the rest soldiers known as fusiliers armed with a lighter version of the standard musket - trained in skirmishing tactics, but there were never enough of these units and attempts to make good the want by using the third rank of each line battalion as skirmishers were no substitute as the men had no proper organizational structure. Though the basic tactical system remained sound - the linear formations in which the Prussian army was to fight in 1806 were exactly the same as those in which the British army triumphed at Waterloo - the army therefore went to war at a considerable disadvantage.