Luftwaffe ground forces in the east?

[Krautman]

On some photos, you can see Luftwaffe crews operating AA guns, presumably attached to a Heer unit. Were AA guns generally manned by Luftwaffe crews? If so, did these AA batteries have infantry protection also consisting of Luftwaffe men?

Was there a general-purpose Luftwaffe infantry force (not the airborne units) prior to those makeshift field divisions made up of former mechanics?

Greetings

Krautman

[David I]

Krautman,

Goering wanted the Luftwaffe to man all Anti-Aircraft guns, period. Under the theory that if they shot down planes, they should belong to the Air Force. He lost that particular, petty grab for authority. Therefore Heer and SS formations manned their own Flak guns. However there were numerous independent Luft AA Battalions and Regiments formed. In Russia they were often called upon to use their 88's in an anti-tank role. Some of these units would have security troops, but no real infantry companies per say.

I know that the HG Flak Regiment had a Recon Company that had a Recon Infantry Platoon and an Armored Car Platoon - but I think that was the exception.

As to LW Field Divisions, thats a different story...

DavidI

[JasonC]

First understand the LW was not a functionally differentiated branch of service for the whole war. It started that way, but over time it simply became the institutional fiefdom of Goering, parallel to the SS and both outside the Heer. This was a competitive matter in Nazi politics among the bigwigs, and deliberately fostered as a form of divide and rule by Hitler. Also understand Goering had been chief of the Prussian state police before taking over the LW, and continued to have serious influence in the Gestapo etc.

Originally the LW controlled the planes and of course their supporting ground personnel. The early FJ (paratroopers) was a small specialist group within the LW, not part of the army. The LW was functionally in charge of air defense for the Reich, and that included Flak units in Germany, early warning facilities, etc. The Germans produced tens of thousands of heavy Flak guns during the war, the overwhelming majority of them assigned to the LW and used in the rear, nowhere near any front. Late, especially, light Flak multiplied as point defense.

The army demanded control of its own Flak because the LW schemes were based on defending areas (heavy Flak) or locations (light), but not moving units. Army Flak guns were not ones assigned to ground fire roles, but ones meant for air defense of moving formations in the army and thus made organic to those units. LW Flak was organized in regiments along artillery lines, with larger formations up to corps sized assigned to defend whole regions.

The FJ were a small and elite core of ground fighting capability within the LW. After Crete, they were not used for air landings anymore (on anything larger than a commando raid scale, anyway, and even those were very rare). They did not however disappear, and they continued to get higher quality recruits than average and put them through tough training.

The LW field divisions were developed in 1942 and expanded in 1943. Eventually they numbered over 20 divisions. These were in all essentially regular infantry divisions just using LW personnel and under a separate chain of command, though they also had more Flak than most infantry ever saw. They were not a success, using up vast numbers of men and material that would have been more effective in the army, under more experienced and professional ground-combat leaders.

Goering did not give up and dramatically expanded the FJ instead, as the LW were used up in the east. Dramatic expansion of the FJ came quite late, with some divisions forming in 1943 and many in 1944, eventually reaching a dozen divisions. Some of these had cadres from the old FJ and picked recruits, and were quite effective, if a bit green at first.

They were not, incidentally, any better equipped than the Heer, on average. (CM depicts them with 2 LMG per squad, which only some of them reached. And some plain Heer infantry divisions were also that well equipped. Averages and variation were similar for both). They tended to be slightly less well equipped in artillery. But in combat they were quite successful, for the most part. Many of them fought in Italy or the west.

There was also the lone HG panzer division, which was never meant to be airborne in any sense. It was simple a SS pattern panzer division under Goering's fief rather than Himmler's. Though late in the war it was redesignated a corps and given a TOE of 2 full divisions, it never actually reached that establishment. Its separate parts, termed divisions, remained KG sized formations, one effectively the armored group of a PD, the other about the strength of a somewhat weakened Heer PzGdr division. Being called a corps did entitle it to a Tiger battalion, however. It fought in Sicily and Italy, and later was moved to Poland.

A typical Flak gun found at the front in Russia, serving with a Heer unit, would be served by Heer personnel, not LW personnel. The same is true in the SS. Separate Flak units were deployed in the east, meant to be static. But in practice many of them were more motorized than the infantry divisions at the front, and they were pressed into stop-gap defensive roles in alarm units, screens, and the like. Strings of motorized light Flak batteries a couple km apart screening open steppe by fire, to check pure infantry, was a typical use. Against any serious opposition they would need help, or they'd just pull out.

This was not primarily a matter of wanting 88s for the front. There were a small number of 88s in each PD, Heer or SS, far more likely to be pressed into service for ground action. Occasionally a unit of LW 88s would send a ground combat KG to the front. These were not conspicuously successful at killing tanks.

Whole LW Flak units were rather more successful at killing planes, but "successful" means something like deploy an 88 and feed it shells for a month or three, get a kill. There was still enough of it and it was cheap enough, that the average Flak gun was probably a more successful weapon system than the average aircraft, in pure kills per cost terms.

[Krautman]

Thanks to both of you for taking the time. That was very helpful.

Originally posted by JasonC:

First understand the LW was not a functionally differentiated branch of service for the whole war. It started that way, but over time it simply became the institutional fiefdom of Goering, parallel to the SS and both outside the Heer.

As far as i can remember, Goering was the one to whom the buildup of the Luftwaffe was entrusted to in 1935, starting from the Deutscher Fliegerverband/Deutscher Luftfahrtverband (?), which was a kind of paramilitary organisation built to avoid the Versailles treaty regulations. Wouldn't this make the Luftwaffe Goering's personal playtool right from the start? And didn't Goering lose more and more influence after the battle of britain?

Originally posted by JasonC:

A typical Flak gun found at the front in Russia, serving with a Heer unit, would be served by Heer personnel, not LW personnel. The same is true in the SS. Separate Flak units were deployed in the east, meant to be static. But in practice many of them were more motorized than the infantry divisions at the front, and they were pressed into stop-gap defensive roles in alarm units, screens, and the like. Strings of motorized light Flak batteries a couple km apart screening open steppe by fire, to check pure infantry, was a typical use. Against any serious opposition they would need help, or they'd just pull out.

Very useful for possible scenario design!

Greetings

Krautman

[JasonC]

Goering was head of the Prussian state police from 1933. In that role, he was instrumental in the coup the Nazis basically staged, to ensure the next election went overwhelmingly their way. He did this by an openly declared policy of police murder, shutting down all the opposition parties, papers, unions, etc by force. After the Nazis had full power, he got the LW. His personnel were already the cadre of the state police which became the Gestapo.

He did not lose influence after the BofB, not seriously. Maybe he wasn't considered invincible, but he never really was so that's moot. Very late, the growth of the SS outstripped his own organization and Hitler had less time for him. He continued his campaign of grab, however. (His agents looted Europe for art as one side-show example). Another major competitor (besides the SS of course) was the economic-focused Organization Todt, originally relatively weak but a serious force once Speer took it over and it started assuming control of large swaths of industry.

All of them competed for resources, manpower, careers for their cronies, impunity to commit crimes, general swagger at each other and innocent underlings' expense, and to a lesser extent military hardware to back them all up.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

I must say, it sounds like a wonderfully effeicient system the Nazi's ran.

Seems almost ironic when one considers the Germans are often noted for their efficiency.

Regards

Jim R.

[Andreas]

Göring and the Luftwaffe lost influence after the Stalingrad desaster, when they could not keep their promise to keep the encircled forces supplied. Parallel to that it became clear that aerial defense of the Reich was not working. An interesting timeline of the Luftwaffe losing its favoured position could be constructed by its reactions to Kriegsmarine demands for aerial support. It is clear that from 1943, the Luftwaffe became much more amenable to such demands, while in 1940, petty fights such as the one over the allocation of five torpedoes kept the services busy.

All the best

Andreas

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

I must say, it sounds like a wonderfully effeicient system the Nazi's ran.

Seems almost ironic when one considers the Germans are often noted for their efficiency.

Regards

Jim R.

The Nazis didn't run it. Hitler did. Personally. He ensured that his minions fought each other tooth and nail, much to the frustration of all. Speer, for one, and certainly many others, realized that a more unified approach was necessary, but without Hitler's consent it would never happen. It all went back to him and his personality. Had Speer, say, been given sole control of the economy instead of battling Goering and his department of the four year plan, et al, things may have been somewhat different - though in the end German disorganization only hastened their eventual demise.

[JasonC]

It was designed to bypass bureaucratic inertia and prevent any individual underling from getting any real independence. If bureaucracy A didn't buy into some radical new idea, then bureaucracy B got the job and the resources. That made for rapid implimentation of whims from the top down. But little horizontal coordination or rationality of effort.

Before full mobilization of the economy, the absence of the last wasn't too strongly felt - but production was low overall. As soon as you had to mobilize all resources and all manpower, rational allocation was everything. And the system sucked at it. Speer came closest to running his portion rationally, but never had control of all economic planning, let alone all manpower allocation.

The result was abundant supplies of some high profile items and ruinous shortages of other critical suppliments for them. Hundreds of new tanks without gas, fleets of fighters without trained pilots, a thousand kinds of trucks with spare parts shortages for them all over, etc. And on the manpower side, Luftwaffe field divisions, a bloated reserve army (until ruthless comb outs in the second half of 1944), navy and LW ground personnel serving as infantry without having been trained for it. While up at the peak of the "grab" system, a few politically selected formations got everything they could possibly want, and their poor cousins did without.

[Carl Puppchen]

While you are going through inefficiency there is the whole Russian part of splitting resources between The Party, The Internal Security (NKVD, or KGB) and the Army (broadly defined). These three groups were also generally at each others' throats, with the party / KGB (I will call them KGB even though they had many names over different periods for ease of convention and because it continued into the post war era, and even into today...) having superiority in the 1930's and into 1941-2 when many of the excellent officers in the army being purged.

These forces jockeyed for power throughout culminating with Stalin's removal of the commisar as the decider of military authority in 1942 and re-establishment of traditional battlefield ranks, etc...

After the war Stalin once again went after the Army, viewing Zhukov as a potential threat to his power base. The party is reduced in authority in Putin's Russia but the battle between the KGB and the Army continues, as internal security forces are still quite substantial.

I don't know if you can quantify the net "drag" on the Germans from their overlapping and semi-dysfunctional organizations vs. the loss of talent to the Soviets from the KGB purges of officer corps... that would be an interesting thread, too.

Of course in China you had the Chinese communist party and the Nationalists running a civil war at the same time they half-heartedly battled the Japanese.

And French / British cooperation in the early war was not optimal, as indicated in the battles in Belgium and the fiasco in Norway.

Later in the war US / British / Australian / Canadian cooperation was quite good, in comparison, even if there were many areas where it could have improved.

In any dictatorship it is critical that no one arm of power become too large, and overlapping and battling fiefdoms are the norm. This is one means of assuring that no one became too powerful. I guess you could say on the US / British side these brakes were applied by the civilian / military authority disputes, which of course reached all the way into Korea when McArthur was dismissed by Truman...

Excellent posts by others, as usual, summarizing the WW2 Nazi organizations. You can learn a lot of history on a battlefront thread .