ABSTRACT
The Nazi assumption of power in January of 1933 forced an almost immediate shift of Britain's attention from the more hypothetical French air threat to the real menace of Germany. By 1935, the German government had in fact significantly intensified the activities of the air agencies inherited from Weimar, and had withdrawn such agencies from the aegis of army and navy to prepare a nominally independent third military service. The question of what the enemy bombers are doing will not matter for the moment; there will be a race to see which side can cripple the whole of its opponent's organization first. The royal air force bomber force was rated as being so weak that its bases could not even draw the expected German air assault away from British cities, no matter what the British bombers were trying to do over Germany.
