Robert Ritter von Greim

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Robert Ritter von Greim

Robert Ritter von Greim or Robert Greim (June 22, 1892 - May 24, 1945) was a German pilot and army officer.

Born in Bayreuth, son of a Bavarian police captain, Greim was an army cadet before World War I and initially served in the artillery before transferring to the German Air Service (Fliegertruppe) in 1915. First flying two-seaters, Greim then joined the Jasta (Jagdstaffel, fighter squadron) 34b flyers for a period in 1918, after Jasta 34b had been equipped with 'cast-offs' from Jagdgeschwader (JG) I, the unit which had been commanded by Manfred von Richthofen until his death in action on April 21. Even though the machines were second-hand, they were warmly welcomed by Jasta 34b as being superior to the older Albatros and Pfalz fighters that they had been previously equipped with. In June 1918, Greim had an encounter with a Bristol Fighter, and his aircraft lost its cowling. This struck and damaged his top wing, along with the lower left interplane strut, but he managed to land the machine successfully.

By the war's end he had scored 28 victories, and had been awarded the Pour le Mérite, and the Bavarian Max-Joseph Order (Orden Max-Joseph). This latter award made him a Knight (Ritter), and allowed him to add both this honorific title and the style 'von' to his name.

After the war, Greim struggled to find a place in the 100,000 man army that the Versailles Treaty proscribed to Germany, and was unsuccessful. As a result he decided to focus on attaining a career in law, and even succeeded in passing Germany's rigorous law exams. However, the lure of aircraft and pilots was too strong, and he was asked by the government of China, in the form of Chiang Kai-Shek, to come to China and assist in building a Chinese air force. Greim then moved himself and his family for a few years to China where he founded a flying school and laid some rudimentary measures regarding developing an air force that he was to build on later in his career. Greim's opinion was never high of his Chinese pupils, perhaps falling victim to the contemporary bias that Asians were unable to operate complicated machinery. He stated in a letter to friends that "The Chinese will never make good fliers, they have absolutely no fine touch with the stick". Even before the Nazis came to power, Greim realized that his and his family's place was not in the expatriate community in China, but in Germany proper, and he decided to return to his home country.

Greim was asked by Hermann Göring in 1933 to help rebuild the German Air Force and in 1934 was nominated for the command of the first school of fighter pilots following the closure in early 1933 of the secret flying school near the city of Lipetsk in the USSR during the closing days of the Weimar Republic, an era when Germany had been forbidden, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, to have an air force, so it had had to train its future pilots in secret.

In 1938, he assumed command of the department of research techniques in the Luftwaffe. Greim was involved in the Battle of Britain and Operation Barbarossa. Hitler awarded Greim the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords of the Iron Cross (Das Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern des Eisernen Kreuzes), which made him one of the most highly decorated officers at that time.

In late 1942, his son, Hubert Greim, a Bf-109 pilot with JG 2 "Richthofen" was listed as missing in Tunisia. He was shot down from below by a Spitfire flown by a RAAF pilot, but bailed out successfully, and spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp in the United States.

Greim's greatest tactical achievement was his Luftflotte's involvement in the battle of Kursk and his planes bombing of the Orel bulge. It was for this battle and his efforts that he was awarded the swords to his Knights Cross.

When the Soviet forces had reached Berlin and the Reich was all but doomed, Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Greim flew into Berlin with female flying ace Hanna Reitsch and tried to convince Hitler to fly out of Berlin with him. Hitler refused, but promoted Greim to Generalfeldmarschall, making him the last German officer to achieve the rank of Field Marshal, and appointed him head of the Luftwaffe, having previously dismissed Göring in absentia for treason on account of his having contacted Western Allied forces without his consent, with the intention of negotiating a ceasefire. He thus became the second man in the history of the Third Reich to command the Luftwaffe, although with the end of the war in Europe fast approaching, his tenure as Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe would last only a matter of days.

Wounded from his landing in Berlin, Greim was still able to leave the city and was later captured by American soldiers on the day of the surrender of the Third Reich, May 8, 1945. Greim, however, was to be part of a Soviet-American prisoner exchange program and, fearing torture and execution at the hands of the Soviets, committed suicide in Salzburg, Austria, on May 24. His final words before taking potassium cyanide were: "I am the head of the Luftwaffe, but I have no Luftwaffe."

After his death, his decorations, which he had put on along with his dress uniform for his almost ritual suicide, were stripped by his US Army guards.

Notes

Regarding personal names: Ritter is a title, translated approximately as Sir (denoting a Knight), not a first or middle name. There is no equivalent female form.