In addition to its service in the West, the Luftwaffe operated over the Soviet Union, North Africa and Southern Europe. From late 1942, the Luftwaffe used its surplus ground support and other personnel to raise Luftwaffe Field Divisions. From 1942, Allied bombing campaigns gradually destroyed the Luftwaffe 's fighter arm. During the Battle of Britain, however, despite inflicting severe damage to the RAF's infrastructure and, during the subsequent Blitz, devastating many British cities, the German air force failed to batter the beleaguered British into submission. The Luftwaffe proved instrumental in the German victories across Poland and Western Europe in 19. The Luftwaffe also operated Fallschirmjäger paratrooper units. By the summer of 1939, the Luftwaffe had twenty-eight Geschwader (wings). Partially as a result of this combat experience, the Luftwaffe had become one of the most sophisticated, technologically advanced, and battle-experienced air forces in the world when World War II broke out in 1939. The Condor Legion, a Luftwaffe detachment sent to aid Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, provided the force with a valuable testing ground for new tactics and aircraft. With the rise of the Nazi Party and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, the Luftwaffe 's existence was publicly acknowledged on 26 February 1935, just over two weeks before open defiance of the Versailles Treaty through German re-armament and conscription would be announced on 16 March. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the Luftstreitkräfte of the Imperial Army and the Marine-Fliegerabteilung of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force.ĭuring the interwar period, German pilots were trained secretly in violation of the treaty at Lipetsk Air Base in the Soviet Union. The Luftwaffe ( German pronunciation: ( listen)) was the aerial-warfare branch of the German Wehrmacht before and during World War II.
Robert Ritter von Greim, the second and last Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe (in office: April–May 1945
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