The declaration of war on the US found a Luftwaffe which was already stretched to the limit. 80 % of its units were supporting the war in Russia, with the remainder engaged in western Europe and N. Africa. In Germany the Flak arm (anti-aircraft units were part of the Luftwaffe) was engaged in checking the initial phase of Bomber Command’s war against German cities. Against such a backdrop, a further escalation of the war would appear to be a suicidal undertaking. This chapter will focus on how Hitler and Luftwaffe C-in-C Göring would have perceived the situation in November/December 1941. All available sources support the idea that Hitler had every reason to take an optimistic view of the future development of the air war. Three new promising aircraft designs were nearing readiness, recent victories in Russia led to the shift of a substantial number of units to the Mediterranean and Bomber Command’s campaign against German urban areas had been checked by the introduction of a gun-laying radar for the Flak arm. A series of unexpected events which occurred from late December 1941 would reveal these expectations to be false hopes, but this fact would have remained hidden from the German leadership in early December.

The output of large parts of the German war economy was, if not quite in crisis, then certainly lagging by the autumn of 1941. It had reached a point where it was struggling to meet the current demands of the field army in Russia fighting in Russia, let alone those raised by the planned large-scale expansion of the Luftwaffe. Against such a backdrop, the idea of escalating the war by dragging another great power into it gives legitimacy to the view put forward by some historians that Hitler was seeking his self-immolation.

A close examination of the sources, however, indicates that Hitler had reached the conclusion that far from having hit a glass ceiling the German economy still possessed considerable slack which could be mobilised by rationalising designs and optimising the allocation of labour and raw materials. As a precedent, he could point to the months of January-April 1940 where a last-minute spurt in productivity had provided much of the ammunition and tanks needed for the campaign in the West. It goes without saying that this forecast mistakenly assumed a marked decrease in the intensity of the fighting in Russia on account of the fall of the Donbass industrial area.