Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Early Intelligence Organization
warfare.”73 In August and early September 1938, Lindbergh visited Russia and
Czechoslovakia. In his return through Paris on September 9, he expressed
pessimism’in an interview with Col. H. H. Fuller, the U.S. military and air
attach& Fuller reported: “Col. Lindbergh believes that Germany has the
outstanding air force of the world today and that it exceeds in power those of
Russia, France, and England combined. German equipment, machinery and
factories he considered the best in the
Well after the Second World War Col. Truman Smith prepared a memoir
on his air intelligence activities in Berlin during the 1930s which generally
revealed that he had taken upon himself the task of awakening America to the
danger of the Nazi menace. Although in retrospect he believed that the
conclusion of the general air estimate of November 1, 1937, had stood up
extremely well, Smith noted some important lacunae. “The most significant
omission is the report’s failure to state that the Luftwuffe was not a long-range
air force, built around heavy bombers with the primary mission of destroying
cities and factories far behind the enemy’s lines, but rather an air force designed
to operate in close support of Germany’s ground armies.” Another shortcoming
dealt with personnel of the GAF: “While the report took note of the great
personnel difficulties which the Luftwuffe was encountering, it failed to mention
the inexperience and inefficiency of many generals of the Lufnyuffe. . . . Most
of these were infantry and artillery generals transferred into the Luftwuffe at the
commencement of the rearmament in 1933. This lack of able and experienced
air generals was to become a more appreciable factor in causing the Lufnyuffe’s
destruction when the Second World War drew to its con~lusion.”~~ For all his
technical expertise, Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, apparently had missed a crucial
point about the GAF: by organization, training, and aircraft selection it was not
an instrument for conducting independent strategic air warfare by heavy
bombardment. “This failure to grasp the essential character of the Luftwuffe,”
wrote General Telford Taylor, “goes far to explain the exaggerated predictions
of destruction which Lindbergh was soon spreading far and wide.”76
On July 24, 1936-two days after Lindbergh’s first visit to Berlin-emissaries
of General Francisco Franco arrived in Germany to request
Hitler’s assistance in a fascist overthrow of Spain’s republican government. In
the dock at the Allied war crimes trial at Nuremberg, Goering remembered the
buildup of the Lufnyuffe and the Spanish Civil War. When Franco asked the
Fuhrer for support, particularly in the air, Goering recalled, ‘‘I urged him to give
support under all circumstances, firstly, to prevent the further spread of
Communism; secondly, to test my young Lufnyaffe in this or that technical
respect.”77 In Spain, the German Condor Legion tested new equipment and
perfected the tactics and techniques of air-ground support to be used in Europe.
Aided by German and Italian air units, nationalist forces under General Franco
were victorious against Spanish government forces until November 1936. At
that point, the republicans, aided by an International Brigade and Russian
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