Yeah, I pretty much do. The Germans might have overclaimed same as we did and the Japanese did, and we all had a love for propoganda, but the Germans were very internally competitive and very good about documenting things on their own soil.
I don't trust information under the heels of a man who routinely purged his officers. You wouldn't falsify internal documents to stay alive and out of the Gulag?
Hitler didn't KILL Goring for his failure to win the Battle of Britain.
Yeah, Hitler was a real sweetheart. As far as military purges go, the main difference is that Hitler had his in 1934 (the Night of the Long Knives) whereas Stalin had his in 1937-1938 (when he admittedly killed more than Hitler did in 1934 - bigger army, bigger purge). Hitler didn't kill his generals, he just took all their power away as the war went on, where at least Stalin had the sense to listen to his generals more as the war went on. I'm not defending Stalin or saying I trust the information that came out of the Soviet Union - far from it. I'm trying to draw a comparison between two progaganda-driven dictatorships, both run by murderous thugs. I find your trust in German record-keeping under the Nazis rather quaint. It's not as if the Luftwaffe existed under some kind of a magic bubble which rendered them immune from the propaganda pressures of the Nazi regime. People on this forum sometimes act as if the Luftwaffe was somehow apart from the putrid monstrosity that was Nazi Germany - they weren't. They were knee deep in it and I frankly find the near-hero worship that goes on regarding some of their aces rather sickening ("The Blond Knight" Erich Hartmann anyone?). The head of the Luftwaffe was an obese, morphine addict Nazi true believer that I don't think for a second was above fudging the numbers to try and rescue his reputation with the Fuehrer after the debacle of the Battle of Britain. I believe the veracity of the Lufwaffe statistics - about as far as I could comfortably throw Hermann Goering.
Venganza