11-20-2023 12:22am

November 20: General Carl Spaatz's Initiatives to End War Enabled Allies' Win

Lesley Misko Editor

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

November 20, 1945: Following the Allied victory in World War II, Carl Spaatz ran into Hermann Goering, his counterpart in the German air force, at Nuremburg during the War Crimes Trials. They sat down for a friendly chat and Spaatz asked him, “Did your new jet airplane really have a chance to win against us?” Goering smiled and answered, “Yes, I am still convinced, if we had only four or five more months time; they were practically all ready.”
Spaatz then asked Goering if they had sufficient oil supply to win the war. He smiled again and said yes, that they would soon have had underground factories producing oil.

Those possible developments were what underlay the urgency to end the war. The longer it went on, the more difficult it would become for the Allies to win. Their resources were not bottomless.

Spaatz’s initiatives were so important; his insistence on bombing oil facilities and factories producing war materials temporarily crippled Germany’s ability to fight and enabled the Allies to win the war.