Karl Drum

Karl Drum (born July 31, 1893 in Diemeringen , † April 2, 1968 in Meersburg ) was a German aviator general in World War II .

Life

On July 1, 1913, Karl Drum joined the Baden Pioneer Battalion No. 14 of the Prussian Army as a flag boy . After attending the Metz War School , which he had to leave prematurely due to the outbreak of World War I , Drum was promoted to lieutenant on August 7, 1914 . He came to his battalion on the Western Front , where he was seriously wounded in June 1915 and was in the hospital until January 1916 . Since he could no longer be used in the field, Drum was transferred to the air force, completed a flight observer training until April 1916 and then held various assignments. On March 22, 1918 he was promoted to first lieutenant and, after he had already received both classes of the Iron Cross , on March 29, 1918 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords.

After the end of the war, Drum was adjutant to the commander of the Flieger des XVII from February to August 1919 . Army Corps and was then taken over into the Provisional Reichswehr. Until 1929, he was 14. (Badisches) Infantry Regiment , most recently as head of the 13 MW - Company in Konstanz . This was followed by his command to the Army Organization Department (T 2) in the Army Office of the Reichswehr Ministry and on October 1, 1929, his transfer to this department.

From 1934 to 1938, as a specialist in military cooperation between the army and the air force, he passed the ranks up to colonel . From 1939 to 1941 he was in command of the Army Aviation. In early 1941 he was promoted to major general , two years later lieutenant general and in July 1944 aviator general. In 1941 and 1942 Drum was in command of the air support , Army Group South (Russian Front). Drum was on the general staff of the Wehrmacht commander in the Netherlands from October 1942 to October 1943 and during this time he was also the commander of the “11. Field Division (L) ” , which was stationed near Athens and was the only German division that was directly subordinate to Army Group E. In July 1944 he took over command of the Feld-Luftgaukommando West France from General der Flakartillerie Eugen Weissmann and thus also received the power to award the Luftgau plaque that had just been donated . Drum awarded this for the first and several times on August 5, 1944. Then he took over command of the newly formed Luftgau Command V ( Stuttgart ) for a few days after the war-related relocation of the command .

In September 1944, Hermann Göring, in addition to Drum, appointed the Air Force General, Eugen Weissmann, and the Aviator General, Wilhelm Wimmer , to be responsible for the air force due to degradation of military strength and defeatism . All were found guilty and sentenced to death. However, the judgments were not carried out and Drum was released from service on February 28, 1945.

After the war he wrote various writings and wrote some monographs in collaboration with the US Air Force until the end of his life . He dealt among other things with the Russian partisanism and attributed the main success to the support of the local population.

Fonts (selection)

The German Air Force in the Spanish Civil War (Condor Legion). Air Force Study Group of the US Historical Division, Karlsruhe 1953–1957.
Airpower and Russian partisan warfare. Arno Press, 1962.

literature

Dermot Bradley (ed.), Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand: The Generals of the German Air Force 1935-1945. The military careers of the aviation, anti-aircraft, paratrooper, air intelligence and engineer officers. Part II, Volume 1: Abernetty – v. Gyldenfeldt. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1701-1 , pp. 147-148.
Richard Suchewirth : The Development of the German Air Force. 1919-1939. Pickle Partners Publishing, 2017.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Samuel W. Mitcham: Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3405-9 ( google.de [accessed February 10, 2018]).
↑ ^a ^b Leonid D. Grenkevich: The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1944: A Critical Analysis historiographical . Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-1-136-31851-1 ( google.de [accessed February 10, 2018]).

personal data
SURNAME	Drum, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German aviator general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH	July 31, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH	Diemeringen
DATE OF DEATH	April 2nd, 1968
Place of death	Meersburg

[:0-1] A ^b Samuel W. Mitcham: Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3405-9 ( google.de [accessed February 10, 2018]).

[:1-2] Leonid D. Grenkevich: The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1944: A Critical Analysis historiographical . Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-1-136-31851-1 ( google.de [accessed February 10, 2018]).