Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (5 page)

CHAPTER 2

Command Fragmentation

A
lthough he never officially held the title, the first chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe was Lt. Gen. Walter Wever, the chief of the Air Command Office from September 1933, to June 3, 1936. He may have been the most capable officer in the Luftwaffe’s history and was remembered by all who knew him as a leader of incredible foresight and genius.

Walter Wever was born in 1887 in the province of Posen, which was handed over to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Wever joined the Imperial Army as an infantry
Fahnenjunker
(officer-cadet) in 1905. He spent the first year of World War I as a platoon leader on the western front. In 1915 he was promoted to captain and became a member of the General Staff, where he distinguished himself. In early 1917 he was assigned to the staff of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Gen. Erich von Ludendorff. He was partially responsible for originating the concept of elastic defense, which broke the back of a French offensive in the Chemin des Dames sector in the latter stages of the war. Wever became Ludendorff’s adjutant and, after the armistice, was assigned to the Truppenamt (the clandestine General Staff). Highly respected by Col. Gen. Hans von Seeckt, the commander of the Reichsheer, Wever was promoted to major in 1926 and to lieutenant colonel in 1930. He was chief of the Training Branch of the Reichsheer when he was selected for assignment to the Luftwaffe in 1933. General Blomberg moaned that he was losing a future chief of the General Staff of the Army when Wever left to join the air force.

Colonel Wever quickly immersed himself in his new duties and mastered them as no one else ever would. One of his staff officers, future Lt. Gen. Andreas Nielsen, later wrote of him:

Greeting his new assignment with enthusiasm, Wever devoted his full attention to the new mission with typical zeal. His quick intelligence, his remarkable receptiveness toward the developments of modern technology, and his vast store of military experience soon enabled him to grasp the fundamental concepts of his mission. He worked untiringly to exploit the unusually favorable circumstances provided by the time in order to create a military instrument equal to the other Armed Forces branches for the defense of the nation.
¹

General Wever was “a firm adherent of National Socialism.”
²
Unlike the Allied political leaders and most of his peers, Wever was intelligent enough to take the time to read
Mein Kampf
, and Hitler’s book became his strategic bible. From it, he learned that Hitler wanted no war of revenge against France and Britain. Russia, the Fuehrer wrote, was Germany’s main strategic enemy. Therefore, Wever concluded, the Luftwaffe must be built for a war against the Soviet Union.

Wever believed it was far more economical to destroy the enemy’s wea -pons at their sources, rather than on the battlefield. He wanted a bomber with sufficient range to reach Russia’s industrial heartland and beyond—as far as the Ural Mountains, 1,500 miles east of Germany’s easternmost airfields. Col. Wilhelm Wimmer, the chief of the Technical Office, agreed wholeheartedly. The result was the “Ural Bomber,” a four-engine strategic aircraft. By 1936, the prototypes of two promising models were ready for test flying: the Ju-89 and the Do-19. The Dornier model had sufficient range (1,800 miles, as opposed to 1,240 for the Junkers prototypes), but both lacked speed. Dissatisfied, Wever ordered the aircraft industry to design future bombers with greater horsepower. Under Wever’s inspired leadership, research and development on the strategic bomber continued unabated, despite Goering’s initial opposition.

In the critical area of handling people, Wever was a master. He managed to work in perfect harmony with such difficult men as Milch, Goering, and Sperrle. Unfortunately, his ability as a flyer was less laudatory. He did not become a pilot until 1933 and had fewer than 200 hours in his logbook when, on June 3, 1936, he flew to Dresden to deliver a speech to the cadets of the Air War Academy. In a hurry to return to Berlin to attend the funeral of Gen. Karl von Litzman, a hero of the eastern front in World War I, Wever skipped the preflight inspection of his He-70—an aircraft with which he was not thoroughly familiar. Every pilot knows how dangerous such an omission is. Because he did not check his aircraft, he did not notice that his aileron lock was still engaged. The ensuing flight was very short. The fully fueled Heinkel hit the ground near the runway and exploded, killing Wever instantly. When he heard the news, Goering broke down and wept like a baby. Although it would not be apparent for some time, his death ended the Luftwaffe’s chances for winning a strategic air war. Wever was replaced by Lieutenant General Kesselring.

Albert Kesselring was born in Marktsheet, Bavaria, on November 20, 1885, the son of a local teacher who had married a cousin. He grew up in Wunsiedel and attended the Latin School at Bayreuth. Kesselring apparently never explained why he decided upon a military career, but on July 20, 1904, almost as soon as he graduated from Bayreuth, he enlisted in the 2nd Bavarian Foot Artillery Regiment as a
Fahnenjunker
. He attended the War Academy at Munich for two years, and was duly commissioned
Leutnant
on March 8, 1906. He spent the next eight years with his regiment in the garrison town of Metz, except for attending an artillery course in Munich in 1909–10.
³

Two events occurred at Metz that shaped Kesselring’s future career. First, he became interested in flying. There were four balloon companies at Metz, and Kesselring saw their value in reconnaissance and as a platform for directing artillery fire. He trained as a balloon observer and became adjutant of the balloon battalion.

The second event was much less happy. In 1911 Kesselring became the victim of an arranged marriage. His father received at least 30,000 marks in the bargain; Lieutenant Kesselring received Pauline Anna Kayssler, a woman for whom he was unsuited. They might have grown to care for each other (other arranged marriages have worked), but unfortunately, Pauline’s mother was part of the bargain. By the marital agreement, she lived with the couple until her death, which occurred long after Albert became a general officer. She made Albert’s life miserable; however, Kesselring’s Catholic religion prohibited divorce. Albert escaped his unhappy domestic life by burying himself in his career. The service caused frequent and sometimes long separations, which Kesselring regretted not at all. There were no children from the union, although they did adopt a son.

Kesselring went to war with his unit in 1914 and spent the bulk of the next four years engaged in positional warfare on the western front. He was promoted to captain in 1915 and was transferred to the artillery staff of Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth (Bavarian) Army in Flanders. In early 1917 he was named adjutant of the Bavarian 3rd Artillery Regiment and, in April, he displayed great courage and skill in rallying disorganized units and in blunting the Anglo-Canadian attacks on Vimy Ridge and Monchy-le-Preux. For his conduct he was recommended for appointment to the General Staff. The appointment was approved without his even having to attend the war academy: a rare mark of distinction indeed in the Imperial German Army.

During the last two years of the war, Kesselring served as General Staff officer to the 2nd Bavarian Landwehr Division on the eastern front, in the Quartermaster’s Branch of the II Bavarian Corps on the western front, and as chief intelligence officer with the III Corps in northern France, a post he held when Germany capitulated. In the chaos following the abdication of the kaiser, he was operations officer (I-a) to the deputy commander of the III Corps at Nuremberg and assisted in organizing Freikorps units in northern Bavaria. He was a right-wing German nationalist then and remained so until the day he died.
⁴

Captain Kesselring considered leaving the army in the early 1920s, but found his prospects none too good in the disrupted civilian economy. He was selected for the 100,000-man Reichsheer and assigned to the 7th Bavarian Artillery Regiment. From 1919 to October, 1922, he commanded a succession of artillery batteries at Amberg, Erlangen, and Nuremberg. After finishing his initial command duty, Kesselring was promoted to major and assigned to the Truppenamt. He worked in the T-4 (Training) Department, where he was involved in the secret training of airmen in the Soviet Union. Later he was with the T-2 (Operations) Department, before being transferred to the staff of Wehrkreis VII (Military District VII) at Munich in 1929.
⁵

During his General Staff tour, Kesselring increased his already good reputation as an organizer and a diplomat. He had a certain charm and developed an ability to get his own way. He had set a firm foundation for his career and advanced rapidly thereafter. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on February 1, 1930, and assigned to the Army Personnel Office three months later.
⁶
For a time he was Reichswehr commissioner for retrenchment and simplification, a job which involved cutting down the armed forces’ bureaucracy and eliminating unnecessary paperwork—a responsibility which Kessel-ring seems to have thoroughly enjoyed.
⁷
Then, on February 1, 1932, he received a prize appointment: commander of the 4th Artillery Regiment at Dresden. He was promoted to full colonel later that year. Then, in 1933, Hitler came to power and Kesselring’s career took a radical turn. He was transferred, somewhat against his will, to the embryonic and still-secret Luftwaffe in October 1933. Here he was responsible for budgeting, housing, construction, food, and clothing. Since the Luftwaffe had few bases and troop barracks and was expanding rapidly, his was an extremely important assignment, which he carried out with remarkable efficiency. He also underwent pilot training during this period, and he also became an admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. He was promoted to major general on October 1, 1934, and lieutenant general on April 1, 1936. On June 9, 1936, he was named chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, replacing General Wever.
⁸

Kesselring played a major role in the construction of the Luftwaffe ground establishment and in the creation of the parachute corps during his one-year tenure as chief of the General Staff. He later gained a reputation as a military genius for his conduct of ground operations in Italy in 1943 and 1944. Kesselring, however, was much less farsighted than his predecessor and, in early 1937, he recommended that the development of the four-engine bomber be halted because the airplane was very costly in raw materials, especially critical metals.
⁹
Also, the fuel requirements were high for oil-poor Germany. Each machine would require an average of six tons of fuel per air operation.
¹⁰
Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, this recommendation was acted upon.

While Kesselring must bear much of the blame for cancelling the “Ural Bomber” program, State Secretary Milch must also share the responsibility. When Col. Paul Deichmann, then chief of Branch I (Operations) of the Luftwaffe General Staff, heard of the proposed cancellation of the four-engine bomber, he at once asked for an appointment with Goering to try to talk him into reversing himself. Milch, however, quickly denounced Deichmann’s farsighted arguments as “pure fantasy.” With available resources, Milch said, the Luftwaffe could produce about 1,000 four-engine bombers, or several thousand two-engine bombers instead. Goering remarked that the Fuehrer asked him
how many
bombers he had, not
what type
he had, and accepted Milch’s arguments.
¹¹
Col. Kurt Pflugbeil, the inspector of bomber forces, also pleaded for the four-engine bomber, but was also turned down. “And Milch personally ensured that Dornier’s and Junkers’ prototypes were consigned to the scrap-heap,” Bekker charged later.
¹²
As a result, Germany had no suitable strategic bombers with which to attack the Soviet Union’s factories in World War II, nor with which to support the U-boats in the North Atlantic, or to conduct long-range attacks against Allied naval convoys bound for Britain or the Soviet Union. Meanwhile the Anglo-Americans devastated Germany’s urban areas—with four-engine bombers.