National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

96 ai r p o w e r in 20 t H Ce n t u ry do C t r i n e s a n d em p l o y m e n t - nat i o n a l ex p e r i e n C e s
tary service. The following protests expressed by France, Great Britain and Italy,
which decided on a mild form of protest, must have confirmed Hitler’s assessment
concerning the weakness of democracies. On 19 March 1935, the German Air Force
showed in public for the first time: During a blackout and live air defense exercise,
the “Jagdgeschwader Richthofen” appeared on the skies over Berlin.
The fact that the German translation of Douhet’s book was published under the
title of “Luftherrschaft” (air supremacy) in June 1935, i.e. only a few weeks after the
German Air Force had been established, cannot be considered pure coincidence if one
takes the efficient apparatus of Josef Goebbels, the Minister of Public Enlightenment
and Propaganda into consideration. In the foreword to the book, Lieutenant Colonel
Freiherr v. Bülow, who meanwhile had become the Director of the “Foreign Air
Forces” division at the “Luftkommandoamt”, the later general staff of the German
Air Force, emphasized that the establishment of the German Air Force was a welcome
point of time to present Douhet’s thoughts to a broader public in Germany.
Notwithstanding all of the comprehensible arguments regarding the decisive importance
of Douhet’s doctrine, Bülow emphasized: „we are not committed to it“. 28
With this, Bülow not only spoke in “pluralis maiestatis”, but he reflected the basic
view held by the commanders of the new German Air Force. The speech held by the
then chief of the Luftkommandoamt, Major General Walther Wever, on the occasion
of the opening of the Air War Academy at Gatow on 1 November 1935, was proof of
an air war concept differing from Knauss’ ideas. For Wever, operational cooperation
between Air Force, Army and Navy in their fight against enemy armed forces had
priority, even if he considered the bomber aircraft the decisive weapon of the air war
and did not rule out its strategic use against enemy armaments industry. 29
Here a special feature of the German Air Force command authorities must be
pointed out. Comparisons with the organization of Anglo-American command authorities
reveal that there was no policy planning staff. Whereas the Anglo-American
supreme command authorities planned within an overall strategic setting, across
continents and for lengthy wars of attrition, irrespective of day-to-day business, the
continental power of the Reich, if only for lacking the appropriate resources, focused
on winning a war as quickly as possible by conducting rapid army operations. 30
As a result, the efficient support of such army operations automatically got into
the center of air war considerations in the German Air Force. In a certain way, it
became apparent that the entire higher officer corps of the German Air Force was
composed of former army officers “who were of course first reluctant to use the wide
range of operational possibilities of waging an independent air war and who, above
28 Giulio Douhet, Luftherrschaft. Berlin 1935, p. 9.
29 Maier, Totaler Krieg und operativer Luftkrieg (see Note 19), p. 44.
30 Cf. Horst Boog, Anglo-amerikanisches Führungsdenken im strategischen Bombenkrieg von 1939
bis 1945 in Abhängigkeit von wechselnden Kriegsbildern, in: Groß, Führungsdenken (see Note 2),
p. 219.