[2][3][4] The unit's history began in 1934, when the Luftwaffe formed a reconnaissance squadron under Oberst Theodor Rowehl and attached it to the Abwehr, the German military intelligence department of the armed forces high command.

Due to the lack of German aircraft with sufficient range, some recon missions used captured American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress or Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers and Soviet Tupolev Tu-2s.

[7] The unit was originally intended to attack naval installations at Gibraltar, Leningrad or Scapa Flow in Scotland, but the Allied Operation Overlord diverted efforts to Normandy.

[11] In the last months of the war, a small number of high-ranking German officers pressed for a suicide fighter programme as a last-ditch effort to stop Allied bombing runs over the Reich.

This programme, known as Selbstopfer ("self sacrifice"), was intended to use the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, a manned version of the V-1 flying bomb, to attack enemy bombers and ground targets.

Several test flights were carried out by Leonidas Squadron KG 200, and mass production of the conversions had begun, but the programme was stopped due to intervention from Baumbach who felt that these missions would be a waste of valuable pilots.

[citation needed] These para-trained commandos of II./KG 200 remain a little-known arm of Germany's World War II parachute forces and were listed on II./KG 200's ORBAT (Order of Battle) as the 3rd Staffel.

The aim was to establish weather stations to provide local and meteorological intelligence, and to ferry agents via French West Africa to Cairo, Freetown and Durban.

[a] On the night of 27 November 1944, KG 200 pilots Braun and Pohl flew a Junkers Ju 290 transport from Vienna to a position just south of Mosul, Iraq, where they successfully air-dropped five Iraqi parachutists in bright moonlight.