WAR

—
ON
THE ESTABLISHING OF
THE GERMAN FIGHTER FORCES,
OR
HOW THE CIRCUS CAME TO TOWN
to begin at the top: the Chief of the Imperial German General Staff from the
beginning of the war until the summer of
1916 was General von Falkenhayn, the
former Prussian Minister of War, the same von Falkenhayn who had been so
impressed by Fokker's stunt flying in the spring of 1914. He was blamed for the
German "failure" at Verdun and replaced by General von Hindenburg.
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg was an
old-time officer. He had won the Iron Cross at the Siege of Paris in 1871 and
had commanded the IV Army Corps from 1903 to 1911 when he had retired at
the age of 65. Recalled in 1914, he had showed up wearing a beautiful oldfashioned
Prussian blue uniform because he had not had time to
have one of the
new German field gray uniforms made. He was appointed to command the
Eighth Army on the Russian Front. His chief of staff was General Erich F. W.
Ludendorff, the "Hero of Liege." The Hindenburg /Ludendorff combination
promptly made its presence felt by handing the Russians a crushing defeat at
Tannenburg. Hindenburg was made a Field Marshal and awarded the Pour le
Merite. When in 1916 he succeeded von Falkenhayn as Chief of the General
Staff, Ludendorff went with him, still his right hand man. The H/L combination
directed all German strategy for the remainder of the war.
It was Ludendorff who obtained the Kaiser's approval for the establishing
of an independent air service. Until the summer of 1916 all air units had been
under the control of the Director of Railways and Transport, their
operation dictated
by army corps commanders. (The United States did not establish a Division
of Military Aeronautics directly responsible to the Secretary of War until May
of 1918; up to then the air service had been a branch of the
Signal Corps.)
General Ernst von Hoeppner, a 56-year-old infantryman, was appointed to
command the new organization, which was given the name Lujtstreitkrdjte, or
Air Combat Force. (The World War II name
Luftwaffe, which means simply
Air Arm—was not used in World War I.) The Air Chief of Staff was a professional
soldier named Major (later Colonel) Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen.
In the summer of 1916 Oswald Boelcke was Germany's premier Jagdflieger, with
18 confirmed victories, and was her most experienced air tactician. He and Major
Thomsen, after a series of conferences, produced an air policy which contemplated,
among other things, the creation of homogeneous and permanent fighter squadrons.
The success of the Kampjeinsitzerkommando derived from the fact that sections
of Fokkers had been allowed to go out and stooge around by themselves hunting
for enemy observation ships without having to worry about protecting their own
two-seaters. Although the Eindecker could no longer cut the competition, the
Albatros certainly could, and it was therefore conceived that the time had come
to spread all-fighter squadrons along the Front.
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