Wekusta - Luftwaffe meteorological service
The basic pillars of war, strategy and tactics, inevitably depend on an uncontrollable factor: the weather. With the increasing sophistication of weather collection, analysis, and forecasting in the early 20th century, weather forecasting became an integral part of World War II. For Europe, the Arctic was the most important geographic area for data collection, from where stormy weather moved east and south. Important data from Arctic stations, extending from Greenland to the Siberian Sea via Svalbard and Franz Josef Land, were almost completely cut off after these stations were gradually occupied by the Allies. The British went one step further and broadcast false weather data to Germany. Germany had to start acting aggressively to win the data collection war.