The core airfield of the Luftwaffe facility took the form of a typical pre-World War II aerodrome, with no clearly defined "runways", being bounded by a roughly hexagonal-layout perimeter road that still exists today, defining an area approximately 1,700 meters (5,600 feet) across within it of about 234.3 hectares, or 578.9 acres, which today is the site of the annual Fusion music festival.

During the 1920s, the airfield was reopened as a civilian airbase, but it was soon used as a testing ground for the secret German air force experiments under the Treaty of Rapallo.

On February 26, 1936, per order of Wehrmacht Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, the Rechlin airfield became the official testing ground of the newly formed Luftwaffe.

Construction work on the airfields and the accompanying barracks was partly carried out by forced labor from nearby concentration camp Ravensbrück.

After several Allied bombing runs on the primary turf-surfaced aerodrome field of Rechlin, and the satellite Roggentin airfield in 1944, testing of late-war planes was shifted just southwards to Lärz.