Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (61 page)

On April 23, Goering sent his famous message to Hitler, asking the Fuehrer if he (Goering) should assume leadership of the Reich (see Chapter
13
). Hitler responded by relieving Goering of his command and ordering his arrest. The Fuehrer then summoned Greim to Berlin.

When Hitler’s message arrived on April 24, Greim was at his headquarters in Munich. A less fanatical man would have ignored the dispatch, for flying to Berlin was little short of suicide. After all, not a single operational airfield remained in German hands in the dying city. Greim, however, left at once for the capital of the Reich. He was accompanied by Hanna Reitsch, another fanatical Nazi and a famous stunt pilot, who was one of the few women to hold the Iron Cross. The next morning they arrived at the Luftwaffe testing and research base at Rechlin, where they intended to board a helicopter and land in the garden of the chancellery. The only helicopter at Rechlin was damaged, however, so the pair appropriated a FW-190 and ordered its pilot, a sergeant, to fly them to Gatow. Hanna was stuffed in the tail of the two-seat fighter as the general and sergeant hedge-hopped Russian flak to Gatow. Here, the next morning, Greim and Reitsch boarded an old Arado-60 (Ar-60) training plane and flew at treetop level toward Hitler’s bunker. Over the Tiergarten in Berlin an antiaircraft shell shattered Greim’s foot. Hanna Reitsch took over the controls and landed the aircraft in a shell-potted street on the east-west axis near the chancellery—a neat piece of flying indeed.
⁵⁹
Greim, in terrible pain, was carried to the Fuehrer Bunker.

At first it was feared that Greim’s foot might have to be amputated. Hitler welcomed him as his wound was being dressed for surgery. “I have called you here because Hermann Goering has betrayed both me and the Fatherland,” he exclaimed. “Behind my back he has made contact with the enemy. I have had him arrested as a traitor, deprived him of all of his offices, and removed him from all organizations. That is why I have called you.” He then promoted the startled commander to commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, with the rank of field marshal.
⁶⁰

The surgeons managed to save the new marshal’s foot, and Hitler had him put to bed in a room opposite the Fuehrer conference room. At 10
P
.
M
. that night German radio announced Greim’s promotion to the world. Also that night Hitler visited him, gave him a suicide capsule, and ordered him to concentrate the few remaining jet squadrons around Prague.
⁶¹
On April 27 or 28, Gen. Karl Koller, the last chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, telephoned Greim from OKW Headquarters, then located in the woods near Fuerstenberg. Greim told him:

Just don’t lose hope! Everything will still turn out all right. My contact with the Fuehrer and his strength has strengthened me like a dip in the fountain of youth. The Fuehrer sat at my bedside for quite a while and discussed everything with me. He retracted all of his accusations against the Luftwaffe. He is aware of what our service branch has accomplished. His reproaches are aimed solely at Goering. He had the highest praise for our forces! This made me exceedingly happy.
⁶²

The romantic Greim, it seems, had been affected by the dream world of the Fuehrer Bunker. Elsewhere, real events took their course. On the night of April 28–29 Russian tanks were reported concentrating south of Potsdamer Platz, massing for the assault on the chancellery. Hitler came to Greim’s room and slumped down on his bed. The only hope left, he said, was the relief attack Gen. Walter Wenck was launching. He ordered Greim to support it with every aircraft he had. He instructed the wounded marshal and Frau -lein Reitsch to fly out of Berlin in the Arado trainer and to direct the Luftwaffe attack. Both begged to be allowed to sacrifice themselves with Hitler in the bunker, but Hitler was adamant. They were needed at Luftwaffe Headquarters, he said. Hitler also ordered Greim to arrest Himmler for high treason. The Reichsfuehrer-SS had attempted to open negotiations with the Allies behind his back, the Fuehrer said.
⁶³

That day—the morning of April 29—Greim and Hanna Reitsch flew out of Berlin and miraculously escaped through a hail of Russian small-arms fire. They landed at Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz’s headquarters at Ploem, where they saw Himmler and told him that Hitler had denounced him for treason. The next day, with the Russians only a few hundred yards away, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin. Shortly before his death, Hitler appointed Admiral Doenitz as his successor.

Doenitz, who considered Greim a “fine man and officer,” wanted to keep him as C-in-C of the Luftwaffe. Greim declined, however. On May 2, at Ploem, he spoke very bitterly to the grand admiral, because, as Doenitz recalled, “the idealism and devotion to duty of the soldiers who believed they had been serving a noble cause should have ended in so dire a catastrophe. He did not wish, he said, to go on living, and we parted, deeply moved.”
⁶⁴

Immediately after Hitler’s death, the Luftwaffe forces in the north suspended all operations against the Western Allies. Greim made his way back to the south, probably on May 3, where fighting against the Russians continued. Here, in northern Austria and Bohemia, the Luftwaffe made its last stand. It had only 1,500 aircraft left, and the flight units were in remnants, disorganized and demoralized, and almost without fuel, as the supply and transportation systems had virtually ceased to function. Greim managed barely fifty sorties a day until May 8, when Germany finally surrendered.
⁶⁵

Greim was utterly demoralized and disillusioned. He was ill, in pain, on crutches, and all of his dreams were shattered. In May he was taken prisoner and sent to a hospital in Salzburg. Here, on May 24, true to his word, Ritter von Greim committed suicide, probably using the pill that Hitler had given him in the bunker, three weeks before. He was fifty-three years old.
⁶⁶

APPENDIX 1

Table of Equivalent Ranks

Footnotes

1
. Roughly equivalent to Officer-Cadet or officer candidate.

2
. Source of R.A.F. Equivalent Ranks: Hanfried Schliephake,
The Birth of the Luftwaffe
(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1971), p. 80.

APPENDIX 2

Chain of Command of
Luftwaffe Aviation Units

Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) (High Command of the Luftwaffe)

Chef des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force)

Luftflotte (Air Fleet)

Fliegerkorps (Air Corps)

Fliegerdivision (Air Division)

Geschwader (Wing) (R.A.F. Group)

Gruppe (Group) (R.A.F. Wing)

Staffel (Squadron)

Kettle (Section) (called “Schwarm” in fighter units)

APPENDIX 3

Strengths of Luftwaffe Units