The Poles also emulated the Soviet model independently and quite closely, despite their general antipathy to all things Russian. The LOPP mirrored the functions of the Komsomol and Osoaviakhim by promoting both sport parachuting and gliding and providing the necessary public facilities.46 Seventeen public parachuting towers had been erected across the country by 1939, beginning with one in Warsaw in 1936, and Polish Boy Scouts used the expertise they had gained to carry out a demonstration jump at the 5th International Scouting Jamboree at Bloemendaal in the Netherlands in August 1937.47 Military parachuting towers were erected at the officer cadet schools at Bydgoscz and Legionovo and the infantry school at Komorovo, and initially parachute training was used as a semi-official character-building exercise for officers, with volunteers undergoing a four-week course that included ground training, parachute packing and up to three jumps from a captive balloon and three more from an aircraft.48 A dedicated parachute diversion and sabotage force was established in September 1937, and the facility at Bydgoscz was expended into a central Military Parachuting Centre in May 1939, tasked to carry out research and development work and to provide training for military volunteers from all branches of the army. The centre’s first course graduated in June 1939 but the German invasion in September cut the second short; the centre was destroyed in the subsequent fighting and the staff, trainees and graduates dispersed.49 Some of these men escaped to Britain, taking with them techniques and operational procedures that played an important role in the establishment and development of the British and Polish Airborne units that carried out Operation MARKET GARDEN.
While the Soviets undoubtedly invented the concept, the first operational exponents of airborne warfare were the Germans. Like the Poles, the latter’s initial inspiration also appears to have also been the Soviets, and probably during the co-operation between the Reichswehr and Red Army under the provisions of the 1922 Rapallo Treaty before Hitler ordered contact severed in 1933. Future Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein attended a parachute exercise in the Trans-Caucasian Military District in September 1932 for example,50 and Hermann Göring and Major Kurt Student, future heads of the Luftwaffe and the German Airborne Force respectively, are also alleged to have attended another Soviet parachute demonstration the previous year.51 Von Manstein’s presence is fully in line with his service at that time as a Major on the Reichswehr’s General Staff department tasked to gather information on foreign militaries, but Student and Göring’s involvement is less certain. The latter was not a serving officer at that time and it is therefore unclear in what capacity he might have been involved in the highly secret Rapallo exchanges, and the former had been involved in co-operating with the Soviets but was posted to an infantry unit in East Prussia in December 1928 to enhance his command skills.52
Be that as it may, Göring was responsible for the creation of the first German parachute unit. The process began in East Prussia in February 1933 with the formation of a para-military police unit named Polizeiabteilung ‘Wecke’, later redesignated Landespolizeigruppe Wecke, which contained a small parachute-trained section dubbed the Luftaufsicht. With the creation of the Luftwaffe in February 1935, the Landespolizeigruppe was integrated into the newly formed Hermann Göring Regiment, and later in the year the decision was taken to turn one of the Regiment’s battalions into a parachute unit under the commander of the Regiment’s Bataillon 1, Major Bruno Bräuer. The entire Regiment was paraded at Jüterborg airfield in northern Germany on 1 October 1935 for a less than inspiring parachute demonstration that ended with the demonstrator unconscious and injured, presumably after a bad landing. Six hundred volunteers nonetheless came forward the following day. This cadre was expanded into a fully autonomous airborne arm via a Luftwaffe Order of the Day issued on 29 January 1936 calling for more volunteers to undergo training at the new parachute school at Stendhal near Berlin. Training began on 11 May 1936 and within five months a platoon of Fallschirmjäger had taken part in exercises in Saxony followed by a larger parachute demonstration in front of Hitler in the spring of 1937. At the same time the Oberkommando der Heer (OKH) also decided to get in on the act, contributing an infantry regiment for training in the air-landing role and forming its own parachute company. The latter was expanded to a battalion, commanded by Major Richard Heidrich, in June 1938. Parachute training was carried out at Stendal as the Heer lacked the necessary facilities.
The various components of the new arm received their first clear mission on 1 June 1938, when Göring placed them under Student’s overall command; the latter had transferred to the Luftwaffe from the army and Göring assigned him the task of eliminating Czechoslovakian border fortifications near Freundenthal to clear the way for the German invasion; all planning and preparation were to be complete by 15 September. The following month Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) created 7 Flieger Division as an umbrella headquarters to oversee the operation, and Student reported his new command combat-ready on 1 September 1938. The latter declaration was somewhat optimistic however, for the single regiment of air-landing troops provided by the Heer was insufficient for the projected tasks and OKH simply refused to supply any more troops for what it perhaps understandably regarded as fanciful experiments; Göring’s public boasting of the prowess of the Luftwaffe component may also have played a part in Heer intransigence. Whether or not, the latter obliged Student to draft in largely untrained personnel from the Feldherrnhalle Regiment, a ceremonial Sturmabteilung (SA) unit as an emergency stopgap, leavened with a hasty injection of experienced officers. It was thus perhaps fortunate that the Munich Agreement at the end of September 1938 rendered the operation unnecessary, although the cancellation added to Student’s woes as OKH promptly removed Major Heidrich’s parachute battalion and the air-landing regiment from 7 Flieger Division control.
The inter-service wrangling and bloody-mindedness between the Heer and Luftwaffe masked genuine differences over the best way to employ the new arm. The Luftwaffe concept envisaged using small groups of parachute troops as a sabotage and demolition force to strike targets that could not be reached by bomber aircraft, whereas the Heer were looking to employ parachute troops as a spearhead for air-landing operations in the Soviet mould, and thus as an operational level adjunct to assist ground operations. A third, more radical alternative was put forward by Student himself. This proposed the creation of a self-contained airborne force complete with its own parachute and air-landing troops, air-portable artillery and transport and close-support aircraft that would operate under a doctrine dubbed the ‘drops of oil’ technique. This involved the simultaneous seizure of multiple landing sites well behind enemy lines in order to dilute the enemy response, which would be maintained and reinforced by air. The pockets would then expand, link up and eventually be joined by advancing friendly ground forces. Whilst radical, Student’s doctrine was hardly as original as it is sometimes hailed. The oil drop analogy harked back to a French colonial technique employed by Marshal Hubert Lyautey in Morocco in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the airborne portion was basically a reiteration of Tartarchenko’s 1932 paper on the ‘Technical, Organisational, and Operational Questions of Air Assault Forces’. Original or not, the result was a compromise imposed by Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) that incorporated facets of all three approaches.
Although he failed to sell his airborne doctrine in its entirety, Student did retain his position at the head of the new arm. When the Germans moved into the Sudetenland in October 1938, Göring ordered Student to go ahead with the air-landing operation at Freundenthal as a propaganda showcase for his Luftwaffe. Student began by drafting in the population of Freundenthal to clear a suitable landing area, readying his fleet of 242 assorted transport aircraft and adapting the planning work produced for the original landing operation by his divisional staff under Hauptmann Heinz Trettner. He then put on a carefully choreographed exercise in front of Göring, the head of the SA Viktor Lutze and a retinue of staff officers, accompanied by music from at least one milita
ry band. The landing went like clockwork, marred only by two aircraft suffering undercarriage failure, which did not appear to have injured any of the passengers.
Not everyone present was convinced by the display. Major Helmut Groscurth from the Heer’s intelligence arm, the Abwehr, dismissed the exercise as a theatrical performance.53 However, it was Göring’s opinion that counted and he was visibly impressed, to the extent that he remarked that the new arm had a great future. With his support the fledgling German airborne force was pulled back from the brink of extinction and Student’s career was in the ascendant. On 1 January 1939 he was appointed Inspector General of Airborne Forces and his new command had been expanded to include more than the existing 7 Flieger Division. After some political infighting Major Heidrich’s Heer parachute battalion had been transferred to the Luftwaffe, and Student also had operational control of another Heer formation, 22 Luftlande Division, a specially trained and equipped air-landing unit. As an additional sign of the favour Student and the Airborne arm now enjoyed with the Nazi hierarchy, a battalion of Fallschirmjäger was invited to participate in the parade to mark Hitler’s birthday in April 1939, now led by Oberstleutnant Bräuer.
By that time 7 Flieger Division boasted a fully manned Pionier Kompanie and reconnaissance, anti-tank, artillery, signal and medical divisional units were being formed. The Division’s cutting edge was its parachute infantry, the three-bataillon Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1 commanded by Oberstleutnant Bräuer, and the two-bataillon Fallschirmjäger Regiment 2 commanded by the recently promoted Oberstleutnant Heidrich. These units were manned by volunteers with an average age of eighteen, selected after a rigorous process designed to weed out all but the mentally and physically toughest and most aggressive. Successful candidates were then put through an intensive twelve-week course that covered infantry tactics, demolition, parachute packing, ground training and landing techniques. The latter were particularly important for two reasons. First, the low and narrow passenger door on the standard Luftwaffe transport aircraft, the tri-motor Junkers 52, made exiting the aircraft cleanly an awkward manoeuvre for the parachutist. Second, the risers on the standard Luftwaffe Z1 parachute canopy were attached to the parachute harness in the middle of the wearer’s back; this meant that the parachute could not be steered in any meaningful way and as the parachutist was left dangling at a slight forward angle, landings had to be made on all fours. This took considerable practice even in ideal conditions, and Fallschirmjäger were issued thickly padded gloves and knee pads in an attempt to minimise landing injuries.
Those who passed the first phase were then despatched to Stendal for a sixteen-day parachute course that included tower jumps and six descents from an aircraft, the final one a mass drop from 400 feet under battle conditions. Individuals who completed the course were then awarded the distinctive Luftwaffe metal parachute qualification badge, which depicted a diving eagle in a wreath of laurel leaves. Receiving the award was no mean feat, given that only one candidate in four passed the course. Perhaps inevitably, given the times and National Socialist leanings of the Luftwaffe, ideology also played a part in shaping the troop’s attitudes. The result was an extremely fit, highly trained, motivated, resourceful and aggressive soldier who, to an extent, reflected the nihilistic, pseudo-Nietzschean attitudes displayed by storm-troops during the First World War. This would certainly appear to be how they were viewed by the upper echelons of the Nazi regime. Hitler himself drew up ‘Ten Commandments’ for Student’s men that urged the Fallschirmjäger to consider battle as a personal fulfilment, to die rather than surrender and to be ‘...as agile as a greyhound, as tough as leather, as hard as Krupp steel...and [thus] be the German warrior incarnate’.54 Similarly, Josef Goebbels ensured that his view of the Fallschirmjäger as an icon of the new National Socialist Germany was amply reflected in the propaganda output of his Ministry, and encouraged members of his staff to volunteer for Airborne service when called up.55 This ideological edge clearly present in the official Fallschirmjäger song, which mirrored the urgings of Hitler’s Commandments, and Student’s men appear to have carried it onto the battlefield, in spite of the widespread popular British perception of them as a hard-fighting but chivalrous foe.56
Student also added an additional and novel element to his Airborne force. The Reichswehr had sponsored public sport gliding in much the same way as the Komsomol, Osoaviakhim and LOPP had sponsored civilian sport parachuting, in this instance as a means of circumventing Versailles Treaty restrictions on training military pilots. Student was involved in this work and, quickly appreciating the potential of the glider for more aggressive military purposes, he commissioned the German Research Institute for Gliding to produce a design for a troop-carrying machine. After Student had personally test-flown the prototype, the machine was accepted for service as the DFS 230. With a crew of two in tandem seats and of high-wing, tubular metal and fabric construction, the DFS 230 was thirty-seven feet long with a wingspan of around seventy-two feet, and was capable of being towed with a ton payload at speeds up to 100 miles per hour. It could carry eight fully equipped troops seated astride a central bench, who exited via two small side doors; the pilot and co-pilot exited the cockpit by jettisoning the Perspex canopy and, as a Luftwaffe warplane, the DFS 230 also sported a roof hatch mounting an MG15 machine-gun.57
Student viewed the glider not as a subsidiary to the parachute, but as a superior method for delivering troops cohesively onto specific targets with pinpoint accuracy. To that end he authorised the formation of an experimental glider unit in November 1939 codenamed Test Section Friedrichshafen, made up of Hauptmann Walther Koch’s company from I Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1, augmented with the Pionier Kompanie from II Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1 commanded by Oberleutnant Rudolf Witzig. The Section was tasked to test the glider’s utility as transport for assault engineers attacking fixed defences, in line with the original Luftwaffe concept of airborne troops as a means of striking targets too difficult for bomber aircraft. When the trials proved the viability of the concept, the Test Section was formally established as Sturmabteilung Koch, named for its commander and intended to be the elite of the German Airborne arm.58 Unlike Student’s doctrinal theorising, this development appears to have been original and it was taken up by the Soviets, who began to add glider units to their airborne units from 1940.59 The idea of using gliders was also taken up by the British and US armies when they followed the German airborne lead in 1940, although they tended toward the opposite tack and employed the glider in a secondary role to the parachute. The British, especially, employed larger machines to carry infantry or vehicles, guns and heavy equipment, with the very occasional exception. These included the ill-fated attempt to attack the German heavy water plant at Vermork in Norway in November 1942, and the spectacularly successful seizure of the Orne Canal and River bridges at Bénouville in Normandy on the eve of the Allied landings in June 1944.60
Hitler earmarked his new and as yet untried airborne force to play a leading role in his attack into the Low Countries, which he revealed to Student on 27 October 1939. The bulk of 7 Flieger and 22 Luftlande Divisions, augmented with troops from the Bataillon Brandenburg Special Forces unit, were tasked to assist the advance of Generaloberst Fedor von Bock’s Heeresgruppe B into and across Holland by seizing river crossings and vertically outflanking the Dutch defences. The first, vital step in this process was the neutralisation of the Belgian fortress at Eben Emael, which controlled the Albert Canal bridges that were to carry the German ground invasion. The mission was allotted to Sturmabteilung Koch, and may have been the catalyst for the formation of Test Section Friedrichshafen. Whether or not, Koch’s men embarked on an intensive training regime from December 1939, which included full-scale assaults on recently vacated Czechoslovak border fortifications that closely replicated the Belgian defences at Eben Emael. These practice assaults were made with live ammunition and explosives, and led to the design and fabrication of shaped charges especially configured
to penetrate thickly armoured turret cupolas.61
However, events intervened and the first operational employment of the German airborne force was actually carried out by four kompanien of Fallschirmjäger from I Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1. Hitler had ordered OKW to prepare plans for an invasion of Scandinavia on 21 February 1940, in order to secure Germany’s northern flank and supplies of Swedish iron ore. Operation Weserübung began at 04:15 on 9 April 1940, when German ground forces crossed the Danish border. Hauptmann Walther Gericke’s 4 Kompanie was to drop in platoon increments ahead of the ground advance to secure two airfields at Aalborg, and the 3,000-metre Stoerstrom bridge linking the Gedser ferry terminal and Copenhagen. Fog delayed take-off and the drop did not go in until 07:00, but both airfields surrendered to the attackers without a fight. One party under Hauptmann Gericke rapidly secured the approach to the ferry terminal and another used commandeered civilian bicycles to overtake and disarm a Danish guard detachment en route to its duty station. Another group tasked to neutralise a Danish coastal defence fort moved off from the drop zone without pausing to recover their weapon containers, opting instead to overrun the stunned Danish garrison armed only with their side arms. The small dimensions of the Junkers 52 exit door cited above prevented Fallschirmjäger jumping with anything larger than a pistol for personal protection, and rifles, machine pistols and machine-guns had to be dropped separately in containers slung beneath the aircraft. This was a significant tactical flaw that was to have serious repercussions, but in this instance it was concealed by the overall success of the Danish phase of Weserübung. Overawed by the speed and novelty of the German assault and faced with imminent attack on civilian areas by circling Luftwaffe bombers, the Danish government surrendered at 09:20 on 9 April 1940.62
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