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German Paratroopers

In the mid-1930s, two ambitious tyrannies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, became interested in the possibilities that airborne operations might offer. As with their work in mechanized warfare, the Soviet interest in airborne operations bore fruit first. In 1935 the Soviets dropped large numbers of paratroopers during their annual maneuvers. Tragically for the Russian people, Josef Stalin's brutal and megalomaniacal regime then proceeded to carry out a drastic purge of the Red Army's officer corps -- a savage bloodletting that all but ended early airborne warfare development and destroyed much of the Soviet Union's military effectiveness.

The Nazis did not purge their officer corps. Instead, as a part of Germany's massive military buildup, Adolf Hitler devoted significant resources to the creation of innovative new forms of the combined-arms approach to war. The Luftwaffe, under the ambitious Hermann Göring, took the development of airborne forces under its wing. Concomitantly, the army began developing supporting forces that could reinforce paratroopers by airlift and glider insertion once the airborne had established an aerial bridgehead.

With thorough and frightening effectiveness, by the late 1930s the Germans had developed a coherent doctrine for airborne operations, the trained troops to execute such operations and the equipment that would allow its paratroopers, or FallschirmjÄger, to carry out their missions once they had reached the ground. The Luftwaffe was able to supply the transport for airborne operations by transitioning its first bomber force, which largely consisted of Junkers Ju-52/3ms, into the transport force, as faster and more effective bombers such as the Heinkel He-111, Dornier Do-17 and the Junkers Ju-88 became available.

Nevertheless, the number of trained airborne troops and their supporting structure was relatively small -- not much more than a reinforced regiment -- when World War II broke out in September 1939. A portion of that force was used in the Polish campaign, but the German conquest was so rapid and overwhelming that relatively little attention focused on the use of paratroopers.

World War II

The German Experience

The first major use of Germany's airborne forces came during Operation Weserübung, the invasion of Norway in spring 1940. The German navy was supposed to capture Oslo, but Norwegian reservists using old Krupp guns and shore-based torpedoes along the Oslo fiord managed to sink the brand-new heavy cruiser Blücher and stop the naval attack cold. The Luftwaffethen flew in a company of paratroopers to seize Oslo's undefended airstrip. Over the course of the morning and early afternoon of April 9, the Germans flew in sufficient reinforcements to move into the capital in the afternoon, but by that time the government had fled, and Norwegian resistance went underground.

France was an even bigger success for the Fallschirmjäger. In early May 1940, the strength of German airborne forces was nearly that of a light infantry division. But their impact on the opening moves of one of the most important battles of World War II was out of all proportion to their size. In the southern Ardennes, Fieseler Fi-156 Storch light reconnaissance planes dropped members of the Brandenburg Regiment on the bridges immediately to the south of the 10th Panzer Division's route of march. In Belgium a small group of German gliderborne troops landed on top of the great Belgian fortress of Eben Emael on the morning of May 10. The supposedly unconquerable fortress fell to the glidermen in a matter of hours, opening the way for Colonel-General Fedor von Bock's Army Group B to advance into northern Belgium, which fatally fixed the attention of the French high command there.

An even greater success came with two simultaneous airborne operations during the invasion of Holland. The first involved a strike that was quite similar to what Mitchell had first proposed in 1918. In this case, German paratroopers landed at the airport near The Hague, the intention being that they would be reinforced by troops brought in by Ju-52s. The aim was to seize the Dutch government and effect a surrender of its forces before the fighting even began. While the paratroopers initially seized the airfield, Dutch troops quickly drove them off before they could be reinforced. The attack, however, resulted in the Dutch high command's focusing on the defense of the capital and rushing its reserves to The Hague.

Meanwhile, a far more dangerous German drive, led by paratroopers, was gathering steam on the Netherlands frontier. In an operation that resembled the later Operation Market-Garden in conception, if not in execution, the Germans dropped small packets of paratroopers to seize the crucial bridges that led directly across Holland and into the heart of the country. They opened the way for the 10th Panzer Division. At every point they succeeded, while the German armored force showed none of the hesitation that would later mark the Allied armored drive in September 1944. Within a day, the Dutch position was hopeless.

How important were these opening moves by airborne troops? In and of themselves they were, of course, not decisive. But airborne incursions throughout France and the Low Countries helped to create a climate of fear and promoted the idea that the Germans were invincible. Moreover, the rumors that swirled around their use, some of which were spread by German propaganda -- such as paratroopers disguised as nuns -- helped to further the disintegration of Allied morale and cohesion. But perhaps most important of all was the fact that their achievements in the Low Countries contributed substantially to Army Group B's success in keeping the French high command focused on northern Belgium and the Netherlands, while the great German armored drive crossed the Ardennes and smashed its way across the Meuse River between May 13 and 15.

Crete

Operation Merkur, the invasion of Crete, on May 20, 1941, came very close to being the first major German ground defeat of the war. Aided by Ultra -- the breaking of the high-level German ciphers -- the British had advance warning that the Germans were preparing to launch a large-scale airborne operation against the island. That information was passed along to Maj. Gen. Bernard Freyberg, the island's commanding officer, who paid no attention to the intelligence. Instead he deployed the majority of his forces to guard the beaches against a seaborne landing, despite the Royal Navy's assurances that it could prevent such an occurrence.

The German plan for the assault split the airborne forces in half: the first drop coming against the airfield at Maleme on the western end of the island; the second coming later in the day, against Heraklion on the eastern end of the island. The Germans significantly underestimated the number of Commonwealth troops available to Freyberg, and they completely underestimated the determination of the Cretan population to defend their homes. The landing at Heraklion was an unmitigated disaster. The operation against Maleme airfield did not go much better. The attacking paratroopers took horrendous casualties and managed to establish only a few footholds against the New Zealand battalion defending the airfield. Moreover, throughout the first day the German airborne command in Athens largely failed to glean how badly things were going. Fortunately for the embattled Fallschirmjäger, Freyberg and the local commanders failed to reinforce the defenders at Maleme.

That evening the New Zealand commander on the scene, whose battalion had also suffered heavy casualties -- but no heavier than the Germans' -- took his troops off the crucial hill that dominated the airfield. The next morning the German paratroopers found themselves in control of Maleme. Soon a steady stream of Ju-52s flew in reinforcements, and the Germans managed to build up sufficient forces to overwhelm the Commonwealth defenders.

The conquest of Crete occupies a special place in military history as the first successful invasion of an island carried out entirely from the air. Nevertheless, the German airborne victory proved to be enormously costly, which many historians have suggested discouraged Hitler from using airborne forces against Malta in early June 1942. This author's estimate is that it was not Merkur's butcher's bill but rather how close the operation had come to failure that was the major factor in the Führer's decision.

German operations on Crete are also notable in that, following their seizure of the island, the invaders engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the local population in retaliation for what they saw as the natives' outrageous desire to defend their homeland. As with the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, the Luftwaffe's paratroopers were fanatical Nazis, thoroughly indoctrinated with the Führer's ideology. Marsch der Fallschirmjaeger / March of the Paratroopers

German paratroopers and airborne commandos played a less significant role as airborne forces for the remainder of the war. There were some successes: the seizure of the Tunisian bridgehead in response to Operation Torch -- the Allied landing in North Africa in November 1942 -- and Benito Mussolini's rescue in September 1943. But for the most part German paratroopers fought as regular infantry. It was in this role that they added new luster to their fearsome reputation on battlefields in Russia, North Africa, Italy and Western Europe as well-trained and tough opponents, ferociously motivated by ideology.

Williamson Murray. Airborne Comes of Age. TheHistoryNet. World War II. March 2004.

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