He became Chief of Staff of Luftflotte 5 in Norway while it flew into the northern British isles in the Battle of Britain.

Gerhard Bassenge was born in Ettlingen, the Grand Duchy of Baden in the German Empire on 18 November 1897.

[1] Bassenge began his military career in the early days of World War I, on 4 October 1914, just shy of his 17th birthday.

[3] Photos taken of him at about this time show a slender man with an erect carriage standing next to or sitting on his Albatros D.III biplane fighter.

[3] Bassenge used a new Fokker D.VII fighter[7] to demolish another Camel, number D8197, over Fere-en-Tardenois, France in the afternoon of 25 July 1918.

He did not destroy another British plane until 27 September; this time, it was another first-line fighter that fell, a Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5a from No.

On 30 January 1940, Gerhard Bassenge was appointed Chief of Staff of Luftflotte 2 under General der Flieger Albert Kesselring.

Luftflotte 2 was heavily involved in the Blitzkrieg of the Netherlands and Belgium, as it included General Student and his Fallschirmjäger.

It was also the air support for the attack on the British Expeditionary Force that ended at Battle of Dunkirk with its consequent evacuation.

[8] On 1 August 1940, Bassenge was transferred to be Chief of Staff of Luftflotte 5 in Oslo, Norway under Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff.

[8] However, before that battle ended, Bassenge had once again been transferred; on 5 October 1940, he was appointed Chief of Staff of a Luftwaffe mission to Romania.

One month later, he was appointed to command Fortress Area Tunis-Bizerte, Tunisia Bassenge was captured 9 May 1943 at Metline, North Africa by the British.

[8] Camp 11 was "bugged" by British military intelligence, and on 10 July 1943, a wiretap caught Bassenge being informed of war crimes by a horrified Generalleutnant Georg Neuffer.

General der Panzertruppe von Thoma, who was held prisoner along with Bassenge, believed that Hitler had gone insane and that the Nazi war effort was doomed.

As the majority of German officers held prisoner were fervent Nazis, the views of Bassenge and Thoma caused considerable dissension with the Hitlerites.