ON 5th March, 1933, the day of the last democratic elections to be held in Germany, the National Socialists led the polling with over 17,000,000 votes. Two weeks later, at a ceremony held in the Potsdam Garrison Church, amid the crash of drums, the blaze of great swastika banners and the thunder of jackbooted feet, Adolf Hitler was formally accepted as the Chancellor of Germany. At last he could strike back at those who had treated him with contempt and dismissed him as an Austrian vagabond, a street-comer orator with wild ideas. The miracle had taken place and Hitler had become all things to all men, able to ignore or eliminate as he chose all who sought to oppose him.
With Hitler’s rise to power, Hermann Goering became the second most important man in the Third Reich. He already held a variety of posts, and was in control of most of the economy of the new government. Also, one of his more recent appointments, that of Minister of Aviation, was a job he welcomed, despite the problems it threatened to bring him. Hitler had entrusted him with the secret task of creating a completely new German Air Force, and thus forging the most decisive air striking weapon the world had ever seen, not as a steady development over a number of years, but in the shortest possible time. To the former commander of the illustrious Richthofen Geschwader this was an inspiring challenge that could not be denied; and he never paused to reflect that an outstanding fighter-pilot does not necessarily make a brilliant air strategist. Had he done so, many wasted young lives might have been spared in the years that followed, and perhaps a little of the glory he gained over the Western Front in 1918 would have survived the ignominious years with Hitler that eventually destroyed him.
Many years after Goering had been entrusted with the formation of a new German Air Force, he liked to point out that in 1933 there had not been a single modem fighter or bomber available to equip the new squadrons, and yet he and his subordinates had managed by 1939 to build up the strongest air force in the world. Such statements were, of course, far from the truth. Goering owed much of his success to his predecessors, in particular General von Seeckt of the Reichswehr, who had worked for years for just the day when the re-armament of Germany would commence on a large scale. During the five years that preceded 1933, almost every German aircraft designer had paid special attention to the development of military aeroplanes, and although the new German Air Force—to be known as the Luftwaffe—could not be equipped immediately after Hitler came to power with the latest fighters and bombers, a great variety of types were already in existence and ready for service.
In 1928, the many training machines and catapult seaplanes designed by Ernst Heinkel with the Reichwehr in mind had led to the building of the Heinkel He 37, a neat little racing and experimental biplane. From this was evolved the He 38, which became the most widely used single-seater fighter in the still secret Luftwaffe. A sturdy and reliable biplane, armed with two machine-guns, the He 38 was powered by a 750 h.p. B.M.W. VI engine which gave it a top speed of 186 m.ph and therefore made it faster than the Bristol Bulldog, the standard British fighter in service at that time. Other Heinkel types ready in 1933 to equip the new squadrons were the He 49 single-seater fighter, which also had a 750 h.p. B.M.W. engine, and was capable of a top speed of 202 m.ph, and the two-seater reconnaissance biplane He 45, which had a top speed of 170 mp.h. These aircraft were followed soon afterwards by the He 46, a high-wing monoplane designed for army co-operation duties, and the He 59, a large twin-engined multi-purpose seaplane that remained in service until the end of the Second World War.
At about this time the Dornier concern had decided to turn its attention to multi-motored landplanes designed as such and not improvised from flying-boats as had occasionally been attempted in the past. In 1931, a large high-wing monoplane with a fixed spatted undercarriage, designated the Do Y, was produced in Switzerland. From this machine was developed an experimental bomber, the Do F, which masqueraded as a mail transport aircraft, and the Do F in turn led to the twin-engined Do 23, which formed the standard medium bomber equipment of the Luftwaffe in 1933. To all intents and purposes an improved version of the Do Y, the rather ungainly Do 23 was in much the same class as the Fairey Hendon, and featured similar defensive positions in the nose and aft of the wide wings. Although it could not be considered a highly successful bomber for the period, the Do 23 was ordered into quantity production pending the arrival of vastly superior types under consideration.
Hugo Junkers provided the unofficial Luftwaffe with its first heavy bomber, the big three-engined Ju 52/3m, which had been designed in 1932 as an airliner for the Lufthansa, with the proviso that it could easily be converted for military use. This slow and cumbersome aeroplane appeared in the first bomber squadrons of the Luftwaffe with a gun ring fitted in the roof to replace the emergency exit, makeshift bomb bays inside the angular fuselage and a retractable “dustbin” turret below, just behind the wide spatted undercarriage. Comparatively useless as a bomber, it nevertheless eventually became a successful freighter and paratroop carrier, and was to remain in service as the principal German transport aeroplane until the end of the Second World War.
Of the many other types which the industrious German aircraft designers were developing in 1933, the Arado Ar 64 and 65 were also chosen for the Luftwaffe, while the prototype Ar 67 biplane was under consideration as a possible single-seater fighter. Apart from the Heinkel seaplanes, Germany still lacked naval reconnaissance craft, and the Dornier Wal, a flying-boat that was a predecessor of the basically similar but far more successful Do 18, was therefore contemplated as temporarily suitable for the purpose.
For the improvement and administration of this varied collection of good, bad and indifferent aircraft that were the nucleus of the new German Air Force a secret Technical Department, known as “C-Amt”, was formed, made up chiefly of engineers and officers who had been transferred from the Reichwehr and old comrades of Hermann Goering who had remained faithful to him since 1918. Erhard Milch, who had proved himself such an energetic chairman of Lufthansa, became the new Deputy Air Minister. Lieutenant General Wever, formerly a Reichwehr officer, was selected by Goering as Chief of the General Staff, while General Stumpff, another Reichwehr soldier, became Chief of Personnel. Karl Bodenschatz, once adjutant of the Richthofen Geschwader, was appointed Goering’s personal assistant at the Air Ministry. One by one, the almost forgotten fighter pilots and officers of the old Imperial Army came out of retirement to supply the new Luftwaffe with the administrative and technical staff it required, all anxious to grasp at the opportunity of a new life and rapid promotion that Goering was now prepared to offer those who had served him in the past.
Thus, by the end of 1933 Goering commanded a collection of men who varied in ability almost as much as the aircraft they hoped to build up into a powerful air force. Many of these new staff officers in the higher echelons of the Luftwaffe were men who either did not fly at all or had not flown since 1918, and refused to abandon the views on aerial warfare they had formed so many years ago on the Western Front. The few exceptions—Kesselring, the new Chief of Administration, and General Wever were two of these—who realised that in a future war the strategic bomber fleet would be the backbone of an air force, struggled patiently to overcome the welter of stubborn, hidebound ideas that surrounded them. General Wever, in particular, was an ardent champion of the heavy bomber, and soon after he took office he realised that such aircraft as the Junkers Ju 52/3m were far from being the ideal striking weapons the Luftwaffe needed. His energy and persistence eventually led to the development of a four-engined long-range bomber, the Dornier Do 19, and in still later years to the production of other four-engined aircraft, such as the big Junkers Ju 89 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Kurier. This endeavour to build up a strategic bomber fleet, based on the theory of the Italian General Douhet, who considered that continuous air attack on enemy cities and industrial installations would weaken morale and might well bring a future war to a swift conclusion, was unfortunately never to meet with more than initial success. In the summer of 1936 General Wever lost his life in a tragic air crash, and without his guiding hand the development of heavy bombers was gradually abandoned. Therefore, in much the same way that the German High Command in the early days of the Great War had envisaged the aeroplane only in a secondary, almost unnecessary role, the men who founded the Luftwaffe in 1933 continued to advocate the employment of aircraft in direct support of the ground forces, a short-sighted policy that later became of vital importance when Germany decided to launch a major bombing offensive against England.
The secret training of German aircrew at Lipetzk experimental centre and other auxiliary airfields in the Caucasus had now been going on for a number of years, and Hermann Goering decided that with the forming of a Luftwaffe the Russian project had served its useful purpose and could be brought to an end. However, he appreciated that the personnel of the new Luftwaffe still needed considerable practical experience in modem military aviation, and here the close friendship of Adolf Hitler with Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy, began to play a vital part in the German plan for a powerful air force. Provided that international complications could be avoided, the Duce was prepared to allow selected Luftwaffe aircrew to train with the Regia Aeronautica, at that time one of the most efficient and modem air forces in Europe. In July, 1933, the first batch of German pilots travelled secretly across the border into Italy, and, posing as South Tyrolean soldiers, were taken to selected airfields of the Italian Air Force. The German airmen, many of whom were already in the service of Lufthansa, were then issued with Italian Air Force uniforms and accepted as students on an air battle training course. One of these enthusiastic young men, an expert glider pilot at the age of nineteen and now anxious to become an efficient fighter-pilot, was destined within ten years to be hailed as a second Manfred von Richthofen, become General of the Fighters in the Luftwaffe, and receive Germany’s highest decorations for valour in the air. His name was Adolf Galland.
In their disguise as officers of the Italian Air Force the aircrew of the Luftwaffe practised every aspect of modem aerial warfare in the warm summer months that followed, developing the new theory of lightning war (or Blitzkrieg) by concentrating on low-level support of an invading army. Day after day the German pilots skimmed over the heads of the Italian soldiers who crouched in the trenches below them, firing at the toy balloons waved unwillingly in the general direction of the fighters as they hurtled past. Then, in the autumn of 1933, the course came to an end, and the now highly trained fighter pilots returned to Germany and the unexciting, monotonous routine of the airline pilot—but not for long. Within six months all the graduates of the training course in Italy had been placed on the Air Force active list, and a year later most of them, including Galland, were commissioned officers on the strength of the Luftwaffe.
During 1934, while Germany staggered under the impact of the Roehm blood purge, Hermann Goering and his lieutenants worked energetically to improve upon the basic equipment that General von Seeckt’s foresight had contrived to provide for them. State architects were requested to submit plans for a magnificent Air Ministry building in Berlin, and Goering, always with his old comrades in mmd, decided to found a Haus de Flieger, or Airmen’s Club, that they could use as a meeting place. Aerodromes and factories began to appear all over Germany as the aircraft industry expanded at a remarkable speed. Ernst Heinkel, whose various types of aeroplane equipped most of the new Luftwaffe, chose, with the assistance of General Kesselring, a much larger and more suitable site at Marienehe for his growing organisation, while the famous Henschel locomotive concern at Kassel now had a new aircraft factory outside Berlin, and soon produced their first prototype, a single-seater advanced trainer. In Bavaria, the young Technical Director of the B.F.W. works, Willy Messerschmitt, emerged into the limelight with his latest design, the little fourseater Bf 108 cabin monoplane, an aircraft that led the way for the outstanding Bf 109 fighter, which played such a vital part in the Second World War. The Bf 108 competed in the 1934 “Challenge De Tourisme Internationale” and soon became so popular as a light sporting aeroplane that it was accepted by the Luftwaffe as a communications aircraft and remained in service for many years.
Looking back at the variety of thinly disguised military aeroplanes Germany blatantly displayed to the world in the early ’thirties, it seems difficult to believe that so many “high-speed mailplanes” and “sporting monoplanes” were accepted as such by an innocent and trusting aeronautical community who should have known better. Perhaps it was only reasonable to accept the Junkers Ju 52 as an airliner, for any military possibilities were carefully concealed, but Ernst Heinkel stretched incredulity to the limit with his slim and beautiful He 70, blithely introduced as a mail carrier for four passengers but in reality an experimental military two-seater, and the direct predecessor of the He 111 bomber. Considered purely as a civil aircraft, the He 70 was remarkable for a very high speed, inadequate baggage space and cramped, uncomfortable passenger accommodation, yet despite the widespread publicity it received suspicions in England and France were apparently lulled by the fact that it did actually enter service with Lufthansa on the Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Frankfurt routes, if only for a short time. In the summer of 1933 a leading Lufthansa pilot, Flug-kapitan Untucht, won eight international speed records with the He 70, later designated the Blitz, which had a maximum speed of 234 m.p.h. at a time when the world speed record for land planes—with a special American racing aircraft—was just over 259 m.p.h Oddly enough, the perfectly streamlined fuselage and elliptical wings of the He 70 made such a favourable impression in England that Rolls-Royce bought one of the machines to use as a test bed for the famous Merlin engine which later equipped the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters of the Royal Air Force.
During this first “undercover” phase of the Luftwaffe, which lasted until March, 1935, Hermann Goering settled into his new post and made use of his most capable officers, Milch and Wever, to gain experience in modem military aviation, although in 1934 he also took the opportunity to become a General of the Reichwehr. Endowed with a genuine love of animals, he had already assumed the title of Reichsjagermeister, or Master Hunter, taking a great interest in the breeding and preservation of wild game. Particularly attracted by a magnificent stretch of forest and heathland beyond Berlin known as the Schorfheide, he arranged for the building of an enormous stone and marble palace for his own use, which he named Karinhall. Situated between two lakes, it included a majestic mausoleum where the body of his late wife, brought from Sweden, was laid to rest. Endowed with the same restless energy and lust for power that was so much a part of Adolf Hitler, Goering was a man who also craved great wealth, and now that he was the second most important personage in the Third Reich all the luxury he had ever wanted began to surround him at Karinhall and his other imposing mansion in the centre of Berlin.
At the end of this busy year, on the eve of his greatest glory, Goering was already the most popular man in Germany, not a political genius like Hitler to be idolised by the people, but a beaming, rosy-cheeked jester who laughed when he was called “the fat man” or “good old Hermann”, and slapped his huge thighs with mirth as he listened to the many jokes about his bulk and hundreds of bemedalled uniforms. Yet behind the jolly exterior lurked always that other Goering who had organised the mass executions on the “night of the long knives” and took more than a casual interest in the new policy for the complete subjugation of the Jews, an odd mixture of ruthless efficiency and good-humoured devilment that had served Hitler well in the past but would be slowly consumed by luxury and wealth until it could no longer stand the test of time.
In March, 1935, the Luftwaffe officially emerged into the open as an independent arm of the Reichwehr, which General von Blomberg was in the process of steadily reorganising on such a vast scale that later, as the Wehrmacht, it became the most modem and mechanised army in the world. Goering at once assumed the rank of General der Flieger, or General of the Airmen, and declared to an astonished Europe that Germany demanded immediate equality in the air, while his technical advisers prepared to turn the new German Air Force into a powerful striking weapon in the shortest possible time. Hitler had always remained insistent on this point, and now Goering and Milch were in the position openly to hammer it home.
Of the several new types of aircraft which the leading German designers had been carefully developing since 1933, two—the Heinkel He 51 and Arado Ar 68 fighters—were chosen as standard equipment until 1937, when it was visualised that the industry would be ready to put into mass production the extremely fast and efficient machines that were already available as prototypes.
The Heinkel He 51 and Arado Ar 68 single-seater fighter biplanes were aerodynamically far superior to the variety of fighters that had formed the temporary equipment of the Luftwaffe since 1933, proving to be almost 20 m.p.h. faster than the standard types used during the clandestine period that had now come to an end. Powered by a greatly improved version of the 750 h.p. B.M.W VI in-line engine, both machines were well streamlined and remarkably similar in general appearance, and the He 51 in particular had a performance not unlike that of the then standard single-seater fighter of the Royal Air Force, the famous Hawker Fury, The Arado Ar 68 was a successor to the sturdy Ar 65 already in service with the Luftwaffe, and had been developed by way of the Ar 67, a prototype fighter experimentally equipped with a Rolls-Royce Kestrel 12-cylinder liquid-cooled engine.
When the existence of the Luftwaffe was formally announced, the bomber squadrons had progressed in equipment hardly at all since 1933 and continued to retain the ponderous three-engined Junkers Ju 52/3m and the far from satisfactory twin-engined Dornier Do 23. However, the strangely uncomfortable “high-speed mailplanes” so beloved of the German designers during the previous two years had served their purpose, and other more modem types were either on the drawing-board or had just reached the prototype stage. Two of these, the excellent Heinkel He 111 and the less successful Junkers Ju 86, were to emerge as medium bombers within a year. Meanwhile, Goering and his lieutenants had to be content with the obsolescent material at hand, while the designers, ignoring the general impatience, worked steadily on with the confidence that they were looking ahead into a brilliant future.
A special order signed by Hitler on 14th March, 1935, authorised the formation of the Jagdgeschwader Manfred von Richthofen 2, which was organised into two Gruppen, each of approximately forty aircraft. The first Gruppe was established with Arado Ar 65s (later replaced by Ar 68s) at Doberitz-Elsgrund near Berlin, and soon afterwards Gruppe II came into existence with Heinkel He 51s at Juterborg-Damm. The commanders and many of the senior officers were airmen who had served during the First World War, and all the Geschwader aircraft sported bright red cowlings in order that the colourful traditions instituted so many years ago by Manfred von Richthofen might be revived. Many of the new fighters at first bore deceptively innocent German civil registration letters, but soon after they entered service the familiar black Latin crosses adopted in 1918, together with the swastika of the Third Reich, appeared as the formal national markings of the Luftwaffe.
On 10th April, 1935, thousands of cheering people lined the streets in Berlin as the long wedding procession of Hermann Goering and his actress bride, Emmy Sonnemann, moved away from the Reich Chancellory in the direction of the Town Hall where the civil ceremony was to be held. Goering, resplendent in the uniform of a General der Flieger, and heedless of the light rain that was falling from a grey sky, waved to the excited crowds, beaming with pleasure as the cries of “Hoch Hermann!” and “Heil Hitler!” mingled with the thunder of aero engines and the fighters of the new Richthofen Geschwader swept in perfect formation overhead. Ten days after the wedding, on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday, the fighter force of the Luftwaffe was expanded with a further squadron of Heinkel He 51 biplanes which was named the Horst Wessel Geschwader and presented to the Fuehrer as a birthday present to mark the double event. The fact that the disreputable S.A. leader Horst Wessel, killed in a Nazi street brawl, should be considered a hero fit to be honoured alongside Manfred von Richthofen apparently had little significance for those who remembered Germany’s most outstanding airman, but it was a striking example of the power that lay behind Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine and the declining standards that were following in the wake of National Socialism under Adolf Hitler.
One of the men who had served in the original Richthofen Geschwader was at this time working in the Technical Department of the Luftwaffe, to the surprise of his many friends, who found it impossible to imagine him fettered to a desk, his life bounded by the dull monotony of office routine. But Ernst Udet, the gay, reckless fighter-pilot of the Great War, the flying acrobat of the ’twenties, the film stunt man of the early ’thirties, had never really changed since 1918. The rise of the Nazi Party meant absolutely nothing to him, and Goering, despite his wealth and power, remained only “the fat man” to Udet, who for years had treated him with a mixture of contempt and amused indifference. Frivolous, light-hearted and yet always an ardent nationalist, Udet disliked working for anyone except himself, and danger was the spice of his life. He had no ability as an executive—his brief career as an aircraft industrialist had ended in complete disaster—and he enjoyed his irresponsible life as a stunt pilot far more than the money it brought him. The love of adventure and passion for flying that was so much a part of him attracted thousands of admirers and hundreds of reliable friends, but he also had a sensitive, artistic temperament that made him at home with famous actresses such as Leni Riefenstal, and he had a reputation as an enthusiastic sportsman.
Why, then, should Udet be interested in the Technical Department of the Luftwaffe? The answer lay to a great extent with Hermann Goering, who knew perfectly well that he needed as many experienced airmen as possible in the new German Air Force, and though he had little in common with Udet, the flying skill and popularity of “Udlinger”, as he was often called, could not be denied. When Goering asked him to join the Luftwaffe, saying that Germany needed practical men with imagination, Udet hesitated, then finally agreed“but only in his own characteristic way. He wanted no official status, had no desire to wear uniform again, and firmly refused to enter the dangerous whirlpool of Nazi politics. He simply wanted to fly and do exactly as he liked, yet to his great surprise Goering was still anxious to accept him, and slyly suggested an immediate trip to America to study the development of military aviation there. Delighted at such an opportunity to travel outside Europe again, Udet said no more, and so the decision that would eventually prove to be a fatal one was made.
While touring the United States, Udet discovered a new air weapon that was to have a serious effect on the whole policy of the Luftwaffe, with disastrous consequences that did not become fully apparent for many years. The dive-bomber, an aircraft which could fall almost vertically from a great height on to a selected target, drop a heavy bomb and then zoom away, was at that time under consideration in America, where such machines were popularly known as “Hell Divers”, and the Curtiss factory was building a number of prototypes. The idea was, of course, not completely unknown in Germany, for the Swedish plant of the Junkers company had produced an aircraft in 1928 designated the K. 47, which was publicised as a two-seater interceptor fighter but proved to be an experimental dive-bomber and the direct predecessor of the infamous Ju 87. Ernst Heinkel had also provided at least one type of aircraft which could be used as a dive-bomber, and this machine, the He 66, did, in fact, go into temporary service with the Luftwaffe. Nevertheless, when Udet returned from America the dive-bomber suddenly became no longer an interesting novelty but a subject of the utmost importance, for Goering’s interest had been aroused and the German aircraft industry was eager to fulfil his demands.
However, it was no easy matter to convince such professional airmen as Milch and Kesselring, and Udet therefore persuaded Goering to buy two of the new Curtiss dive-bombers for demonstration purposes. After they had been delivered he spent many hours flying the new machines, until at last he was completely familiar with their amazing ability to plunge headlong towards the earth, engines screaming with power, only to pull easily out of the power dive at a movement of his skilled hands and rise swiftly away. But at Tempelhof, Udet lost control of the Curtiss he was flying when an elevator abruptly jammed, and he barely escaped by parachute before it crashed. He refused to be discouraged and decided to demonstrate the remaining Curtiss at Rechlin before an audience of high-ranking Luftwaffe staff officers. The ensuing magnificent flying display failed to impress those who saw it, not because they could honestly find any obvious faults in the performance of the machines, but because most of them considered Udet to be nothing more than a likeable jester, an aerial comedian who enjoyed being in the limelight. With a strength of character totally at variance with his usual careless acceptance of events, Udet bitterly resisted any criticism of the dive-bomber as a modem air weapon, but as a civilian, a mere outsider fortunate enough to have the ear of Hermann Goering, he found it impossible to oppose the views of the general staff. Unwittingly, of course, he had played directly into Goering’s hands, for now, unless he was prepared to let the dive-bomber idea fizzle away, he had to join the Luftwaffe, take a high military rank and acknowledge the existence of the Nazi Party. Reluctantly, Udet decided to accept the responsibilities of high office and became an Oberst in the Technical Department, realising at last that Goering’s patience and diplomatic skill had, as usual, been rewarded.
Now that Udet was able to use his new influence in the Luftwaffe a specification was soon drawn up for aeroplanes to be used as dive-bombers and fighters. The first machine to be built to fulfil this specification was the Henschel Hs 123, a sturdy single-seater biplane with a large 800 h.p. B.M.W. 132 air-cooled radial engine and a fixed, spatted undercarriage. The prototype Hs 123 was first flown, and by Udet, in May, 1933, and later this machine was demonstrated at the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg that year. Not entirely successful as a dive-bomber, and with a maximum speed of only 214 m.p.h. at 4,000 ft. that made it a hopeless proposition as a fighter, the Hs 123 turned out to be more of a ground attack (close support) aircraft than anything else, and it was therefore eventually placed in production as equipment for the Luftwaffe’s first Schlachtgeschwader, or close support wing. Strangely enough, the subsequent history of the Hs 123 more than justified Udet’s unswerving faith in the type, for it served with the Legion Condor during the Spanish Civil War, and although obsolescent by 1939 flew in support of the German invasions of Poland and France, was used in some numbers on the Russian Front and actually remained fully operational until 1943.
Despite the fact that he gained little official support from the German Air Ministry (the Reichsluftfahrtministerium) and continued to be opposed by most of the leading Luftwaffe staff officers, Udet remained an ardent exponent of the dive-bomber, and by the end of 1933 the Junkers, Heinkel and Arado factories were building prototypes for his consideration. Meanwhile, General Wever was demanding the heavy strategic bombers that Germany would need so badly in the near future, Goering was inclined to feel that fast twin-engined medium bombers should compose the main striking force of the Luftwaffe, and a few lonely voices in the wilderness were suggesting that a strong fighter arm should not be overlooked. Uncertainty and indecision reigned supreme, but the professional airmen shrugged their shoulders and reflected that all the main difficulties were merely the birth pangs of the new Luftwaffe, and time and the technicians would overcome them.
In Berlin Adolf Hitler, preparing for the war in which air power would play such an important part, was one of the few people who knew that in 1935 there was very little time, and within four years there would be no time at all. Unfortunately, the passing years only brought more revolutionary ideas and greater problems, while the wavering, unsettled policy of the men who had founded the Luftwaffe meandered on and on, until eventually it contributed in no small measure to the downfall of what might have been the most powerful air striking weapon in the world.