Hitler's Commanders (36 page)

For propaganda reasons Udet was reported as having been killed in a crash while testing a new airplane. Goering wept at his funeral but later said of Udet, “He made a complete chaos out of our entire Luftwaffe program. If he were alive today, I would have no choice but to say to him: ‘You are responsible for the destruction of the German Luftwaffe!’”
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Goering’s own responsibility in this destruction, of course, was not insignificant.

As the tide of the air war turned against Germany, Hermann Goering devoted more and more of his time to pleasure-loving pursuits. He lived “the life of Riley” with his second wife (a former actress) in a huge palace (which he tastelessly dubbed Karinhall after his first wife) on his massive estate in the Schoenheide, north of Berlin. On this 10,000-acre fiefdom (which he seized from the public domain at little or no cost to himself), he set up a private game reserve stocked with elk, deer, bison, and other animals, which he frequently hunted. He also acquired a castle in Austria and other properties and spent much of his time ransacking Europe for art treasures. In fact, he was probably the greatest art thief in history, for he considered himself the last Renaissance man, and his gigantic greed matched his corpulence. The bloated Reichsmarschall ballooned to around 320 pounds and went back on drugs again in the late 1930s; he was soon taking pills by the handful. Busy acting as Reichs Hunting Master and playing dress-up with an incredible number of uniforms and decorations, he pretended to be the hard-working master of the Luftwaffe, but in fact he had long ago given in to laziness, indifference, and indolence. In reality he had very little interest in the air force, as long as no one challenged his position as its undisputed leader.

With Goering preoccupied with luxurious living and Udet out of the way, Milch succeeded the late air armaments chieftain in all his offices. Reasoning that obsolete airplanes were better than no airplanes at all, he cancelled the Me-210, He-177, and Ju-288 (B-Bomber) projects and ordered that the obsolete Me-110s and He-111s be returned to mass production. Under his ruthless but capable direction, German aircraft production figures began to rise again in 1942. However, he could not make good five years lost to incompetence and neglect. He also continued to feud with the chiefs of the General Staff (Colonel General Hans Jeschonnek and others),
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did his best to throttle the development of the jet airplane, and continued to plot to replace Hermann Goering—even to the point of suggesting to Adolf Hitler (shortly after Stalingrad) that the Reichsmarschall be relieved of his air force duties. Goering, his power and influence at a low ebb, could do nothing toward ridding himself of his deputy at this point, but neither did he forget the incident.

Erhard Milch was very slow in recognizing the potential of the jet airplane. He first saw a jet prototype fly in August 1939 (before the war began), but, like Udet, was not impressed. In 1941, however, when Professor Messerschmitt enthusiastically reported on the fine performance of his Me-262 jet prototype, Udet came out in favor of its speedy development. Milch refused to allow it, and Udet (now in decline) could do nothing about this decision. (Perhaps Milch had had enough of revolutionary aircraft types after the He-177.) A disappointed Messerschmitt continued to develop the turbojet clandestinely via a secret arrangement with BMW and Junkers. Milch did not even become marginally interested in the jet until 1943, when Lieutenant General Adolf Galland, the chief of the fighter arm, flew one and was deeply impressed. Milch respected Galland and allowed the Me-262 to be put into production, albeit at a very low priority. In August 1943, Milch announced a production goal of 4,000 fighters per month and recoiled in shock and horror when Galland recommended that 25 percent of these be jets. This reaction, Trevor Constable and Raymond Toliver wrote, “exemplified, even as it reinforced, the Technical Office climate of hesitancy and irresolution.”
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Unfortunately for Milch, he was unable to meet his ambitious production goals, and his prestige began to decline at Fuehrer Headquarters. Sensing this, Milch—like Udet before him—gambled. He ordered Volkswagen to begin mass production of the Fi-103 flying bomb even though severe technological problems had been reported in the prototypes. Two hundred defective Fi-103s were manufactured before it was discovered that their structures were too weak. More precious man-hours and resources had been wasted at a time when Germany was struggling against the combined industrial might of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. Also, Milch now faced a new threat to his position: Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer, a favorite of Adolf Hitler and a good political infighter in his own right. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Luftwaffe, Speer was making inroads into Milch’s territory—the air armaments industry—by 1943. Goering, of course, refused to try to intervene on Milch’s behalf, and Speer continued to raid the aircraft factories for skilled laborers; Milch continued to undershoot his production goals; and his stock continued to fall at Fuehrer Headquarters.

When Hitler became interested in developing the jet as a fighter-bomber, Willi Messerschmitt told him (on November 26, 1943) that the Me-262 could be modified to carry two 550-pound bombs or a single 1,100-pound bomb. Milch, fearing that his standing with the Fuehrer would be further diminished and ever mindful that Goering was only waiting for an opportunity to sack his would-be usurper, was afraid to tell the dictator that it was not possible to make these modifications; instead, he continued to develop the Me-262 as a fighter. Hitler, who had been led to believe that he was going to get a sizable number of jet fighter-bombers by D-Day, did not learn of Milch’s duplicity until May 23, 1944—only two weeks before the Allies landed in France. Justifiably furious, Hitler withdrew his protection from Milch. Goering wasted little time in stripping his deputy of his power. On May 27, the entire air armaments industry was transferred to Speer’s jurisdiction. Milch should have taken the hint and resigned at once, but he did not; therefore, on June 20, with Hitler present, Goering ordered him to submit his resignation as chief of air armaments and state secretary for aviation. This he did the following day.

Milch was allowed to retain the figurehead post of inspector general of the Luftwaffe. No doubt to the surprise and annoyance of Goering and others, Milch actually made a number of inspection trips; then, on October 1, his car skidded off the road near Arnhem and struck a tree. Milch, who woke up in the hospital, suffered three broken ribs and lung damage. He lay immobilized at his luxurious hunting lodge until early 1945.

With typical brashness, Milch showed up at Goering’s palatial home, Karinhall, uninvited, on Goering’s birthday in January 1945. He found the Reichsmarschall’s attitude toward him was most unpleasant. Three days later he found out why: a week-old letter arrived from Goering, dismissing Milch as inspector general—his last remaining post. He was transferred to the Fuehrer Reserve and not reemployed.

Hitler’s attitude toward Milch softened toward the end, and the Fuehrer even decided to put him in charge of a special staff to repair the German transportation system, but then changed his mind three days later. At the end of March 1945, Hitler sent Milch his usual birthday greetings, and the two met for the last time in the Fuehrer Bunker on April 21, nine days before the dictator committed suicide. Once again, even this late in the war, Milch was impressed with the Fuehrer’s behavior.

In the early morning hours of April 26, Milch left his hunting lodge for the last time and headed north. He had really waited too long, for he passed Soviet tanks on the road, but the field marshal drove with his lights off and was lucky enough not to be halted. He drove to Sierhagen Castle (at Neustadt, on the Baltic coast), where the British arrested him at noon on May 4. Before the day was over, a British commando ripped his marshal’s baton out of his hand and beat him to the floor with it. Like so many others on both sides, Milch was abused and tortured while in prison. Such acts were counterproductive in this case, however, because they turned Milch from a potentially friendly witness for the prosecution into a fervent defender of Hermann Goering—to spite his captors, if for no other reason.

Goering put up an excellent defense in his own behalf at Nuremberg and is praised even by his worst detractors for the mental skill he exhibited while making a certain U.S. Supreme Court Justice look foolish. This made little difference, as the end was a foregone conclusion and Goering was sentenced to death by hanging. The former World War I flying ace had one more trick up his sleeve, however; outwitting his opponents one last time, he committed suicide by taking poison at 10:40 p.m. on October 15, 1946—two hours before he would have been hanged.

Milch, meanwhile, was confined to a cell at Dachau called “the bunker.” Designed for one person, its occupants included Milch, his old enemy Kesselring, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch (who was seriously ill and who died shortly thereafter of heart failure), Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, and General of Infantry Alexander von Falkenhausen, the former military governor of Northern France and Belgium. Eventually tried at Nuremberg as a minor war criminal, Milch was convicted of deporting foreign labor to Germany, which resulted in enslavement, torture, and murder. The fact that he called the conspirators of July 20 “vermin” on the witness stand did not help his case. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and was incarcerated in the penal facility at Rehdorf. His sentence was commuted to 15 years’ imprisonment in 1951, and he was released in 1955. The former state secretary settled in Duesseldorf, where he lived with relatives and worked as an industrial consultant for the aviation division of Fiat and for the Thyssen steel combine. His taste for power politics had apparently been cured, and he never attempted to return to the limelight or hold public office again. The last surviving Luftwaffe field marshal, Erhard Milch was much more genial in his later years than he had been in the days of his power. Hospitalized in late 1971, he died at Wuppertal-Barmen on January 25, 1972.

Due to Udet’s incompetence, Goering’s laziness, and Milch’s combination of ruthless ambition, lack of foresight, and timidity in developing the new jet technology, German pilots spent most of the war flying obsolete airplanes. This makes their achievements even more remarkable.

wilhelm balthasar
was one of the earliest heroes of the Luftwaffe and an outstanding junior commander. Born in Fulda on February 2, 1914, he followed in the footsteps of his father, a captain and World War I aviator who was killed in Flanders only 10 months after the birth of his son.

Tall and thin, Balthasar was a throwback to an earlier era. He believed in chivalry and insisted that captured pilots whom he had shot down be brought to his headquarters so he could treat them to a meal and some wine and/or schnapps before they began their confinement in the POW camps. Balthasar was also known for taking care of his own young pilots (who were not much younger than he), and he had a reputation as an excellent flight instructor.

Balthasar joined the Luftwaffe in 1935 and, as a second lieutenant, first saw action in Spain in 1937, where he flew He-70 reconnaissance airplanes, obsolete He-51 fighters, and the new Me-109 fighters. He shot down his first victim, a Soviet-built Rata, on January 20, 1938. Then, in an incredible free-for-all dogfight, he shot down four adversaries in six minutes on February 7. He added two more victims to his list before he returned to Germany a short time later. There, Balthasar served as a squadron commander in the 131st Fighter Wing and in the 2nd Fighter Wing Richthofen. Shortly thereafter he first earned an international reputation as an aviator by flying around Africa (25,000 miles) in early 1939.

Balthasar did not see action in the Polish campaign but distinguished himself in France as commander of the 7th Squadron, JG 27 (see appendix V for a table of Luftwaffe unit abbreviations and designations at the wing level and below). On June 6 alone he shot down nine French airplanes, and on June 14 (the day Paris fell) he became the second member of the Air Force to receive the Knight’s Cross. Balthasar (now a captain) was Germany’s highest-scoring pilot in the Battle of France, accounting for 23 French and British airplanes in aerial combats, not counting another 13 he destroyed on the ground.

During the Battle of Britain, Balthasar was elevated to the command of III Group, JG 27. He was seriously wounded in the battles of September 4—an experience from which he never fully recovered psychologically. Nevertheless he was further elevated to wing commander on February 16, 1941, succeeding Major Helmut Wick as commander of JG Richthofen after the latter was shot down over the English Channel on November 28, 1940.
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When most of the Luftwaffe moved east in May 1941, in preparation for the invasion of Russia, the Richthofen Wing was left behind to oppose the Royal Air Force in the skies over France. Despite the increasing odds and the lingering effects of his wound, the gallant Balthasar shot down his 39th and 40th enemy airplanes on June 27.
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Meanwhile, some new Me-109F-4s arrived in France to replace the older Me-109E models. Noted for his technological expertise as well as his flying ability, the young wing commander did not like the new version of the standard German fighter because of its weak wings and aileron flutterings, among other things. Characteristically, Balthasar decided to test-fly the new airplanes himself. On July 3 he was making lazy turns and rolls near Hazebrouck (a town not far from Aire) when he was jumped by several British Spitfires. Balthasar immediately took evasive actions and engaged them in aerial combat, but suddenly his Messerschmitt plunged to the ground, killing him instantly. A subsequent investigation found that there were no bullet holes in his airplane; one of his wings had collapsed during the stress of combat.

At the time of his death, Wilhelm Balthasar had shot down 40 enemy aircraft (excluding the seven in the Spanish Civil War). He had already been awarded (but had not yet received) the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross. Shortly thereafter he was posthumously promoted to the rank of major. Honoring one of his last wishes, his men (after some searching) buried him in a cemetery near Abbeville, in the plot next to his father—a man he never knew but in whose footsteps he had followed—all the way to the grave.