Was the luftwaffe really apolitical or not? Does a "clean luftwaffe" thing exist?

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There is no doubt that the Luftwaffe was a political animal, and its operation in large measure dictated by politics.

If for no other reason, consider the leadership of the Luftwaffe. Hitler was both Head of State and head of the armed forces. That makes all of the armed forces, from highest general to lowliest private part of the political structure. This was reinforced by the oath of allegiance all soldiers were forced to take. This wed all soldiers to the fuhrer, and forced them to follow his exhortations with unthinking loyalty. Not that the overwhelming majority of soldiers needed any goading. For the most part they were enthusiastic supporters of the regime.

I would say in passing that all military of all nations were political beasts. Some more partisan than other, some more active players than other, but all political beasts just the same. Internecine politics comes to the forefront most clearly in interservice battles. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Luftwaffe. During 1943 the Luftwaffe was able to release a large amount of manpower. This was because the reich flak defences were no longer fully manned by regular soldiers. most of the guns were operated by the workers from that time to the end of the war. The heer was suffering acute shortages of manpower and wanted to use this manpower to restore manning levels in about 40 shattered heer divisions. If the heer's wishes had been accepted, that drafted manpower would have received great benefit from the experienced cadres that remained in the depleted divisions. The Luftwaffe leadership, however, refused to agree to that plan, with goring not wanting the 'purity" of the manpower under their command being tainted by the heer. Utter political claptrap in other words. The results were that the LW formed its own divisions, the Luftwaffe Field divisions, which had enormous resources expended to form them, and proved to be very poor in the field, due to the lack of experience in land combat in their formations. The LW field divs proved utterly unreliable and useless. Most were broken up and the manpower re-integrated into the army, as had been the original intention.
 
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I don't remember reading any in depth study of how the citizens of London in 1940-41 felt about LW pilots philosophy be it clean or not clean.
 

I'd say that whatever sins Kriegsmarine had...they should have been forgiven in 1945 when thousands civilian lives were saved by German Navy.
And it reminded me Russian Imperial Navy "grand finale". Pompous, corrupted and mostly ineffective, - but they carried almost 150 000 away from the Bolshevists terror in November 1920. And so they earned their honourable place in history. Sometimes the final act matters the most. In my humble opinion...
 
My father admired Captain Langsdorf of the Graf Spee, he met veterans of the Battle of the River Plate later in the war.
 



Absolutely not. DKM is often painted as being saintlier than thou, but in reality it was probably as ruthless as the two other major services. Possibly only the SS was worse but its debateable.

As an example, in 1939, at the outbreak of the war, every foreign merchant ship in german ports and anywhere that the Kriegsmarine could reach (generally in the Baltic) were illegally seized and pressed into german service (after being reflagged). the cargoes were confiscated, Anyone of Jewish descent disappeared most of the remaining crews were interned for the duration (There was one exception when a seized US ship was commandeered then released, 1939-40) . This applied to all nationalitiesd, including future allies like Italy. Sweden nearly went to war over the issue. There were many instances of German warships unlawfully entering the territorial waters of neutrals (like Sweden) and essentially pirating ships working in those waters. Much is made of the British decision to mine the Norwegian leads in 1940. However, what is omitted from that narrative is that from the beginning of the war, Germany was laying mines in Danish and Swedish territorial waters and not declaring that they had. They later did the same thing in Dutch waters. DKM S-Bootes on more than one occasions sliced Danish, Dutch and Swedish fishing smacks in half. One of the S-Boote commanders spent a lengthy time in gaol after the war over that incident.


The Germans repeatedly flouted the accepted rules of engagement applicable to naval warfare. They quickly ramped up the attacks by U-Boats to unrestricted attacks. which irked the neutrals, but was overall was probably reasonable. However, what is not reasonable is that unrestricted attacks were supposed to be restricted to what are known as "declared areas" …..specific pieces of ocean. Outside those declared areas the uboats were supposed to observe the normal stop and search rules. They seldom did that, resulting in close to 5 million tons of neutral shipping placing itself under the protection of the RN . This included a good deal of Italian shipping incidentally . and fishing iaslnThe Germans .

And of course finally there was the notorious "open fire and sink" any lifeboats they came across . Commenced in the latter part of 1941, it incensed the neutrals, just in time for the US entry. funnily enough, I can understand why this order was given.....several uboats were lost after lifeboats reported Uboat positions, course and speed. As I recall, one U-Boat was lost because of that information. Still illegal and still an atrocity.

So no, even though the evacuation work done in East Prussia was very brave, it doesn't "clean the slate" for me. DKM had illegal (and unnecessarily so) blood allover it by wars end


This Day in the War in Europe: The Beginning
 
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Let's look a little closer at that interesting statement "open fire and sink".

When the SS Laconia was sunk by U-156 (in 1942, by the way), they went to great lengths to rescue the survivors.
Assisting U-156, was U-506, U-507 and the Italian sub Cappellini.

The four subs had survivors above and below decks and had survivors under tow in lifeboats. They tried to notify the Allies of the situation and were heading towards the African coast to get the survivors safely to surface ships that were heading out to rendezvous. They had had Red-Cross banners displayed, too.
But they were attacked by Allied ASW bombers resulting in a great deal of the survivors being lost.

It was THIS incident, in 1942, that caused Doenitz to forbid the U-Boats from rendering assistance ever again (aptly called the "Laconia Order). Period.

Prior to this, U-Boats did render assistance to their victims when prudent and I should also mention that unrestricted Submarine warfare was conducted by the USN in the Pacific.
 
Uboats before the Laconia would sometimes lend assistance, but not always and not often. there were a number of occasions before the Laconia where not only did they not offer assistance, they engaged in outright murder of survivors there was no formal order to do this until mid-war, but it happened. Japanese often did the same.

There is no legal reason to offer assistance to combatants, and for british flagged ships even merchant ships, or even neutral shipping travelling under the protection of the RN, I think it reasonable, or justifiable for the Germans to attack merchant shipping and the crews in those circumstances. It was not legal to do so at the time, but morally I think the germans had a case.

The atrocity that can be laid at DKMs feet, in the best traditions of Mei Lei, and still would even today, was that neutral shipping not sailing under the protection of the RN and outside the declared area, displaying the correct neutrality symbols would still be sunk (often) without warning. Less regularly, but still often enough to be concerning, the uboat having carried out this illegal attack, would then surface and kill as many of the crews as they could. it depended on the commanding officer. Someone like Langsdorf never engaged in that behaviour (but Langsdorf was seen as a bad commander by DKM, even before the scuttling, so it was the Langsdorfs that were the exception within DKM), but enough of the younger generally Nazi inspired Uboat commanders would show no moral compass and no mercy even to neutrals operating away from the war zones. you cant say that is the product of an organisation with its values completely screwed up.

Submarine Atrocities
 
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I'll just point out that the Luftwaffe was an entirely Nazi construct. It had no longstanding previous traditions to draw upon like the Heer and Kriegsmarine and it had never been a part of either like other independent air forces.

It was an entirely political organisation run in the 1930s by the second most powerful politician (real terms) in Nazi Germany.

Cheers

Steve
 
parsifal said:
DKM is often painted as being saintlier than thou, but in reality it was probably as ruthless as the two other major services. Possibly only the SS was worse but its debateable.
Click to expand...
Maybe British Bomber Command was more ruthless. After all, BC and SS purpose was killing civilians only.
 
"... an entirely Nazi construct. It had no longstanding previous traditions to draw upon like the Heer"
I think the Luftwaffe attempted to reconstruct the air warrior culture of the Red Baron fighter squadron(s) ... Udet, Goering, Air Marshall von Richtoffen to just name the obvious.
All air forces were young institutions ... the promotion of Walther Wever, a successful and ambitious Heer officer, to leadership brought a wealth of Heer trafitions to the new service. Air Power, after WW1, was a political factor in all European countries and those like the US and the Commonwealth that had participated in WW1. The Panzer Corps were equally 'poilitical' but shared the same espirit de corps culture.
 
There is no proven case of a U-Boat machine-gunning survivors, unless you want to count the movie U-571 as a legitimate incident.

Here is a VERY well written article regarding the myth and offers a great many examples that run contrary to the claim. It even touches on the fact that the Kriegsmarine did not use the party salute until forced to do so after the assassination attempt on Hitler, in '44. Also be sure to examine the list of sources offered at the end.

uboat.net - Articles
 

I agree, but the Luftwaffe was unique in being the construct of a particular regime. All other air forces were either part of an army or navy or had recently become independent of one. In the case of the Luftwaffe it was staffed by many who were not airmen at all, but even senior operational commanders had largely grown up under the Nazi regime.

I've always wondered why the Luftwaffe was the only service to wear a necktie. It was a distinguishing feature and undoubtedly deliberate.

Cheers

Steve
 

famous Hitler quote:

... 'I have a reactionary Army, a National Socialist Air Force, and a Christian Navy,' ...
 
Great find and excellent article. I found it interesting that the allied sailors mostly credit the U boat crews with time to escape. Also the author correctly points out that Hollywood has made everything German a "Nazi" organization...again.
 
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