Legion Condor

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Legion Condor

active July 1936 to March 1939
Country German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire Franco-Spain
Spain 1938Spain 
Commanders
Commanders November 1936 to October 1937:
Hugo Sperrle
November 1937 to October 1938:
Hellmuth Volkmann
October 1938 to March 1939:
Wolfram v. Richthofen
chief of staff November 1936 to January 1937:
Alexander Holle
January to October 1937:
Wolfram v. Richthofen
October 1937 to October 1938:
Hermann Plocher
October 1937 to March 1939:
Hans Seidemann
insignia
Wing cockade Spanish Civil War nationalist roundel.svg
Trunk cockade Nationalist air force black roundel.svg
Tail cockade Fin Flash of Spain.svg
Aircraft
bomber Heinkel He 111 , Junkers Ju 87
Fighter aircraft /
helicopter 		Dornier Do 17 , Heinkel He 59
Interceptor Heinkel He 51 , Messerschmitt Bf 109
Reconnaissance aircraft /
helicopter 		Heinkel He 70 , Heinkel He 45 , Heinkel He 60 , Fieseler Fi 156
Transport aircraft /
helicopter 		Junkers Ju 52
Standard of the Condor Legion

The Condor Legion was an Air Force federation of the German Wehrmacht in the Spanish Civil War , which in covert operations , ie without German uniforms or insignia on the side of against the Spanish Republic insurgent Falangists under General Francisco Franco was used. It was built in 1936 under the strictest secrecy, intervened in several important battles and played a major role in the victory of the putschists. Its existence was denied by both the Nazi government of the German Reich and the Spanish Falange until 1939.

The Condor Legion built the world's first airlift and carried out the first major air raids in history against the civilian population of a European country. In the aftermath of the public perception, the Condor Legion is known to this day in particular through the air raid on Guernica on April 26, 1937, which became a worldwide symbol of terror by means of aerial warfare against a defenseless civilian population .

The archive of the Condor Legion located in Berlin did not survive the Second World War . This makes research more difficult.

The air raid on Lérida on November 2, 1937 was attributed to the Condor Legion for decades. Only research in the 21st century revealed that this attack was flown by the Aviazione Legionaria (whose archive has been preserved in Rome). 221 civilians died, almost as many as in the air raid on Guernica half a year earlier.

history

Initial support for the coup plotters

The civil war began at a time when much of the Spanish armed forces were stationed in Morocco . With the navy for the most part loyal to the Republican government, there was only air left to bring the coup plotters' troops to mainland Spain. At that time, Spain had only rudimentary air warfare capacities; there was no need for a regular air force.

Before the insurgent Spanish generals struck in the summer of 1936, they sought support in Berlin, but received no commitments. The Wehrmacht leadership and the Foreign Office did not believe in embarking on an adventure in the Spanish Civil War; the risk of failure seemed too high to them. In contrast to Italy, the German Reich had no interests in the Mediterranean.

Franco contacted Hitler directly through the NSDAP's foreign organization . The Reich Aviation Ministry forwarded their envoy to Hermann Göring , who contacted the responsible Italian authorities through Admiral Wilhelm Canaris . Hitler ordered aircraft to be supplied to Franco. General Franco initially received three Ju-52 transport aircraft as emergency aid . On July 30, Italy dispatched a squadron consisting of twelve Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 transport aircraft , which landed the next day in Spanish Morocco . On August 22, 1936, the German steamers Cameroon and Wigbert arrived with war material for the insurgent troops.

Installation and use

A Condor Legion bomber on a Spanish airfield in 1939
Guernica, destroyed by the Condor Legion
Officer candidates for the putschists and a German instructor

When the advance of the nationalists stalled in October 1936 and the Republicans achieved success on some sections of the front thanks to the support of the International Brigades from France , the German Reich , Italy , the Soviet Union , the United Kingdom and the United States ( Lincoln Brigade ) recorded, Hitler decided on October 30th to increase the support of Franco with air force units. He was strengthened by the relief of the Guardia Civil in the Alcázar of Toledo, besieged for two months, by Franco's Moroccan troops, which caused a great stir internationally.

The German expeditionary corps was gradually set up between July and December 1936. A “special staff W” under the direction of the Air Force General Helmut Wilberg selected the “volunteers”. Members of the Condor Legion were able to reduce their military service time by serving in Spain and earned many times more than the soldiers stationed in the Reich. The Reich Ministry of Aviation was in charge in Germany . The pilots traveled to Spain in civilian clothes and allegedly as vacationers as part of a vacation program organized by Kraft durch Freude . There they were given a brownish-olive uniform, without any indication of their Wehrmacht origin. For the duration of the deployment they remained members of the Wehrmacht, which manifested itself in the continued payment of the salary, the crediting of the time spent in Spain towards the seniority of the promotion and the calculation of the pension.

A group of aircraft was transferred by air on July 27th, and the first units were adopted on July 31, 1936 at Döberitz airfield . On August 1, 1936, the Woermann steamer Usaramo and the Union travel company - 25 officers and 66 NCOs embarked under this cover name - left the port of Hamburg for Cádiz . On November 7, 1936, a ship with 694 soldiers set out for Seville , where it arrived on November 16. The soldiers were not informed beforehand where they were going; they were convinced that one would end up at Danzig . In the winter operation on Rügen , an air force corps comprising around 4,500 men was relocated to Spain . It included a combat group of three squadrons Junkers Ju 52 , a hunting group of three squadrons Heinkel He 51 , a reconnaissance squadron with twelve Heinkel He 70 , four heavy and two light anti-aircraft batteries, an air communication department and an air park . All German troops already present in Spain, mainly aviators, flak and aviation news organizations, were integrated into the air force corps, which was given the name "Legion Condor". The Wehrmacht provided the largest contingent; in the first phase of the war they relied on the Seville-Tablada airfield .

Major General Hugo Sperrle was entrusted with the command of the Legion on November 6, 1936 , while the chief of staff was Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen . Sperrle was formally under Franco's Spanish high command, but was able to independently decide on the Legion's operations. Sperrle gave the number of German soldiers who had arrived in Cádiz in November 1936 as 6,500. There were never more than 10,000 German soldiers in Spain at the same time; a large number of them consisted of officers and specialists. In January 1937 it was reinforced by a tank division with 100 PzKpfw I tanks under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma , which were only used for training purposes. After the delivery of the German tanks, Wilhelm von Thoma carried out the military training of the Spanish Legion on the PzKpfw I at Franco's headquarters in Cáceres . Regular personnel exchanges - the soldiers usually served no longer than nine months - were able to finish During the civil war around 25,000 German soldiers were deployed in Spain.

In the first months of the war the Republican Air Force only owned a few old Bréguet machines. André Malraux set up the first international air squadron, the España Squadron , which had around twenty bombers and forty fighter planes, almost all of them old, discarded machines. Most of the air fleet that was then available to the Republican armed forces in the spring of 1937 had come from the Soviet Union. Of 460 aircraft, 420 were of Soviet origin, including 200 fighters, 150 bombers and 70 reconnaissance aircraft.

The German aircraft delivered first were no match for the Russian Polikarpow I-16 fighters. Even the transport aircraft of the type Ju 52, which were temporarily converted into bombers , did not prove their worth in their role as combat aircraft. Therefore, as the bombers were from the spring of 1937 new German side aircraft Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 and in small numbers, the dive bomber Junkers Ju 87 delivered. The development of new types of high-speed bombers, which could bring their bomb load to the target in a dive, had been promoted by the head of the technical office of the Reich Aviation Ministry Ernst Udet . This type of aircraft has now been tested in practical use. The newly developed German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft proved to be superior to the aircraft of the Republican Air Force.

The Condor Legion intervened in all major battles from 1937: Bilbao , Brunete , Teruel , Ebro-Bogen . The air raid on Guernica on April 26, 1937, in which the religious capital of the Basque Country was almost completely destroyed and around 300 civilians were killed, was of particular - also symbolic - significance . Within a very short time, streets and rows of houses were reduced to rubble and ashes with high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs , and German low-level pilots shot machine guns at the fleeing civilian population. While 80 percent of the buildings were completely destroyed, the bridge, which is said to have been the actual target of the attack, remained undamaged. In Spain, the Condor Legion is remembered to this day, mainly because of the air raid on Guernica. This attack prompted Pablo Picasso to paint his famous work Guernica .

War trials of new weapons and tactics

Bf 109 C-1 , Jagdgruppe 88, Condor Legion
Ju 87A

The war effort of the Condor Legion served the Luftwaffe to test new weapon systems and tactics.

From 1936 to 1939, several prototypes and a total of four series models were tested and further developed in Spain from the later most built aircraft of the German Air Force, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 . The Commander in Chief of the Air Force, Hermann Göring , said before the International Military Tribunal :

“When the civil war broke out in Spain, Franco sent a cry for help to Germany for support, especially in the air [...] Franco was in Africa with his troops [...] The decisive factor was that his troops came to Spain first. The guide made some thought, and I vigorously urged that assistance be given in all circumstances. On the one hand, to oppose the expansion of communism [...], on the other hand, to test my young air force on this or that technical point. With the Fuhrer's permission, I sent a large part of my transport fleet and sent down a number of test squads of my fighters, bombers and anti-aircraft guns, and in this way had the opportunity to test with a sharp shot whether the material was being developed appropriately. So that the staff also got a certain amount of experience, I ensured a strong circulation, that means always new ones and the others back. "

- Hermann Göring : Quoted from Pierre Broué, Emile Témime: Revolution and War in Spain. (History of the Spanish Civil War). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 441.

During the operations, the superiority of the focus on the deployment of German air units at the focal points of the front proved to be superior. The government's air forces were outnumbered for a long time, but were at a disadvantage when deployed because they spread their contingents over the entire front.

organization

Air force

At the time of its formation in November 1936, the Legion was structured as follows

136 aircraft in total

  • LN / 88: Air Intelligence Division with two companies
  • F / 88: Air defense department with six batteries in Seville-Tablada or in action on the Madrid front:
    • four batteries with 8.8 cm - Flak (16 guns)
    • two batteries with 2.0 cm flak (20 guns)
  • P / 88: two air force operating companies in Ávila

In the course of the following two and a half years there were minor changes, so the 4.J / 88 was later disbanded, but a dive bomber squadron equipped with Ju 87, the 5.J / 88, was added to Jagdgruppe 88. In the course of time, as explained in the previous chapter, the flying device was replaced by modern types. The first operational assessments were made by specially set up test teams ( VB / 88 , VJ / 88 ). The Bf 109 soon replaced the first He 51, the He 111 replaced the Ju 52 / 3m in its role as a bomber ("combat aircraft") and the Do 17 was used as a reconnaissance aircraft.

Ground troops

The ground contingent of the Condor Legion was called “Group Beekeepers” and comprised up to three tank companies “Group Drone”, a PaK command and some support troops as well as instructors for various branches of service at several military schools. The officers and NCOs of the tank companies were mainly recruited from personnel of the 6th Panzer Regiment of the Wehrmacht. These trained Spanish teams alternately and led trained troops at the front.

bases

The following selection of airfields, including many field airfields, is structured according to regions of operation. The order of the regions roughly follows the chronological order of the major disputes, from the first missions in 1936 in the south, 1936/37 in the greater Madrid area, 1937 along the north coast, 1938 in Aragon and 1938/39 in Valencia and Catalonia .

Loss of the Condor Legion

The German casualties up to the end of the Spanish Civil War amounted to 315 casualties. By the end of the civil war in 1939, 96 aircraft of the Condor Legion were lost, 40 of them as a result of direct combat. The other losses resulted from accidents, especially in the winter months, and from wear and tear.

The bereaved received the Cross of Honor for surviving German Spanish fighters . A total of 183 members of the Legion were wounded; The Wound Badge was awarded 182 times in black and once in silver. 26,116 German members of the Condor Legion, including the Kriegsmarine , received the Spanish Cross with or without swords.

The Legion in West German politics of the past

Eight fallen soldiers of the Condor Legion lie in the Almudena cemetery in Madrid. On the 80th anniversary of the attack, the Nazi war memorial, which until then was often the target of neo-Nazi marches, was demolished at the insistence of the German embassy.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the operations of the Condor Legion were initially assessed uncritically according to military criteria. In particular, the pilot of the Condor Legion Werner Mölders was the subject of veneration. Historical research later led to the fact that, after a long and controversial debate, the Bundestag decided in 1998 not to recommend members of the Condor Legion as models for soldiers in the Bundeswehr . In January 2005, by order of the Federal Minister of Defense , the barracks named after Mölders and the fighter squadron were renamed . In Berlin, an important street still bears a name that it was given in honor of the Condor Legion: Spanische Allee .

On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica, the Madrid Municipal Cemetery Company ordered the removal of the last traces of the Condor Legion in La Almudena cemetery . This happened at the express request of the German ambassador in Madrid. Until then there was a memorial there for the Legion and the seven pilots buried there. The memorial wall read in German and Spanish: “Here rest German airmen who fell in the fight for a free Spain. German aviators died for God and for Spain. Present!"

Known members

Others

The Luftwaffe's Kampfgeschwader 53, set up in 1939, was given the honorary name "Legion Condor".

In 1936, Lieutenant Colonel Thoma donated the Condor Legion's armored troop badge for members of the Condor Legion's ground contingent . Wearing this award was officially approved in 1939 by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Walther von Brauchitsch .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Legion Condor  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In addition to the Wehrmacht salary that was continued to be paid, there were front and other allowances as well as an automatic increase by one salary group, which offered the Legion members a luxurious lifestyle or the opportunity to build up larger reserves. In addition, the deployment gave opportunities for awards and faster promotion (e.g. through pre-patenting ). This indicates that the legionaries were not, as is assumed in parts of the literature, civilians without combatant status . ( Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : War and Flies. 2010, p. 109).
  2. ↑ Birgit Aschmann: Loyal friends? 1999, p. 26.
  3. ^ Pierre Broué, Emile Témime: Revolution and War in Spain. History of the Spanish Civil War. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 440.
  4. ^ Klaus A. Maier: The destruction of Gernika on April 26, 1937. In: Military history. Issue 1, 2007, pp. 18–22, here p. 22.
  5. ↑ Heribert García i Esteller: L'Aerodrom de la Senia, 1937-39. Imatges d'un passat. Edició millorada. CEIBM y Patronat del Camp d'Aviació de la Sénia, La Sénia 2008, ISBN 978-84-612-7666-0 (in Spanish and Catalan).
  6. ^ Robert Forsyth: Aces of the Legion Condor (= Osprey Aircraft of the Aces. 99). Osprey, Oxford 2011, ISBN 978-1-84908-347-8 .
  7. ↑ Herbert M. Mason: The Air Force 1918–1945. Build up, rise, fail. Paul Neff Verlag, Vienna 1973, p. 223.
  8. ^ A b Guernica massacre: Madrid removes facade that glorified Nazi role. In: The Guardian . Retrieved April 26, 2017, same day
  9. ↑ J. Knab: "Timeless Soldier Virtues". To date, the Bundeswehr has not succeeded in breaking the fetters of a fatal cultivation of tradition. In: The time . No. 46, 2005, accessed December 3, 2015.
  10. ↑ Spanish Avenue. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert ) - Wannseestrasse was renamed on June 5, 1939.