A 500 kg bomb. It went bang inside it. How it blazed away and spread rapidly. We went down specially and had a look to see if it was a dummy fire that they had started—but that was not possible. You could see how the buildings were collapsing, so furious was the conflagration. I hit either a grain elevator or an ammunition dump. We had been out over the sea for some time when we still saw the splinters coming up as from the explosions.412
The more destructive the weapon, the more enthusiastically POWs talked about it. Sergeant Willi Zastrau, a radio operator aboard a bomber, for instance, emphasized the advantages of the new explosive used in 1,200-kilogram bombs: “Triolin is the best explosive in the world.”413 Other crew members were likewise enthusiastic about the latest bombs. “I tell you, those are something special,” Bomber Gunner Clausz of Bomber Wing 76 raved: “We completely wrecked Bari with them. When they fire into the water just beside a ship, then it goes up, like a fountain, like fireworks! We [destroyed] seventeen ships there, ammunition ships, how they blew up! We were at a height of 2000 m, but I watched it from my under fuselage tunnel, the flames were so high, we passed just over them.” 414
High-tech weapons weren’t the only ones that could produce results. Low-tech, dirty weapons also had their effect. A bomber pilot praised the new paths being blazed in bomb development:
KURT*: (There is) a bomb that is used against troop concentrations and this bomb has a very thin casing and is filled with rusty razor blades, old nails, etc. and has a small explosive charge and is just used for causing casualties.
SCHIRMER*: I don’t suppose you would have told him (I.O.) that.
KURT: No, no. It really is filled with rusty old razor blades and old junk; it saves a lot of material. Formerly, for a fragmentation bomb a very large charge was required, and it had to have a thick casing to make it burst properly and produce a lot of fragments. And so material and explosives are saved by having quite a thin casing and filling this up with rubbish…. that has been dropped a lot.415
The technology with which Luftwaffe and navy soldiers waged war decided whether and how they could carry out their assigned tasks. For that reason, technology was at the center of their own sense of self and exercised tremendous fascination.
If the technology was efficient, then soldiers had fun carrying out their missions. If equipment wasn’t available or was suboptimal, operations not only stood little chance of success, but were far more risky. The soldiers’ obsession with technology had dominated their everyday experience of war, and it remained one of their primary topics of conversation as POWs. Yet as incessantly as the men discussed questions of horsepower, cubic capacity, and radio frequencies, all the more rarely did they ask questions about the overall context. Specialists tend to apply their instrumental reasoning to the precise situation and task they have been given. The topic of military technology once again manifested the deep connection between modern industrial labor and the labor of war. World War II was a war of technicians and engineers, pilots, radio operators, and mechanics. The laborers in this war used what they saw as grand and fascinating tools. Technology was an arena men could both talk about and agree on for hours on end.
“I never believed that we should lose the war, but I’m convinced of it now.”
