The German state-sponsored histories of World War II, published in English translation as Germany and the Second World War, are remarkable achievements of scholarship. Fair-minded and detailed, they present a thorough picture of Germany at war. In one of the sections on war production the authors seemed surprised that Germany's economic effort was geared much more towards aircraft production than land armaments. They then pose a question:

It is a central question, but it is also misdirected in its assumptions. Instead of Germany spending a “conspicuously” small amount of effort on the land war, the Nazi state's efforts in this area were absolutely typical of all the major powers, with the exception of the Soviet Union. The economies of four of the five great industrial and technological powers that fought World War II were geared by large majorities towards the production of air and sea weapons. Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom (with the British Empire) and the United States all devoted between 65 percent and 80 percent of their economic output to the making and arming of aircraft, naval vessels and anti-aircraft equipment. In all cases aircraft were the single largest element of production, ranging from 30–35 percent of US munitions output to more than 50 percent in the case of the United Kingdom. When one adds the costs of developing and arming aircraft to the costs of constructing airframes and engines, these percentages jump to slightly below 50 percent for the United States and to more than half for Germany and the United Kingdom. In all, construction of air weapons also received first priority in the allocation of industrial workers and in being supplied with crucial raw materials such as aluminum. In many ways it is the allocation of aluminum that really shows the high priority given to the air war.