Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (10 page)

Richthofen entered the Reichswehr on November 1, 1923, as a second lieutenant in the Prussian 11th Cavalry Regiment, then headquartered in Berlin. He received an adjusted date of rank of January 1, 1916, which enabled him to be promoted to first lieutenant (permanent rank) on April 1, 1925.
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The following year he was permitted to fly again under the Paris Air Agreement. He took part in many civilian air competitions in the late 1920s and was, in fact, a member of both the secret German air force and the General Staff.

Lieutenant von Richthofen was officially posted four times in the three years between 1927 and 1929, probably to hide his aerial activities from the Allied high commissioners. He was officially assigned to the 13th Cavalry Regiment, the Wuerttemberg 5th Medical Company, the T-3 Section of the Reichswehr (Defense) Ministry, and the 5th Artillery Regiment. Finally, on April 1, 1929, only two months after his promotion to captain, he was officially given a “leave of absence” from active duty. Actually he never left the service. The leave was arranged to avoid overtly violating the Treaty of Versailles. In reality, Richthofen was attached to the Italian General Staff in Rome, where he became a close friend of Air Marshal Italo Balbo, a pioneer of Italian military aviation. Richthofen learned a great deal from this dynamic and capable aviator, who was destined to be shot down and killed over Tobruk in 1940, the victim of his own trigger-happy antiaircraft gunners.
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Richthofen learned more in Italy about the employment of large air units than it was possible to learn in Germany at that time. Upon his return to Germany in late 1932, the thirty-seven-year-old captain was assigned to the Prussian 6th Motorized Detachment so he could gain firsthand experience with the kind of mobile units he would one day be called upon to support.
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It was his last assignment in the army. Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, and Goering transferred Richthofen to the secret Luftwaffe as chief of the Development and Testing Branch.

Richthofen rose rapidly in the new air force. He was promoted to major on June l, 1934, and to lieutenant colonel on April 1, 1936. His real rise to high command, however, can be dated to the outbreak of hostilities in Spain.

“The history of the Spanish Civil War,” Gen. of Flyers Karl Drum later wrote, “is inseparable from the career of Freiherr [Baron] von Richthofen in Spain.”
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As chief of testing and development, Richthofen was naturally interested in the performance of the new German aircraft models in actual combat. He went to Spain himself in December, 1936, to supervise the employment of the new Me-109 fighters, the He-111 and Do-17 bombers, and the Hs-123 dive-bombers. Here he came into close contact with General Sperrle for the first time. They got along extremely well, and no one was particularly surprised when Richthofen replaced Holle as chief of staff of the Condor Legion in January, 1937.

With the departure of Richthofen, Udet lost his most competent assistant, a man whose absence would cost him dearly in the years ahead. Richthofen, however, now had his first opportunity to really distinguish himself, and he quickly took advantage of it. Not only was he extremely efficient, but he was also a very skillful diplomat and negotiator. He was already thoroughly conversant in Italian, and he quickly mastered Spanish as well. Not unnaturally, the Spanish Nationalist commanders were impressed by his efforts and the speed with which he learned their language, to the point where he was soon able to carry on technical military discussions in Spanish. Generalissimo Franco especially respected the capable Silesian pilot. “One can say without exaggerating that he was soon the acknowledged spokesman of the Condor Legion,” wrote Drum. “At the same time, the relationship between General Sperrle and his chief of staff was an unusually cordial one. The two men complemented each other perfectly, and their excellent team-work contributed a great deal to the position of respect which the Legion established for itself in Spain.”
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As Sperrle’s chief of staff, Richthofen came to appreciate the value of close air support for ground forces. He especially was impressed with the performance of the dive-bomber, which he had been extremely skeptical of as head of the Testing and Development Branch. On June 9, 1936, Richthofen had gone so far as submitting a memorandum calling for the discontinuance of the Stuka dive-bomber,
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but his proposal had been rejected by Udet. Before the end of the Spanish civil war, Richthofen would become one of its strongest advocates.

In January 1937, Sperrle came up with a plan to capture Madrid and end the war. It called for a two-prong attack, with one wing cutting the Valencia highway, while the other severed the road to Barcelona. The Fascist assault forces would then link up southeast of the capital city, encircling the main Loyalist garrison, which would be pinned down by frontal attacks. Franco, who held Sperrle in high esteem, liked the idea and ordered it implemented.
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The plan was good, but its execution was poor, because the two wings did not attack at the same time. The Spanish managed to cut the Madrid-Valencia highway on February 13, but, when Franco’s other wing did not attack on schedule, garrison commander General Miaja concentrated his reserves on the Valencia highway. By February 24 he had reopened the road, although it remained under Fascist artillery fire.

The second prong of the offensive was formed by the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie (C. T. V.), under the command of Italian general Mario Roatta. Roatta did not start until March 8. To further complicate matters, he did not reveal his plans to Sperrle and Richthofen until the last moment, thus hampering his own air support. On March 11, after making good progress, the vanguard of the four Italian divisions lost its head and was routed at Guadalajara by an inferior number of Republicans, who were well supported by Soviet tanks. Madrid was saved for the Loyalists, at least for the time being. Again checked, Franco turned his attention to northern Spain and the Basque country around Asturia.
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In the weeks that followed, the Condor Legion was used mainly in close air support operations for the Nationalists. Sperrle’s men flew in support of the rebel drive on Bilbao, a city in northern Spain, which fell on June 19, after a long and bitter fight. The legion was then rushed back to Madrid, where a Red counteroffensive threatened to break the siege. This offensive was not completely halted until July 12; even then the Estremadura highway—the Nationalists’ lifeline—was threatened. Franco responded by attacking again on July 25, in what became known as the Battle of Brunete. Well supported by the Condor Legion, including the flak batteries used in a ground support role, he routed the Loyalists’ vanguards and destroyed the wedge aimed at the Estremadura highway. The closely packed defenders were slaughtered by Sperrle’s bombers, which were well protected by the newly arrived Me-109 fighters. The Loyalists estimated their own losses at 30,000. General Drum considered Brunete the decisive battle of the civil war.
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The Nationalists had split the Loyalist forces in half in 1936 but had been unable to eliminate the northern pocket on the Bay of Biscay. Unable to take Madrid, Franco again turned his attention to this sector upon the strong recommendations of Sperrle and Richthofen. The tactical plan for the battle was drawn up by Baron von Richthofen. The offensive began in late March 1937.
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During this campaign, Sperrle introduced another innovation: the Fascist terror raid. On April 26 he attacked the Basque town of Guernica with He-111 and Ju-52 bombers, which dropped incendiary and high-explosive bombs, while He-51 fighters strafed the fleeing and unarmed civilian inhabitants, clearly in violation of international law. Some 1,654 civilians were killed and 889 were wounded.
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“Guernica,” Fletcher wrote later, “ . . . has since become a synonym for Fascist brutality in Spain.”
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Sperrle apparently never received so much as a mild reprimand for Guernica. Certainly the deaths of a few hundred Spanish civilians was of little concern to him. Besides, Franco could not repudiate his actions, even if he was so inclined, which is highly doubtful. In fact, for years after the war, it was a crime in Franco’s Spain to say that Guernica was bombed by Nationalist forces. The generalissimo would not risk losing the Condor Legion, which he desperately needed for his autumn offensive on the northern front.

The mountainous terrain, with its deep valley, steep slopes, and poor road network, offered innumerable advantages for the defenders. The attackers were led by General Vigon, the commander of the Navarre Corps and a man of great determination. Closely supported by Sperrle and Richthofen, he pushed his way through the mountains and reached the coast near Torrelavega, west of Santander, on August 25. This victory cut off the retreat of 70,000 Republicans, who were forced to surrender. Although surviving elements continued to resist fiercely, the Loyalist northern front was doomed after Torrelavega. The last pocket of resistance was wiped out at Gijon on October 21.
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Meanwhile, a conflict between Sperrle and Lt. Gen. Wilhelm von Faupel, the German chargé d’affaires in Spain, reached its head. Faupel had had a long career in the Imperial Army. He had served in the Freikorps in the 1919–20 period and was a military advisor to several South American countries in the 1920s. Considering himself an expert on Latin affairs, Faupel recommended that Hitler send three full infantry divisions to Spain—a proposal which Warlimont strongly objected to. Hitler ruled in favor of Warlimont, but Faupel continued to interfere in Spanish military affairs, much to the annoyance of Franco and his confederates. He also tried to interject himself into the business of the strong-willed Hugo Sperrle, and a series of bitter disagreements ensued. The feud reached such proportions that Hitler decided to replace both men, but not at the same time, to preserve appearances. Faupel was recalled on August 20.
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Ten days after Gijon fell, Sperrle formally gave up command of the Condor Legion and returned to Germany as a hero. He had been promoted to lieutenant general on April 1. Seven months later, on November 1, 1937, he was advanced to the rank of general of flyers. On February 1, 1938, he assumed command of Luftwaffe Group 3, which was redesignated 3rd Air Fleet in February, 1939.
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Sperrle led the 3rd for the rest of his career.

Maj. Gen. Helmuth Volkmann succeeded Sperrle as commander of the Condor Legion. An army officer since 1908, he had been transferred to the Luftwaffe as a colonel in 1934. Volkmann picked his own chief of staff, Maj. Hermann Plocher, who had been with the Condor Legion since 1936. Baron von Richthofen remained in Spain until the end of 1937, when he returned to Germany and received a special promotion to colonel. He was given command of the 257th Bomber Wing on April 1, 1938,
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but his adventures in the Iberian peninsula were not over, as we shall see.

The main problem General Volkmann faced was the issue of whether the Condor Legion should remain in Spain or not. Due to casualties, and wear and tear on equipment caused by months of heavy fighting, the legion was no longer a first-class fighting unit. Volkmann favored continuing the war, but demanded that the legion be reequipped and properly resupplied, or else that it be returned to Germany. His 150 aircraft were in poor condition, and too many were obsolete models. His flak guns, especially the 88s, were worn out after firing hundreds of rounds (many of them in support of ground troops), and only sixteen of his thirty fighters were serviceable. Volkmann flew to Berlin and presented his case very effectively. He won the support of Col. Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces High Command (
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
, or OKW), who was then at the height of his influence. Volkmann also warned that the withdrawal of the Condor Legion would have a disastrous effect on the morale of the Nationalists. His arguments were well taken, and the legion was virtually rebuilt. The He-51 was fully superseded as a fighter by the excellent Messerschmitt 109 (Me-109), which shot down twenty-two enemy airplanes in a five-day period in July, without suffering a single casualty.
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Meanwhile, the Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers arrived in Spain in strength, and the He-111 and Do-17 twin-engine bombers became more numerous, while new flak artillery arrived to replace worn-out pieces. Supply operations were also stepped up, and the Condor Legion had no further trouble in that area for the rest of the war.
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