James S Corum. Journal of Strategic Studies. Volume 27, Issue 1. March 2004.
Rearming Germany was a long and complicated process. It was especially difficult to create a new German air force. The army generals who dominated the Bundeswehr cadre did not even want an air force but rather a small arm air corps. Moreover, Adenauer’s defense staff failed to adequately budget or plan for a new air force. As rearmament began, US Air Force leaders, working closely with the small Luftwaffe staff in West Germany’s shadow Defense Ministry, basically took charge of the process to ensure that the Germans built a new Luftwaffe on the American model—a large, multipurpose force organized as an independent service and fully integrated into NATO. The first Bundesluftwaffe commanders allied themselves to the Americans, often in opposition to their army comrades, to overcome the political problems caused by Adenauer’s poor defense planning and create a modern air force on American lines.
When West Germany committed itself to rearmament in the 1950s it faced tremendous difficulties in terms of financing, equipping, manning and training an entirely new armed forces. In building the Bundeswehr, the most complex set of problems was in creating a modern air force—virtually from scratch. By the late 1950s a modern German air force had finally emerged from the process, although well behind the planned schedule. In its early years, the Bundesluftwaffe experienced more than its share of growing pains. This article aims to examine the political, technical and personnel problems in the creation of the German air force during 1950-60 and especially the central role, the US Air Force played in the organization, equipment and doctrine of the new force. Although certainly not a failed enterprise, the founding of the new German Air Force was accompanied by considerable confusion, friction and inefficiency at the top levels of government. Indeed, some very strong debates about the nature of the new armed forces would take place among the German military planners as the Americans, in particular, worked to influence and direct the development of the German forces. Some of the issues brought up at the time of German rearmament have been with us ever since. Indeed, many current characteristics of German military culture and differences among the services can be noted from the founding of the Bundeswehr. By looking at the early years of the Bundeswehr, and in particular the German Air Force, one can hope to come to a better understanding of the development of German military policy and the manner in which the Luftwaffe became the most ‘Americanized’ of the three German armed forces.
Early Conceptions of an Air Force—The Himmerod Conference
With the Berlin Crisis of 1948-49, the founding of NATO and the establishment of the Bundesrepublik in 1949 German rearmament became a critical issue for the Western alliance. It would be impossible to meet NATO defense goals without a major German rearmament program. Konrad Adenauer started thinking about Germany’s defense relationships with his accession as the Bundesrepublik’s chancellor in 1949. A small military advisory group, headed by Count Schwerin began discussions about Germany’s military role in Western Europe. The invasion of South Korea by Soviet-supplied forces made European defense and German rearmament especially urgent issues. In October 1950, with Adenauer’s blessing, a group of 15 former Wehrmacht senior officers acting as military advisers to the Federal Government met for several days at Kloster Himmerod in the Eifel Mountains to develop a program for German rearmament within the context of the Western Alliance. The Himmerod Conference, chaired by General a.D. Adolf Heusinger (who became the first Generalinspekteur of the Bundeswehr), can be counted as the ‘Magna Carta’ of the Bundeswehr and laid the foundations for developing an armed forces for a democratic West Germany. The officers at the conference, mostly former army officers (Retired General der Flieger Robert Knauss was the only Luftwaffe officer there), outlined a plan for an army of approximately 12 divisions—all fully armored and mechanized units with the best equipment available and able to fight the kind of mechanized maneuver warfare at which the Germans had excelled in World War II. The navy would be a small force designed for defense of the Baltic and North Seas.
The officers proposed developing a German air force to be equipped with American aircraft. They rejected the old Luftwaffe’s squadron and wing organization and recommended copying the American air force logistical and organizational structure. This made sense because if the new Luftwaffe were to be equipped by the Americans, maintaining the same unit structure as Americans would simplify the logistics support that the new Luftwaffe would undoubtedly need. Up to this point, the Himmerod proposals meshed with American thinking on airpower. However, the central proposal for a new German air force was radically different from British and American views on airpower. The former officers proposed a plan for a German air force of approximately 831 aircraft with 180 reconnaissance planes, 279 fighter-bombers and 372 interceptors that would serve as the army’s air corps rather than as a truly independent service. Air groups would be directly attached to the army divisions and corps and under direct army command—a view anathema to both British and American air war doctrine. Moreover, the proposed air corps would not be a balanced force capable of strike missions and air defense. The role of the air force in national air defense was virtually ignored by the German planners who assumed that the air defense of Germany mission would be primarily handled by the air forces of the Western Powers.
In drawing up a proposal for a new air force, one of the consistent concerns of the former officers was the need to assign German air units to the exclusive support of German army units. General Heusinger and the former army officers argued that insurmountable language difficulties that would arise if German forces were placed in a multinational command. German air force pilots dedicated to supporting the army and under German army command would only have to speak German and operational mistakes typical of coalition operations would thereby be avoided.
Adenauer accepted the Himmerod conference proposals as a basis for rearmament planning. In the same month he fired his very capable military adviser, Count Schwerin, who made the mistake of talking too openly about rearmament plans to the press and frankly admitting that a new German armed forces would have to reestablish conscription. Although Schwerin was simply being sensible and honest, it was impolitic to talk about conscription at this time. Adenauer replaced Schwerin with a member of the Bundestag, Theodor Blank, as coordinator for all defense-related issues. Officially, Blank’s title was Der Beauftragte des Bundeskanzlers für die mit vemehrung der Allierten Truppen Zusammenhangenden Fragen (Plenipotentiary for the Federal Chancellor for Questions Concerning the Reinforcement of Allied Troops). Since this title was even too windy for a German bureaucrat, Blank’s bureau was simply referred to as ‘Amt Blank’. Blank was seen as Adenauer’s shadow defense minister and began building a defense ministry staff to work with the Allied Powers and Bundestag to prepare the groundwork for German rearmament. Blank was not a former officer and was on the left of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU). He was not known for being in Adenauer’s inner circle and, as something of a liberal outsider, was seen as likely to gain SPD support for rearmament. A military department of mostly former officers was functioning in Bonn under Blank’s direction by early 1951.
Through 1950 and 1951, the US government negotiated quietly with Bonn on rearmament policy. Ideas of completely demilitarizing Germany, popular in Germany and which had some appeal to the major NATO powers, were strongly opposed by the United States at the Four Power conferences. The United States had dramatically increased its force commitment to Europe at the start of the Korean War—indeed, more US troops were sent to Europe in 1950-53 than were sent to Korea. Although the United States had increased its force levels in NATO from one to five divisions in the early 1950s there were clear political limits to putting more US ground forces in Europe. On the air force side of the European buildup the growth in US forces was impressive. In June 1950, at the start of the Korean War the USAFE (US Air Force Europe) had 15,146 military personnel assigned, supported by 19,425 civilian employees. By June 1953, the air force in Europe had grown to 84,602 military personnel. Adding civilian employees the total was over 100,000 air force personnel. During 1951 the US Air Force staff drew up plans to put 28 aircraft wings into Europe by 1954 with a force of 185,000 military and civilian personnel assigned to the US Air Force Europe, a force increase of almost 600 per cent from 1950. In fact, the USAF would not realize this figure and USAF strength in Europe peaked with 91,000 officers and airmen, 5,159 US civilians and 39,882 foreign national civilians. With such a large US commitment to Europe, Presidents Truman, and later Eisenhower, along with the US Senate, strongly insisted that the Europeans also take up a greater burden for their own defense. From 1956 on the US policy was to pare the defense budget and cut back conventional forces from the high point of the Korean War. This meant encouraging the West German government to rearm and leading the way in negotiations with other NATO powers to grant approval to German rearmament.
One central figure in the creation of the Bundesluftwaffe was General Lauris Norstad, who served as the commander US and Central European NATO air forces from 1950 to 1956 and as NATO supreme commander from 1956 to 1962. As building up an effective Allied air force in Europe’s vulnerable central front (Germany) was a top priority for NATO and a key part of US deterrence strategy, Norstad took a keen interest in every aspect of German aerial rearmament. Throughout his tenure as US air commander and as NATO commander, Norstad worked to influence the organization, training, equipment and doctrine of the Bundesluftwaffe. Having an impressive résumé as a senior air force planner and staff officer during World War II, and having played a key role in developing the organization, roles and missions for the newly independent US Air Force in 1946-49, Norstad was especially qualified to influence the creation of a modern German air force.
Norstad had a well-deserved reputation as one of America’s leading strategists and military politicians. During his 12 years in NATO, he simultaneously played the role of senior American commander as well as senior Allied commander. While pushing his own very American perspective on the Europeans, he also tried to represent European views to the US government. Throughout the early years of the Bundesluftwaffe, Lauris Norstad employed his considerable political and diplomatic skills in providing advice and direction for the new air force.
Norstad arrived in Germany as USAF commander in February 1951 just as the military command structure of NATO was taking shape. In December 1950 the NATO Council had appointed General Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. In February the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was set up and SHAPE assumed control over all of the forces assigned by member nations to defense of NATO territory. Norstad assumed two hats and two staffs under the new command structure. At SHAPE headquarters in Paris he was CINCAAFCE (Commander in Chief Allied Air Forces Central Europe) and at the USAF European headquarters in Wiesbaden he held the post of CINCUSAFE (Commander in Chief US Air Force Europe). Under both offices he was directly involved in issues concerning developing a German air force.
The concept of a German air force as an army-controlled support force advocated by the former officers at the Himmerod Conference was completely unacceptable to Norstad and the USAF leadership. The views on air power expressed by the former army officers at Himmerod were called ‘the doctrine of a defeated enemy’ and ‘naïve’ by the USAF staff. Norstad had been with the US Army Air Forces in North Africa in 1942 when the Americans had tied their air units to army commanders precisely in the same manner as proposed by General Heusinger.
The failure of this system forced the Americans to revise their air doctrine and place air units under the central command of air commanders who would cooperate with, but not be directly tied to, the army. For the USAF, flexibility was the greatest advantage to air power. Because of the range and speed of aircraft, air units could be dispatched to operate all across a war theater as needed—able to mass aircraft for decisive effects at the order of the theater commander. Norstad and the USAF staff wanted to see a large German air force which would have full equality with the other services and be capable of a variety of missions including air defense, tactical transport and tactical interdiction as well as close support of the army. The American concept of a German air force emphasized its flexibility and full integration into the two Allied tactical air forces in Germany and able to provide air support to any NATO mission along the entire front.
Norstad was concerned about the direction of German defense thinking on airpower and in July 1952 wrote to General Thomas White, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff (later USAF chief of staff) for permission to form an Air Force permanent military assistance group to Amt Blank to replace the system of informal contacts that already existed. Norstad pointed out that a primary motivation for a more formal relationship was to influence German rearmament planning. Of German air force rearmament planning Norstad wrote, ‘One of our greatest concerns in the matter has been in seeing that the German Air Force, when it is formed, is patterned along lines that will permit its effective use as part of the defense forces of the Western Powers rather than see it parceled out by direct assignment to ground units for limited objectives. We have been disturbed that this might happen unless qualified advisers were on hand to work directly with the Germans in their early planning’.
In February 1951, the USAF War Plans Division prepared a study of German aerial rearmament for General Norstad. It outlined a German air force with at least 750 front line combat aircraft for air defense and ground attack. At least ten fighter wings should be organized and the German air force equipped by the United States under a military aid program. The training of German air force personnel should take place outside of Germany. At this point, Germans and American military staffs were working on parallel courses as the only official coordination and contact was at the highest political levels. The military planners in Amt Blank were not authorized to communicate directly with their American and Allied military counterparts even to share vital information about equipment capabilities or discuss shared logistical concerns.
In April 1951 the first official German proposals on developing an air force for the Bundesrepublik were set forth at the Allied Rearmament Conference sponsored by the NATO Council and held in Bonn. The German air rearmament proposals were set forth by former army Generals Heusinger and Speidel. The German planners outlined a German proposal for an air force of 1,900 first line aircraft including fighters, fighter-bombers, reconnaissance planes and light bombers with the largest part of the force to consist of fighter-bombers for ground support. The USAF tables of organization would be copied and the fully mobilized force would consist of about 88,000 personnel, including 3,000 flight personnel. The air force would be parceled out and flying units would be assigned to specific divisions and corps of the army. The last part of the plan, as one might expect, met with strong opposition from the USAF.
Bundesheer and Bundesluftwaffe—Differing Views on Military Doctrine in the 1950s
From the very beginning of the formal rearmament process in 1950 the German army and air force staffs demonstrated consistently different attitudes towards adopting American organization, equipment and tactics. Indeed, these attitudes have persisted to the present day.
In forming plans for equipping, training and organizing the German army units, the Bundesheer generally rejected US Army organization, equipment and tactical doctrine. As rearmament plans were finalized, the army planners consistently found fault with the US Army’s infantry weapons, especially the American rifles and machine guns. These, the former officers observed, were still of World War II pattern and were generally obsolete, indeed inferior to the weapons the Germans had developed during 1939-45. American tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment were all criticized by Amt Blank’s army members as outdated and generally unsuitable for the German Army. Although the new German Army would acquire a significant amount of American equipment in its first years, as soon as possible the German Army equipped itself with German-made equipment that they argued was superior to the equipment of the US Army. German army divisions were organized in a significantly different manner from the US divisions and German army tactical doctrine, while conforming to NATO and the United States at the operational level, differed considerably from American and British practice at the tactical level. In short, the new West German army did not feel any need to copy American practice and never viewed itself as a junior partner of the US Army.
The West German Air Force had, from the earliest planning days, exhibited a very different attitude towards its American counterpart. At the beginning of the rearmament planning the small group of air force planners came to the conclusion that the practical way that Germany could develop a sizeable and modern air force was to copy the equipment, tactics, training and organization of another air force, and clearly, the best model was the USAF. In the early years almost all of the Bundesluftwaffe’s equipment would be American. Indeed, the Luftwaffe’s first leaders were frankly eager to copy the American model. Luftwaffe air groups would be organized on American lines and the American training system would be adopted in toto.
There were two reasons for the different relationships of the two services towards their respective American services. The first was psychological. The former army officers who built the Bundesheer did not feel any inferiority towards their American counterparts. The attitude was generally that the German army of World War II had been, man for man and unit for unit, the better army. They believed that German training, tactics, unit leadership and equipment had been generally superior in battle and that the German army had suffered defeat primarily due to the overwhelming superiority in numbers of men and material of the Allied forces. Therefore, they needed little coaching or foreign tutelage in forming, training and equipping a modern mechanized army.
There was, indeed, a strong basis in fact for the views of the former army officers. Many in the American army agreed that the German army had performed superbly on the battlefield and had indeed been superbly professional at the tactical level of war. In fact, immediately after the war the US Army employed several dozen German generals to write monographs on specific campaigns and on their combat lessons, many of which were published and greatly influenced US Army doctrine. After all, the German army had acquired four years of experience in fighting the Soviets and the US Army was eager to learn from the German experience.
The attitude of the early Bundesluftwaffe officers towards their war experience was quite different. The Luftwaffe had been decisively defeated in the air over Europe long before the end of the World War and by 1943 the Luftwaffe had lost the ability to provide effective support to the ground armies. By early 1944 the Luftwaffe had lost air superiority over Germany that allowed the Allies free to bomb any target in the Reich with relatively low losses. While the Germans had been the first to fly jets in combat, most of the Luftwaffe pilots were flying clearly inferior aircraft by the end of the war. The former Luftwaffe officers of Amt Blank knew that in the years since the end of the World War aerial warfare had been almost completely transformed. A variety of aircraft-delivered atomic bomb been developed by the Russians and Americans, and by the end of the Korean War the USAF had become an almost all jet air force. Even the few German pilots who had flown the Me 262 in the latter part of World War II knew that their experience was largely irrelevant in the technological terms of the 1950s. The Americans had already gone through two generations of jet aircraft technology and were ready to field their third generation of jets (the F-100 Century series) at the end of the Korean War. Development had begun on a fourth generation of jets (F-104, F-4) by the mid-1950s. In short, the former Luftwaffe officers realized that the only way they could catch up technologically and to learn how to fight a modern air war would be to copy the Americans.
Another reason for the different attitudes of the German army and air force towards the US military model was economic. By the mid-1950s German industry had recovered from the war and the economy was booming. It would not be difficult for German firms to produce high quality modern arms for the army. For example, the vehicle industry had grown rapidly in the 1950s and was capable of producing superior armored vehicles, trucks and jeeps of German design and manufacture by mid-decade. If the Bundeswehr might at first require some surplus US weaponry to equip its first units, this situation would not last for long. By 1960, German industry was able to produce prototypes of the superb Leopard I battle tank and a missile-armed tank destroyer.
However, the German aircraft industry had not yet recovered from World War II. Under strict postwar regulation by the occupying powers, the German aircraft firms that survived in the early 1950s were small operations that produced small quantities of light utility planes. The German aviation industry might be able, in a few years, be able to build basic jet trainers and transport aircraft. However, the West German aviation industry in the early 1950s had neither the capital, trained workers, plant capacity or research facilities to build modern jet aircraft. Moreover, the German aviation industry was generations behind the Americans and British in terms of designing and building modern planes. At first, and for the foreseeable future, the new West German air force would be almost completely dependent upon buying aircraft from its allies. There was an option for building planes under license in Germany, although Germany’s first major attempt to produce combat aircraft at home (F-104 Starfighter) was handled very poorly by the defense ministry.
This left the Luftwaffe with buying American aircraft as the only realistic course. The British, to be sure, had developed some superb fighter aircraft in the late 1940s and early 1950s (the Venom and the Hawker Hunter) that would have served Germany’s needs quite well. One 1951 report by the USAF Staff pointed out that the British Venom fighter best suited German requirements. However, the major issue for the rearmament planners was the capacity of British and European aviation manufacturers to provide aircraft in the requisite numbers. The American staff officers were unsure of whether the British could produce several hundred jet fighters in a short time. But the American aircraft industry, thanks to the increase in fighter production brought by the Korean War, was able to promise a large number of modern jet fighters to be delivered in a short (24-36 month) timeframe. Yet even this would require setting up extra factory shifts. Although there was considerable pressure to ‘buy European’ from the Defense Ministry, this was usually resisted by the Luftwaffe officers who preferred a single source of supply which simplified maintenance and logistics.
The Pleven Plan and Delay in German Rearmament
While Adenauer and the Americans were ready and willing to begin planning for German rearmament in late 1950, the rearmament issue was placed in political limbo in October 1950 when the French Prime Minister, René Pleven, announced his government’s plan for German rearmament. The Pleven Plan, as it came to be known, called for the creation of a supranational European army in which a German army and air force would be organized and incorporated into multinational European divisions and corps. The European army would be under the command of the European Union. From the American, British and German standpoints, the Pleven Plan was unacceptable because it would require a long delay in rearming Germany. The military arm of the European Union had not been formed and it would take considerable time to negotiate a command system and agree on joint national policies. However, NATO had been formed in 1949 and already possessed a command structure and a set of common defense policies and goals. In the Fall of 1950, the Americans saw the rearmament of Germany in urgent terms as the Korean War had broken out and the need to immediately build a strong deterrent in Europe seemed obvious. Whatever the merits of the Pleven Plan, implementing it would take too long in contrast to building new German armed forces within the context of NATO. In addition, the senior commanders of the US military distrusted French plans and intentions. While publicly hailing the French plan US Secretary of State Dean Acheson privately condemned it as ‘hopeless’. Although some senior US officers expressed some very lukewarm support for the idea, General Omar Bradley, chairman of the American joint chiefs of staff, rejected the Pleven Plan immediately.
The American and British governments preferred to see national armies, each with its own complete command, logistics and training structure, organized into divisions and corps and capable of major operations. In the case of Germany, the British and Americans wanted to see a national army of approximately 12 divisions backed up by a strong air force able to play a major role in European defense. The German forces would be committed to NATO and under NATO command. For Adenauer and his military advisers, the issue of German sovereignty was central and a national German army as an equal partner in NATO seemed the best course. It was going to be a hard pull in the Bundestag to get acceptance for rearmament from the SPD. To rearm, but then to place the German forces under French or European command might have lost Adenauer the support of the CDU, which remained suspicious of French motives and preferred the NATO approach.
Even though the French plan was rejected almost out of hand by the British, Americans and Germans, France had the power under the Four Power Agreement to insist that its proposal be discussed by NATO and the Allied Powers. Since France had veto powers over German rearmament issues, the British, Americans and Germans were forced to spend the next three years trying to negotiate with the French to drop their proposals.
Opening USAF-German Air Force Relations
With German rearmament issues stuck at the top levels of the European Defense Community and NATO, there was no framework to allow direct military-to-military contact between the staff of Amt Blank and the US forces in Germany. The first actual contact came from an informal memo from the chief of the German air-planning group in Amt Blank, Colonel Eschenauer, to the staff of US Air Force Europe at Wiesbaden in November 1951. Eschenauer wanted to initiate meetings with the Americans to discuss the reconstruction of airfields, deployment of German air units and training for the new air force. In fact, this is the first inkling that the Americans had that Amt Blank had an air staff. The Americans were delighted with the idea of direct contact with their German counterparts. However, both sides had to be discrete because the US forces were not officially authorized to set up direct contacts with the German military staff. It was a classic ‘Catch 22’ situation. Until a formal plan for rearmament could be agreed upon between the Allied powers and Germany official military to military contacts were out of the question as Germany did not yet have any armed forces recognized under law. On the other hand, how could Germany and the Allies come up with anything resembling a coherent rearmament plan unless the military experts exchanged ideas and information and examined proposals?
In early 1952, the USAFE commander appointed several officers under Colonel Franklin Schroeck of the Operations Section to be responsible for liaison and planning with the Germans. The Americans wanted simply to send a liaison team to Bonn to work with the air planners of Amt Blank. However, since this was politically unacceptable, covert means of establishing German-American contact were examined. At first, the idea of establishing German American liaison under the cover of a historical research program was discussed. Finally, a solution was reached in the first meeting of the German air force planners with the Americans at the USAFE headquarters on 8 January 1952. Since both sides were liable to get in trouble with the French for having official contact channels, the Americans and Germans agreed to a series of ‘informal’ meetings in which the German air force planning team would visit USAFE headquarters and ‘informally discuss’ air rearmament issues.
From this point, German and American airmen met fairly regularly. One of the major concerns of the US airmen was the plan to subordinate the German air force to the army. This concept, noted General Landon of the USAFE staff in a memo to General Norstad, was probably being reinforced by the US Army advisers assigned to the US High Commissioner’s office. ‘… the only formal contact the Germans have had with US military forces has been through the High Commissioner’s office to his advisers, who are army officers from EUCOM (European Command). We have feared, and some of our early reports concerning the overall plans being formulated by the Germans have indicated, a possibility of subordination of the air arm to ground control to an undesirable degree.’
In the meantime, General Norstad tried in 1952 to get formal US government approval for the creation of a USAF military assistance group to be assigned to coordinate military liaison with the German government, the USAF and the European Defense Community Planning group. Given the delicate political situation, the Air Force turned down Norstad’s request and the American and German air force planners continued to meet informally. The informal meetings were temporarily suspended in early 1952 when the French government got wind of US/German discussions and insisted that all German rearmament issues had to be discussed through the European Defense Community Interim Commission. The issue went to Washington where the Air Force chief of staff was told that the USAFE staff had been meeting informally for some time and some very useful preliminary planning had been accomplished. In July 1952 General Norstad expressed his concerns to the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff, General Tommy White ‘One of our greatest concerns in this matter has been in seeing that the German Air Force, when it is formed, is patterned along lines that will permit its effective use as part of the defense forces of the Western Powers rather than see it parceled out by direct assignment to ground units for limited objectives. We have been disturbed that this might happen unless qualified advisers were on hand to work directly with the Germans in their early planning.’
Faced with strong arguments from Norstad and his staff, Washington decided not to give in to the French protests. Since only formal military contacts outside the context of the European Defense Community Commission were forbidden, then the informal contacts could continue. In fact, the informal German/American staff contacts continued and increased in frequency and in the variety of subjects discussed through 1952 and 1953. The small Luftwaffe staff of Amt Blank trooped over to the USAFE headquarters on a monthly basis to ‘informally’ discuss planning issues with the American air staff. While German and American air force officers were able to carry out some of the basic planning for rearmament, the effort remained hampered by political restrictions imposed by the European Defense Community, and bureaucratic restrictions imposed by NATO and the US Defense Department. For example, air defense planning required developing an extensive communications and radar network. Yet security regulations precluded sharing classified information about Allied aircraft control and warning centers to the German planners. Finally in December 1953, at the urging of USAFE, the Air Force staff granted an exemption to the security regulations and allowed the USAFE planners to share classified defense information with accredited German military personnel.
Despite slow progress on the political front, the USAF realized one of its primary goals in supporting the Amt Blank air planning staff. By August 1952 the American military observers at the European Defense Community Commission were told that Amt Blank had dropped the concept of creating the Luftwaffe as an army air corps and that it had decided that any future Luftwaffe would be a fully independent service and would be fully integrated into Allied air operations.
Finalizing the Defense Plans
By 1953 it was evident that the Pleven Plan was getting nowhere and that German rearmament would take the form of a national force within NATO. Through 1953 and early 1954 the various restrictions on direct military to military contacts were dropped. In November 1953 the cadre for a US military assistance group was formed in European Command with USAF representatives and charged with direct liaison with Amt Blank, which had grown to about 800 personnel at this time. In the summer of 1954 the US military assistance group to Germany was moved to Bonn to work on a daily basis with Amt Blank to finalize German rearmament plans.
Blank and his staff developed a series of final plans, based on NATO’s Lisbon Conference 1952 force requirements, to mobilize an army of 12 divisions, an air force of approximately 20 wings with more than 1,300 first line aircraft (fighter-bombers, interceptors, reconnaissance and transports) as well as several hundred training aircraft, and a small navy of a destroyers, minesweepers and patrol boats. Blank and his staff proposed a four and a half year rearmament period to build the Bundeswehr to full strength. Adenauer rejected this plan out of hand and insisted upon a three-year rearmament program. Adenauer’s unrealistic demand put Blank and his staff under enormous pressure to speed up what was already an overwhelming task. It is little wonder that the rearmament program not only failed to meet its goals, but came very close to collapse.
As Germany prepared to enter NATO as a full partner in 1955, it was clear to the American military that the most difficult part of German rearmament was building a new German air force. The army already had a cadre of well-trained former Wehrmacht officers and NCOs under arms in the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Police). Moreover, Amt Blank had already carefully examined the records of hundreds of former professional soldiers for ties to Nazism and had cleared them as politically reliable. The only thing the army would need to build effective units would be the acquisition of heavy equipment and American training teams to instruct German cadres in the operation and maintenance of equipment procured from the US. The Bundesmarine was in the best position for rearmament. The American and Royal Navies after World War II had maintained several minesweeping flotillas manned by former German navy officers and NCOs. This meant that the Bundesmarine could start out with several dozen ships and a cadre of personnel fully trained in ship handling and naval operations.
However, the only cadre for a German air force, aside from the small air staff in Amt Blank, was German employees of the USAF. To be sure, the USAF in Germany employed and trained thousands of German workers in airfield support operations such as air traffic control, as firemen, air base engineers, mechanics and machinists. Many Germans would be transferred to become civilian employees of the Bundeswehr. However, these were support positions. The Luftwaffe had no cadre of pilots trained in high performance jets nor were there Germans trained in the current radar systems or electronic gear—without which an air force cannot function. Not only would the air force have to acquire all new equipment, the personnel operating the equipment would have to undergo a long training period to operate effectively.
General Norstad made building a new Luftwaffe a top priority for the US Air Force in Europe. In 1954-55, the USAFE developed a large-scale training program for the new Luftwaffe. The United States would create a three-base training complex in southern Germany (Kaufbeuren, Landsberg and Fuerstenfeldbruck) supported by the USAF logistics depot at Erding. The USAF would create a full training wing, each with about 1,000 USAF personnel supported by over 1,000 American and German civilian employees, to train the Luftwaffe’s pilots and technical personnel. The goal was for the Americans to train a German cadre over a period of 18 months, after which the Germans would be able to take over their own training. The bases would be turned over to full German control during the training process. On 6 May 1955, the USAFE and Amt Blank approved a 62-page contract setting up the goals, obligations and financial arrangements for the USAF training of the new Luftwaffe. The USAF training establishment in Germany had been building up since 1953 in anticipation of German rearmament and by mid 1955 the three USAF wings were formed and mostly manned. To oversee the whole effort for training the German Air Force, Norstad put the training wings under a single headquarters (USAF Training Headquarters-Provisional) commanded by a general who reported straight back to Norstad.
In contrast to the strong American emphasis on building up NATO airpower, Blank and his senior military adviser, General Heusinger, seem to have had little concept of air power or its role in German defense. The Amt Blank staff was overwhelmingly devoted to army rearmament and the Luftwaffe staff of Amt Blank throughout the whole rearmament period was grossly undermanned for its tasks. In November 1954, on the eve of rearmament, Gruppe Luftwaffe in Amt Blank had 28 staff sections in its organization table. Of these, six of the staff sections, including the very important organization, personnel and communications sections, had no section leader. The first priorities of the air staff were organizational planning, recruitment of an adequate cadre base and drawing up plans for the systematic training of personnel and, later, whole units. All of this required very close coordination with the Americans. However, the Luftwaffe staff had too few personnel to look to other essential tasks of a military command—the logistics, basing and support structure. Norstad was fully aware of the deficiencies of Amt Blank and quietly set his own USAFE staff to work drawing up a comprehensive plan for German basing, logistics and support forces.
Norstad’s concept for the new Luftwaffe was to have a national air force, fully integrated into the NATO command structure and divided between the 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force (2 ATAF) in north Germany and the 4th Allied Tactical Air Force (4 ATAF) in south Germany. The US selected bases for repair and rebuilding and estimated the support facilities required for each base. The USAFE staff also developed plans for the basing of specific operational units to include the fighter-bomber and interceptor groups and the reconnaissance squadrons. At the same time, a training plan for the German Air Force was drawn up.
Members of the Luftwaffe staff met in January 1955 to talk about German organizational concepts for the Luftwaffe. At this point, the German staff admitted to the Americans that they had not had the personnel or time to begin serious planning for the logistics and support structure of the German Air Force. The USAFE increased its planning efforts to develop a complete logistics and basing plan for the German Air Force. By June 1955 a fairly complete basing and logistics plan had been drawn up and Norstad was able to present the basing and logistics plan at his first formal meeting with the German air staff. The German air staff was apparently glad to get receive the ready-made US plans for their air force and passed them on to Blank and the senior staff who approved them without any debate or modification. Thus, by mid-1955 the not yet existing German Air Force had a comprehensive training plan and a program for unit basing and logistics that met with NATO approval.
United States Air Force correspondence on German rearmament shows that the US exerted a very close and direct influence on every aspect of the new German Air Force. In May 1955 the USAF chief of staff, General Nathan Twining, send a secret message to General Tunner, commander of the USAFE concerning rumors that Amt Blank was considering Lt. General Adolf Galland, the World War II fighter ace and hero, as the Bundesluftwaffe’s first chief of staff—or Inspekteur. General Twining pointed out that Galland had associated with known Neo-Nazis to include Hans Ulrich Rudel and that Galland had worked in 1948 as an air adviser to the Peron dictatorship in Argentina—a government on especially bad terms with the United States. While reminding Tunner to make it clear to the Germans that ‘it’s completely their choice’ he added that Galland would not be acceptable to the United States. Twining added, ‘Suggest you hint broadly to German Planning Group that we welcome another choice.’ The documents on the early rearmament era of the Luftwaffe are pretty thin and there are no records of discussions on the selection of the first Generalinspekteur of the Luftwaffe nor do we know when and how the US concerns were brought to Amt Blank although there were constant informal meetings between senior Americans and Germans. However, we do know the reaction to the American hints. Amt Blank soon announced that Lt. General Josef Kammhuber, a former Luftwaffe general who had masterminded the air defense of Germany in 1943-44, would become the Luftwaffe’s first chief. While Galland would be brought into the new Luftwaffe as a fighter unit commander and later promoted to general, he never reached the top rank as Generalinspekteur.
The Luftwaffe is Born—Initial Training Problems
The Bundeswehr was officially born in mid 1955. The USAF in Europe had prepared its training staff and bases to take in the first influx of Luftwaffe training cadres. However, the new defense ministry, still led by Blank as the first German defense minister, was so undermanned that basic staff work and personnel screening for German defense planning had not been completed. ‘E-Day’, the day for the USAF to begin training of German cadres, had been set for mid-1955. The new ‘E-Day’ was reset for 1 January 1956; the creation of the German Air Force was six months behind schedule at the start.
Once training began for Luftwaffe cadres, numerous problems became evident. The first Luftwaffe cadres had not been well screened for the high physical standards of pilot training or for English proficiency. This resulted in a higher than expected ‘washout’ rate for the first classes of German pilots and technical personnel. Since there was a shortage of trained German cadre, the USAF instructor personnel had to remain at their posts longer than planned. However, these early problems were relatively minor. The first chief of the Luftwaffe’s Training Command was Colonel Panitzki, who had led the Luftwaffe staff in Amt Blank since 1954 and was a powerful advocate of modeling the Luftwaffe on the US Air Force. Since virtually the entire Luftwaffe was in a training status from 1955 to 1958, Panitzki was the most important senior commander in the Luftwaffe. As training and personnel problems arose, Panitzki responded quickly with new tests for cadre, more thorough screening and better English language preparation and the problems were quickly overcome. One hears of few complaints from the American side on the quality of the German Luftwaffe personnel reporting to US bases and units for training.
Through 1956-58 as the Luftwaffe was built up, German-American jointness was stressed. German Luftwaffe officers worked with the American training base commanders and personnel with the goal of turning the bases over to German control in late 1957, after which the American instructors would remain as tenant personnel. All of the American accounts of the 1956-57 training program mention the close and very friendly cooperation between German and American air force personnel. The Germans saw the Americans as helpful and highly competent teachers. The Americans saw the German officer and NCO staff and instructors as cooperative and highly dedicated to the mission of building a new air force.
The most serious problems in building the Luftwaffe originated in the German Defense Ministry. No sooner had the German government signed agreements with the Americans on paying for bases, training and equipment it began to try to renege on scheduled payments and renegotiate the terms. The government had promised that rearmament would not cost more than DM 9.26 billion per year—a wholly unrealistic figure. As a result, new German recruits showed up to the Bundeswehr bases for training only to be told they would be housed in old hangers as proper housing had not been allocated.
Throughout 1955, the US Embassy and Air Force repeatedly nagged the German Defense Ministry about the agreement for the Germans to take over financing the US training bases on 1 January 1956. The USAF had initiated 32 major construction projects for the first Luftwaffe bases that involved millions of dollars. By the end of 1955 the Defense Ministry was several million dollars in arrears to the US Air Force. The financial situation was so serious by the start of 1956 USAF Colonel Schaal, the project officer for the German air force training program, predicted that the failure of the GAF (German Air Force) would be foredoomed unless the Germans were willing to finance their own armed forces. As the defense funding crash approached, the very frustrated Americans refrained from accusing Defense Ministry of bad faith, but instead blamed Blank’s ministry for gross inefficiency and spoke of ‘bureaucratic difficulties’ with rearmament.
The contemporary American analysis of the German rearmament problems was right on target. One problem was the unrealistic limits for rearmament costs set by Adenauer. Another cause for inefficiency was in Bundeswehr laws. In creating the Bundeswehr the Federal Republic had admirably insisted upon the principle of civilian control of the military. However, the government did (and still does) take the principle to extremes. Civilian control of the armed forces meant not only that the military would be subordinated to the civilian government, as in the American/British system, but that Defense Ministry civilians would handle all money, resources, administration etc. Unlike in the US Air Force or Royal Air Force, unit and base commanders had no control whatsoever over their own budgets. All checks had to be signed by and approved by ministry officials in Bonn. No unit commander had the right to reallocate the training or construction funds to meet his unit priorities or to handle immediate funding problems. Every administrative issue had to go through ministry civilians in Bonn—and the ministry worked very slowly.
Faced with the financial crisis that could have ended with a stillborn Luftwaffe in 1956, Norstad and the USAFE commander, General Tunner, moved quickly and imaginatively to avoid the proverbial crash of Germany’s air rearmament. USAFE pulled $9.3 million in funds out of the US Air Force budget to finance the German Air Force. In order to keep training going the USAF found $1.7 million to pay for training German instructor personnel. In this manner, by reallocation funds from throughout the US Air Force in Europe, the senior US commanders kept the Luftwaffe training programs going until the Defense Ministry could sort out its bureaucracy.
The Defense Ministry, in handling all financial and external matters for the Luftwaffe, repeatedly failed to carry out even some fairly routine administrative functions that directly affected Luftwaffe training. Even though the Defense Ministry had years to plan for NATO interoperability, when flight training began in 1956 the Ministry had failed to negotiate fueling agreements and overflight rights over NATO countries—a very routine matter for any air force. The USAF training commander at Fuerstenfeldbruch, responsible for advanced jet training that included navigation and instrument flights, had to deal with this Defense Ministry failure. At first, American trainers only allowed ’round robin’ flights that originated and terminated at Fuerstenfeldbruch. However, since this could not provide a realistic and exacting standard of navigation training, the US commander took the initiative and got USAF approval to clear training flights for his German students to other USAF bases in Europe. This lasted for some months until the Defense Ministry could again sort out the bureaucracy. Presumably, the USAF supply officers kept track of the German fuel expenditure for eventual payment by the Defense Ministry.
As rearmament began, it became painfully evident that Germany’s first defense minister was neither a very competent politician nor an effective bureaucrat. Blank disliked the press and was reluctant to speak in public and his press relations from 1950 to 1956 were abysmal. Moreover, Blank refused to provide details of rearmament plans and spending to Bundestag committees and, as a result, the Bundestag was reluctant to appropriate funds to Blank to avert the defense budget crash of 1956. The Western Powers were clearly dissatisfied with Blank and the slow pace of German rearmament in 1956 and complaints from NATO allies mounted.
In October 1956 Adenauer requested the resignation of his very loyal, but not especially competent, defense minister and replaced him with the eager and ambitious young Bavarian politician, Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss immediately announced to an unhappy NATO that the new policy for rearmament would be ‘quality over quantity’. The three-year buildup plan was scrapped and the pace of rearmament was appreciably slowed—in fact the Bundeswehr took seven years to reach it original force goals. However, new German units would have the best equipment and would be fully equal to any other NATO units. In most respects, Strauss was an improvement over Blank as he enjoyed far better press relations and was the better politician. Under Strauss’ leadership the German defense budget grew from DM 3.4 billion in 1956 to DM 7.970 billion in 1958. At least the financial problems of the Blank era were overcome and the buildup of the German Air Force finally funded adequately.
The Luftwaffe’s Growing Years—1957-63
As the Luftwaffe passed through the first cadre training, the relationship with the USAF deepened. Once German pilots had received their initial jet training they were transferred to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, then America’s premier fighter school, for advanced training on F-84 and F-86 fighter jets. German enlisted technicians were sent to courses at Kiesler AFB in Mississippi and air defense personnel went to Fort Bliss, Texas, for training. There were a few complaints at first from some of the Luftwaffe’s most famous wartime aces who initially disliked the highly rigid and detailed ‘checklist’ approach of American jet fighter training that took little regard for developing the ‘joy of flying’ that had been part of the Luftwaffe’s more informal pilot training program in the Third Reich. However, after flunking some checkrides from American instructor pilots, the Luftwaffe’s jet pilots soon came to appreciate the American approach to training. After all, in flying high performance jets, there was a lot less room for mistakes than in the old Me 109s.
The American training programs for Luftwaffe personnel, done largely in the US Southwest to take advantage of the superb flying weather, meant that Luftwaffe personnel would become more familiar with the United States and with the American way of life than the army or navy personnel. In fact, the big problem with learning English cited by General Heusinger and the other military advisers in the 1950 Himmerod Denkschrift as the grounds to make the Luftwaffe an Army support force turned out to be a non-issue. The Luftwaffe personnel learned English readily and the USAF training commanders all praised the English competence of Luftwaffe personnel.
Back in Germany, the buildup of the Luftwaffe lagged far behind that of the army or navy. Those services had small units formed before the end of 1956, as the whole Luftwaffe was in training. By the end of 1957 the army had created five divisions and had held its first large maneuvers where it had performed creditably. Most of the navy had been organized by the end of 1957. At the same time, the Luftwaffe had activated only one operational squadron, a transport unit. Not until 20 June 1958 did the Luftwaffe activate its first jet fighter bomber unit equipped with F-84Fs.
The senior officers of the new Luftwaffe were enthusiastic about obtaining American aircraft. One reason is that the Americans produced some very fine aircraft such as the F-84 and F-86 fighters. Another reason was aircraft availability. The US aircraft industries had geared up for the Korean War and were in a position to deliver a lot of aircraft right away. Although there were some fine European aircraft being manufactured at the time, one issue was whether the European countries could fill large aircraft orders quickly. One might think that part of the Luftwaffe’s ‘buy American’ enthusiasm was due to subtle American pressure. Indeed, this was not the case. In the initial plans drawn up by the Americans for equipping the Luftwaffe and agreed to by the Germans the USAF staff planners proposed that the British Hawker Hunter be purchased as the primary air-to-air fighter of the Luftwaffe. At 227 planes, it would be the second largest single equipment purchase of the Luftwaffe—only behind the 521 F-84 fighter-bombers. Indeed, the US Air Force Europe senior staff was very sensitive to British and French criticism that it was pushing too hard to influence the Germans and sell American doctrine and equipment. In meetings with his British and French colleagues in 1955 the US Air Force Europe commander insisted that the US advice to the Germans was just that—advice, not pressure. It is probable that the Americans advocated German purchase of the Hawker Hunter primarily out of concern for European sensibilities. Interestingly enough, the only major item on the Luftwaffe’s initial aircraft purchase plan that was not procured was the Hawker Hunter.
In the first years of the Luftwaffe, there were consistent disagreements between Luftwaffe senior officers and the Defense Minister on whether American or European aircraft should be procured. General Kammhuber, the Luftwaffe’s first chief of staff and Colonel Panitzski, chief of training and later chief of staff, opposed the defense minister’s policy of buying European aircraft whenever possible—especially if the Luftwaffe was to be saddled with notably inferior aircraft as a result. Against Luftwaffe objections, Blank decided to equip the first German transport squadrons with the French Noratlas transport even though the Luftwaffe leaders strongly preferred the American C-119 transport. The Noratlas carried only 5.5 tons of cargo and required as much fuel and maintenance as the C-119, which could carry 13.6 tons of cargo. In short, it was a very inefficient and expensive means to make the French happy.
In the early 1960s, the same issue was repeated. The Luftwaffe staff wanted the Defense Ministry to purchase the American C-130 transport as the follow on for the Noratlas. The C-130 was clearly the better buy than the decidedly inferior French Transall, but the Transall was the Defense Ministry’s choice. Franz Josef Strauss’s policy was to buy European whenever possible. Although the initial trainers of the Luftwaffe were readily available but obsolete American planes, one of the first major Luftwaffe procurement contracts written under Strauss’s tenure was for French Fouga Magister and Italian Piaggo trainers. Not only were both aircraft outstanding jet trainers, they could also be built under license in Germany.
Strauss viewed the aircraft purchase policy as a means of building up the German aviation industry, a great part of which happened to be located in Strauss’s home state of Bavaria. The arrangement to buy and build French and German trainers not only built better European relations, it was also a means to get Germany into the jet aircraft manufacturing business. Strauss’s predecessor, Blank, showed considerably less interest in building up the German aviation industry through licensing arrangements. In January 1955 German and American aircraft manufacturers proposed a plan to have the German aircraft firms build the American F-100 fighter jet under license. Colonel Panitzki, the senior Luftwaffe planner, strongly supported the idea. Since Germany was looking at building simple jet trainers under license, building the US fighter plane would have been a sensible next step in developing the German aviation industry. However, Blank refused to commit the defense ministry to guarantee capital financing for the program and the plan fell through.
In 1958 there would be a remarkable turnaround on this issue. In that year, Franz Josef Strauss committed Germany to equip the Luftwaffe with the state of the art F-104G fighter plane and built it under license in Germany. The F-104 would be the follow-on aircraft for the very successful F-84s and F-86s just then equipping German squadrons and would be a quantum leap in technology for an immature force. Strauss arranged for generous capital support for the aviation industry and the program went ahead. The Starfighter buy was Strauss’s worst decision as defense minister as it committed the German aircraft industry, which had just started building simple jet trainers, to building a highly sophisticated new aircraft design—something far beyond Germany’s capabilities at the time. Due to problems with training, maintenance and poor production quality the Luftwaffe would lose almost one F-104 fighter a week in 1964—the time known to the Luftwaffe as the ‘Starfighter Crisis’. Panitzki, who became Inspekteur of the Luftwaffe in the 1960s, was forced to resign in 1967 for telling a reporter that the decision to buy the Starfighter hat not been his but rather was the responsibility of Franz Josef Strauss and that it had been a purely political decision without military input. Although it was perfectly true, it was not done in the Bundeswehr to assign any mistakes to a cabinet minister.
However, it was neither Lockheed’s salesmanship nor the license manufacturing agreement that pushed the German purchase of the F-104 Starfighter. One of Adenauer’s primary foreign policy goals, some would argue his overarching goal, was to achieve full equality for Germany as a major Western power. In the late 1950s, full equality for Germany meant having a nuclear force—either a fully German nuclear deterrent or a German nuclear deterrent force within the NATO framework. While the initial model of the F-104 (F-104A) was designed as an air-to-air interceptor, the later model F-104G that the Germans agreed to manufacture had been extensively redesigned as a tactical nuclear bomber. It could carry the AGM-12B air to surface nuclear missile or a tactical nuclear bomb. Indeed, the bomb load of the F-104 was unimpressive for a fighter-bomber, only 2,500 pounds. However, it was enough to carry the primary US tactical nuclear bomb of the era—the Mark 7 bomb with a 20-kiloton warhead and weight of 1,600 pounds. Armed for nuclear warfare, the F-104G could cross the enemy border at very high speed, rapidly climb, toss the tactical nuclear bomb and race for home. General Norstad was a strong advocate of a German nuclear force and fostered a NATO agreement in December 1958 that would allow Germany to have atomic weapons under the same arrangements that applied to other member states. This meant that US forces would retain custody of the nuclear weapons until the NATO supreme commander released them and authorized their use. Although it was under NATO and not German command, Germany’s acquisition of the F-104 provided it with a credible nuclear weapons delivery system.
From 1958 to 1963 the Luftwaffe steadily expanded and units took their place alongside Allied units of the 2nd and 4th Allied Tactical Air Forces where they earned a solid reputation for good flying and combat readiness—until the Starfighter crisis. In 1963, five years behind the original schedule, the Luftwaffe reached the final strength that had been planned for in 1954: 92,000 military personnel and 17 operational combat wings.
Conclusion
The creation of the Luftwaffe in the 1950s provides a good case study of bureaucratic inefficiency and weak political leadership on the part of the West German government. The Luftwaffe was not well served by Konrad Adenauer and Defense Minister Blank nor by General Adolf Heusinger, Blank’s senior military adviser. When rearmament came in 1955-56, the German Defense Ministry had laid the foundation for an effective army and navy but somehow the air force side of rearmament was basically ignored. The air planning staff was so starved for personnel and resources that if they had not quietly initiated informal contacts with the Americans in 1951 and allowed the USAF to carry out most of the planning and staff work for the Luftwaffe, the Bundeswehr would have come into being in 1956 with an army and navy but no air force. The Defense Ministry’s failure to pay for the training in 1956 would have killed the Luftwaffe at that time if Lauris Norstad and the USAF staff had not done some creating accounting and found the money for training. In short, when the Luftwaffe celebrates its 50th anniversary in three years, General Norstad has a far greater claim as the founder of the Luftwaffe than anyone in the German Defense Ministry.
Much of the blame for the early rearmament muddles lies with Konrad Adenauer, who was fundamentally uninterested in details of military organization and operations. His goal from 1950 on was for Germany to have large, capable and well-equipped national armed forces so that Germany could earn ‘Equal Status’ with the other major powers. By originally setting a completely unreasonable three-year rearmament goal and then strictly limiting rearmament costs he made German rearmament far more difficult than it had to be. Plans were constantly made and remade during 1955-58.
Blank was a thoroughly mediocre manager and the tremendous confusion and inefficiency of the early years of the Luftwaffe and Bundeswehr are largely his responsibility. Blank, hired for political reasons, proved to be a poor politician when it came to dealing with the press or making a case for increased defense funding. His decisions on equipment procurement were timid. The idea to license build the F-100 was a sound one, but fell through because Blank failed to get financial support for it. Yet Blank could not be deterred from buying the Noratlas— an expensive but low-performance airplane—as it fitted Adenauer’s ‘buy European’ preference. None of the NATO nations was sorry to see Blank go in October 1956.
General Heusinger played a central and admirable role as the first Generalinspekteur of the Bundeswehr. However, he had little understanding of airpower and the central role that air forces would play in European defense strategy. His concept of the Luftwaffe as a branch of the army shows a remarkable lack of understanding of British and American military doctrine.
When the German-American air forces relationship began in 1951, the German air staff soon found it had much more in common with their American counterparts in terms of military doctrine, strategy and organization than with Blank, Heusinger and the rest of Amt Blank. It is certainly not a matter of the Americans foisting an air force doctrine and organization on the Germans. Rather, it was a case of the German air staff allying themselves with the Americans to win doctrinal and organizational battles with their own ministry in order to become an independent air force, equipped with American equipment and part of the NATO air defense. If the Luftwaffe was created as a junior partner of the USAF, complete with American planes and American training, it was because all the senior Luftwaffe officers of the 1950s (Kammhuber, Panitzki, Steinhof etc.) truly wanted it that way. This is in stark contrast to the German army, which insisted from the start on an organization, training system and equipment that was uniquely German.
There has been a remarkable consistency in German and American air force relations since the 1950s. From the start the German Air Force was highly Americanized—a force with a distinctly American style of uniform, organization and operational tactics. Not only has most of the equipment of the Luftwaffe been American, but the influence of long periods of training in America (to this day) is notable.