Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (59 page)

Greim’s rise in the Luftwaffe was rapid. He had talent, experience, the right kind of background, and the right political convictions. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel (September 1, 1935), was named inspector of equipment and safety devices (February 10, 1936), and was promoted to colonel on April 1, 1936. He received a prized appointment on June 1, 1937, when he was named chief of the Personnel Section (later Office) of the German Air Ministry—in effect, chief of personnel of the Luftwaffe. He was promoted to major general on February 1, 1938, and became a member of the German Academy for Aerial Research that same year.
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Major General Ritter von Greim switched from staff to line on February 5, 1939, when he assumed command of the 5th Air Division. This unit did not take part in the Polish campaign but was nevertheless upgraded to V Air Corps in late 1939 or very early 1940. Greim’s promotion to lieutenant general was dated January 1, 1940,
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so it is probable that this was the date on which the 5th Air was officially upgraded.

The invasion of France was Greim’s first major campaign in the Second World War. He initially headquartered near Stuttgart and operated against northeastern France, on the southern flank of the main ground thrust, mostly with bomber units. He did a thorough job of disrupting the French transportation and supply systems and helped prevent the French from achieving a timely concentration against the “Panzer Corridor,” the German breakthrough to the sea. Greim did not take part in the Dunkirk debacle. He was awarded the Knights Cross on June 2 and was promoted to general of flyers during the multitudinous promotions of July 19, 1940. He was only forty-eight years old.
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During the Battle of Britain, Greim’s V Air Corps directed the 51st, 54th, and 55th Bomber Wings, which were equipped with Ju-88 and He-111 bombers. As in France, he was subordinate to Sperrle’s 3rd Air Fleet.
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He performed his duties in an acceptable manner, but without winning any special laurels.

Up until this point, Greim had achieved credible results, but without achieving any special distinction. In May 1941, however, Greim’s command was shifted to the East and reinforced with the 3rd Fighter Wing (equipped with Me-109 fighters). His aircraft crossed the Soviet frontier on June 22, in support of Rundstedt’s Army Group South.
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He spent the rest of the war—and virtually the rest of his life—in more or less constant action on the eastern front. Few airmen distinguished themselves on the Russian front to the degree that Greim did. From June 22 to 25 alone his units flew 1,600 sorties against seventy-seven Russian airfields, destroying 774 Soviet aircraft on the ground and 136 in the air. By July 3, Greim was able to report that his corps had destroyed more than 1,000 enemy aircraft on the ground. Fifth Air Corps supported Kleist’s 1st Panzer Group in the crossing of the Sluch, in the Battle of Uman (where 103,000 Soviets were captured and 317 tanks and 858 guns were captured or destroyed), and in the Battle of Kiev, which resulted in the surrender of 667,000 Russian soldiers in September 1941. He supported Rundstedt’s armored spearheads in the opening of the bridgehead at Dnepropetrovsk, in destroying three Soviet divisions at Novo-Moskovsk, and in the rolling up of the Soviet Dnieper flank in the Zaporozhve vicinity. His units blasted Soviet columns and troop concentrations and smashed Russian railroad lines, materially delaying the Communist resupply and reinforcement efforts and preventing them from stabilizing the southern sector of the eastern front. He then paved the way for the encirclement of large Soviet formations against the Sea of Azov, where more than 100,000 Red soldiers and hundreds of tanks were captured.
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Greim lost aerial supremacy on the southern sector in late September, 1941, when almost all of his fighter units were transferred north to take part in the Battle of Moscow. He nevertheless continued to send his bombers and dive-bombers far behind Russian lines, interdicting their rail communications around and east of Kharkov. From September 23 to October 12, 95 Soviet trains (including 4 ammunition and 4 fuel trains) were completely destroyed and another 288 were heavily destroyed. Russian railroad traffic was cut in sixty-four places, and Soviet marshal Timoshenko was forced to abandon several ground counterattack plans because his ravaged logistical system could not support them. Greim also repeatedly and successfully attacked the Soviet tank factory at Kramatorsk (one of the most important tank factories in the Soviet Union in 1941) and smashed the large Red aircraft plant at Voronezh.
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Greim was forced to give up his last fighter unit (the III Group of the 52d Fighter Wing) on October 22. Fifth Air Corps still pressed its attacks, even without fighter protection, and played a major role in the capture of Kharkov, Kurst, and the Donets Industrial Basin. Following the fall of Kharkov, Greim’s units destroyed 79 railroad trains and damaged 148 others in the attacks between the Donets and the Don. They also continued bombing and dive-bombing attacks against Soviet troop concentrations, roads, and tactical positions, in support of the Sixth and Seventeenth armies. In late October, Greim was given the mission of supporting Kleist’s 1st Panzer Group (later First Panzer Army) in its drive on Rostov.
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“General Mud” took over on November 6, forcing Kleist to temporarily halt his offensive. The Russians then made a major effort to get their rolling stock out of the region. For the first time trains consisting entirely of locomotives (forty to sixty per train) were spotted by the Luftwaffe. In a seventeen-day period—much of it poor flying weather—Greim’s pilots destroyed 12 trains and 51 locomotives and damaged another 32 trains and 161 locomotives. Some of Greim’s fighters were restored to him during this period, and they shot down 65 Russian aircraft in 578 sorties. The Reds were unable to prevent the destruction of much of the rolling stock in southern Russia.
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On November 12, the 54th and 55th Bomber Wings, which had been in combat since May 1940, were withdrawn to Germany to rest and refit. Only one group of the 55th was left behind, reducing Greim’s total bomber strength to fewer than ten aircraft. He continued to support Kleist’s advance with Stukas and fighters.
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Rostov fell on November 23, but the Soviets counterattacked almost immediately with fourteen fresh divisions, as well as strong tank and air support.
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They advanced over the frozen Don River delta and retook the city on November 28. Greim then covered Kleist’s retreat from Rostov.
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On November 30, 1941, Greim, his headquarters, and several of his combat units were transferred to Belgium, with the idea of organizing a mine-laying air corps for use against the United Kingdom. Within a week, however, the Soviet winter offensive was unleashed from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The High Command of the Luftwaffe quickly decided to split V Air Corps in half. One part, under Col. Hermann Plocher, the corps chief of staff, remained in Belgium. The other half, under Greim, was redesignated Special Staff Crimea (Sonderstab Krim) and returned to 4th Air Fleet, where its mission was to help Manstein repulse the imminent Russian advance from the Kerch Peninsula and maintain the siege of Sevastopol.
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At Karinhall on January 7, 1942, Reichsmarschall Goering personally briefed Greim on the Crimean situation,
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which was this: Manstein’s Eleventh Army was besieging powerful Russian forces at Sevastopol, but the Soviet bridgehead on the Kerch Peninsula had not been eliminated. Soon the Kerch Strait would be frozen solid, and the Reds would be able to transport immense quantities of supplies and reinforcements to the Crimea and take Manstein in the rear, possibly forcing him to lift the siege and even abandon the Crimea. This Greim was to help prevent.
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Greim arrived at his new headquarters at Poltava on January 15. His units included the 77th Dive-Bomber Wing (minus I Group); III Group, 51st Bomber Wing; I Group, 100th Bomber Wing; a fighter squadron of the 77th Fighter Wing; and Col. Wolfgang von Wild’s Air Command South, a miscellaneous collection of torpedo-bomber, air/sea reconnaissance, and anti-amphibious squadrons.
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Greim’s main problem was the low operational strength of his units, caused by the intense cold. Fighter and dive-bomber groups, normally twenty to thirty operational aircraft, were down to twelve to fifteen aircraft, while bomber groups were down to six or seven aircraft. Ground organization was faulty, and the necessary supplies were absent.
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Manstein had already repulsed one Soviet advance in late December. On January 15—the day Greim arrived—he anticipated the Soviets by attacking their bridgehead on the Kerch, despite the fact he was outnumbered two to one. The Reds counterattacked on the nineteenth, halting Manstein’s advance at Parpach. Greim performed valuable service by attacking Red strongpoints, artillery positions, and troop and armored concentrations, as well as dock installations in their rear, all against strong Red Air Force fighter units, equipped with lend-lease aircraft. The squadrons of Special Staff Crimea flew 1,089 sorties between January 19 and February 18 and destroyed 23 Soviet aircraft in aerial combat, 44 more on the ground, sank 25,000 tons of shipping, bombed Red port installations at Kerch and Kamysk Burum, and destroyed 335 Soviet vehicles (some of them horse-drawn supply wagons), 14 trains, 14 artillery batteries, a fuel depot, and a supply depot. Greim’s total losses were two He-111 bombers.
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In early February the Brussels group of the V Air Corps staff, including Colonel Plocher, returned to the eastern front, where it assisted in the withdrawal of Richthofen’s VIII Air Corps from the central sector (“Combat Zone Center”). In mid-February, Special Staff Crimea was ordered dissolved; Greim and his group joined Plocher’s group at Smolensk soon after, reuniting V Air Corps Headquarters. Six weeks later, on April 1, V Air was expanded and redesignated Luftwaffe Command East, an air fleet-level headquarters. Greim was now responsible for the air and flak support of Army Group Center. Special Staff Crimea was replaced by IV Air Corps, and the plans for creating a mine-laying corps in the West were quietly abandoned.
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Luftwaffe Command East initially consisted of the 18th Flak Division (Maj. Gen. Richard Reimann), 12th Flak Division (Maj. Gen. Ernst Buffa), 1st Air Division (Maj. Gen. Alfred Buelowius), 2d Air Division (Maj. Gen. Stefan Froehlich), and Air Administrative Commands II (headquartered at Posen and Warsaw) and Moscow, headquartered at Smolensk.
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Johannes Steinhoff described Greim as a “virile, likable Bavarian [who] positively radiated steadfastness.”
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The big, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered commander was called “Papa” Greim by his men, who adored him. With his imposing physical presence, friendly disposition, and spectacles, he must have seemed like a father figure to them.
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Whatever the reason, he seemed to be able to get the maximum effort from his few, understrength units. His mission in the spring of 1942 was to support Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge’s Army Group Center. Hitler’s strategy for the East in 1942 called for a major offensive on the southern sector. Kluge’s tasks were secondary: hold his lines and, insofar as possible, deceive the Soviets into thinking that the main German offensive would come in the central, not the southern, sector. Kluge has never been given sufficient credit for the brilliant manner in which he accomplished this task, even though it had unpleasant side effects for Army Group Center. Stalin, deceived into thinking the main German blow would fall here, concentrated the bulk of his divisions against Kluge’s depleted regiments.

The most dangerous positions on the central sector were those of the Ninth Army (Col. Gen. Walter Model), which was exposed to attack from three sides in the Rzhev salient. The Soviets tried to pinch off the salient (and not for the first time) on April 13 and 16, but failed, thanks largely to the 2nd Air and 12th Flak Divisions. The Soviets suffered heavy losses in this battle.
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Throughout 1942 Luftwaffe Command East flew from one tactical crisis to another, for Army Group Center’s front was too long and lacked sufficient artillery, antitank guns, and tanks, as most of the panzer divisions had been sent south or were rebuilding in France. Also, Greim lacked the necessary aircraft, for Loehr’s 4th Air Fleet to the south had priority for replacements. There could be no question of waging strategic aerial warfare; Greim concentrated instead on interdiction raids against Russian railroads, attempting to slow the Soviet buildup against Army Group Center. Later, in late May, he concentrated against the Red Guards Cavalry Corps of General Below, which had penetrated behind Fourth Army southeast of Smolensk and south of Vyazma. He was unable to completely stop the Russian airlift to Below.