At the time, Göring and Wever also required a long-range fighter escort design for protecting the bombers over Britain and the Soviet Union, Germany's expected enemies.

[21] In November 1936, Richthofen left the Technical Service staff to take a field command in the Condor Legion, a Luftwaffe contingent sent to support General Francisco Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.

[30] This apparent regression from the practices and experiences of World War I stemmed from the belief among the General Staff (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe) that army support aviation in 1917–1918 was purely a reaction to trench warfare.

[30] The Spanish experience encouraged the General Staff to embrace the dive-bomber concept, for which Richthofen was partly responsible, but the influence of the conflict on German operational preferences remain ambiguous.

Staff officers were trained to solve operational problems, and the lack of doctrine and reluctance of the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL = High Command of the Air Force) to micromanage gave Sperrle and Richthofen a free hand to devise solutions.

Given the slight numerical and technological advantage of the Luftwaffe over its enemies in 1939–1941, its success during these years can largely be attributed to extensive officer and staff training programs along with the experiences of the Condor Legion in Spain.

Hellmuth Volkmann assumed his place, but his pessimistic reports to Berlin, his continued demands for support and resources, and his personal disagreements with Richthofen forced his replacement in October 1938.

Some accounts of the raid, including defenses proffered after the fact by Condor Legion veterans, argued that the "poor accuracy" of German bomb sights in early 1937 was responsible for the carnage caused by the attack.

[43] Only eight days into the campaign, on 8 September, the Tenth Army had advanced so far into Poland, that Richthofen was obliged to move Günter Schwartzkopff, his most experienced dive-bomber exponent, into Polish airfields, while Reichenau closed in on Warsaw.

The collapse of communications deprived commanders and squadrons of orders, a situation exacerbated by the lack of a common radio frequency and by over-stretched logistics, which also forced them to scavenge enemy supply depots.

While the operational situation was not good, Löhr took command of Fliegerführer z.b.V., giving the unit virtual autonomy and allowing Richthofen to build a personal empire of six Gruppen (Groups).

Just after midnight on 12/13 September, the Luftwaffe chief of staff Hans Jeschonnek ordered Löhr to prepare to attack ghettos in northern Warsaw, in retaliation for unspecified war crimes against German soldiers in recent battles.

[49] That morning, Richthofen signaled the OKL; "Urgently request exploitation of last opportunity for large experiment as devastation and terror raid", and added "every effort will be made to completely eradicate Warsaw.

Leaflets demanding the city's surrender had been dropped on four days earlier, but Richthofen began acting on his own initiative, using Luftwaffe Directive 18, dated 21 September, which gave him responsibility for the conduct of air operations.

[55] Fliegerkorps VIII and Richthofen were led to believe they would spend the entire campaign supporting Reichenau in northern Belgium, but the OKL did not inform the Corps that it was going to be used in a Meuse breakthrough.

Richthofen was ordered to throw in half of his force in the Hague battle and to attack the Scheldt estuary, near Antwerp, the Dutch border, to stop the French before they positioned themselves near the Moerdijk bridgehead.

[67] Richthofen moved his HQ to Ochamps to keep up with events, while he gambled on German air superiority holding out to fill forward airfields up with aircraft, which led to overcrowding.

In June 1940, Richthofen and his Corps' specific mission was to establish air superiority over the southern part of the English Channel (near France) and to clear British shipping from that strip of sea altogether, particularly from the region between Portsmouth and Portland.

[86] Richthofen's force did not participate in the bombing of Belgrade, but were engaged in attacking Yugoslav reinforcements, concentrated on the Austrian and Hungarian borders in the north, that were streaming south to block the break through.

[100] By the summer of 1941, the Luftwaffe and its land-air liaison teams would dramatically reduce the number of friendly-fire incidents, as German assault aviation would have detailed knowledge of friendly and enemy dispositions.

[115] On 20 August Richthofen moved strike and fighter aircraft to Spasskaya Polist, 40 km north-east of Novgorod, to support an attack that would encircle Leningrad and cut it off from Murmansk.

Admiral Götting and Fliegerführer Süd (Flying Leader South) Wolfgang von Wild, responsible for all naval aviation in the region, ignored the request; it was only necessary to abandon operations in the Crimean shipping lanes, not the whole expanse of the Black Sea.

Nevertheless, he committed himself to his task, and ordered Fiebig to destroy rail links around Stalingrad, where the German Sixth Army, despite having 1,000 aircraft supporting its drive to the city, were struggling to make rapid headway.

He allowed some raids against Grozny's oilfields and close support operations, but the mountain terrain in the region made it difficult for the Panzer Divisions to exploit the actions of his air units.

[167] The failure of the German ground and air offensive against Anzio in April 1944, meant that the Allies would establish a firm beachhead, and there was no opportunity for Richthofen to launch any major counteroffensives in Italy.

After one briefing, in the summer of 1943, Richthofen praised Hitler's "brilliant grasp" of military strategy, and blamed the "idiotic" Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel for the failures of the Wehrmacht.

[174] In Corum's view, this perception is based on the mythology surrounding German aerial doctrine of the time, which asserted without evidence that the Luftwaffe had a policy of "terror bombing" for which killing civilians and terrorising civil populations into submission was the primary aim.

[174] Warsaw, however, appeared to have all the hallmarks of a "terror attack": the use of high explosives and incendiary bombs (632 tons) destroyed a portion of the city and killed an estimated 6,000 civilians or non-combatants.

The nature of the war on the Eastern Front—which differed enormously from its prosecution in Western Europe—can have left no doubt in the minds of senior Wehrmacht commanders that Germany was operating outside the rules of international law.

Richthofen was also supportive of rocketry and jet propulsion while working at the Technical Research Office, at a time when leaders of the other major powers settled for larger piston-engine aircraft.