For Kaiser and Hitler: From Military Aviator to High Command - The Memoirs of Luftwaffe General Alfred Mahncke 1910-1945 by Jochen Mahncke

Author:Jochen Mahncke [Mahncke, Jochen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2012-06-11T21:00:00+00:00

Translator’s note

For an energetic soldier like my father, Alfred Mahncke, the Polish campaign was an exercise in overcoming obstacles and frustrations and settling differences. It began with the unexplained and harmful series of ‘start-stop-start’ attack orders from the Luftwaffe High Command, which created confusion for squadrons, wrecking carefully planned timetables and placing unnecessary strain on combined Luftwaffe-Armee operations. Having commanded a Geschwader where he knew everyone he dealt with personally, Mahncke became responsible for a multitude of faceless service- and supply departments in the rear, many of which were staffed by reservists who first had to find their own feet. The most important mission was to locate Polish airfields captured by the advancing Armee and to make them operational for the Luftwaffe. These were called ‘E-Hafen’, short for Einsatz-Hafen – combat or operational airfields. Often staff and workshops arrived while fighting was still taking place around an airfield, and thus German aircraft were unable to land. Some service units had to struggle at a snail’s pace along often quite appalling roads in totally unsuitable trucks which looked more like huge removal vans. Those in the RLM were probably proud of having dreamed up such monstrosities for the valuable equipment they had to carry, not realizing that there existed no Reichsautobahn in Poland, and that many road and river bridges had been destroyed during the fighting, which subsequently caused huge delays to the advance. Because army troops, tanks and guns also massed at these crossings, with ambulances from the front wanting to get their wounded back to field hospitals, the chaos and bottlenecks were considerable. But one of the most pressing problems every soldier noticed was the distribution of Feldpost or rather the lack of it, as disorganization reigned supreme. It took forceful measures to sort more than 800 bags of mail for the Luftwaff e and then to deliver the letters.

After two weeks of rough living and sleeping, Mahncke records, gratefully, the acquisition of a ‘… wonderful bed, a blow-up rubber mattress with two blankets and a sleeping bag with white head cover’, which he ‘confiscated’ from a downed Junkers Ju 52. In order to be safe from vermin, he lay the mattress on a civilian doctor’s examination table. His only complaint was the absence of mail from home (the first letter arrived after three weeks) and he admits in his diary that he missed his family. He writes: ‘When the war is over, I would like to retire as soon as possible and enjoy my days as I want to. Conditions in the Luftwaffe give me food for thought and I do not always agree with everything. Non-performers are promoted. I want to retire and let younger men take over who see the situation with more optimism.’

The Polish campaign lasted for 18 days, and as early as the first day the Polish Air Force had been hit so hard that it ceased to exist – effectively – as an enemy. Groups of abandoned aircraft were everywhere, some damaged, but

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