1. Hans Jeschonnek was born in 1899 and joined the military as a cadet in 1909.
120 Facts About Hans Jeschonnek
1. 2.
Hans Jeschonnek fought in the Silesian Uprisings in 1919 and then served as a junior general staff officer in the 1920s.
3.
Hans Jeschonnek admired Hitler and under the leadership of his close associate Hermann Goring, commander-in-chief of the newly formed Luftwaffe, Hans Jeschonnek's career began a meteoric rise from Hauptmann in 1932 to Generalmajor in 1939.
4.
In November 1938 Hans Jeschonnek was appointed chief of the general staff at just 39.
5.
Hans Jeschonnek's rise depended, in part, on his slavish and unquestioning loyalty to Hitler and Goring.
6.
Hans Jeschonnek oriented the Luftwaffe away from the broadly based doctrines of the inter-war period upon the outbreak of World War II.
7.
Hans Jeschonnek was a pupil of the short-term concept, the so-called Blitzkrieg war.
8.
Hans Jeschonnek neglected industrial production, military intelligence, logistics, air defence, strategic bombing and the creation of reserves, the sustenance of a military organisation.
9.
The military victories, until 1942, largely masked the failures of Hans Jeschonnek, Goring and the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe.
10.
In 1943, Hans Jeschonnek experienced at least one emotional breakdown over the failures and the inability of the Luftwaffe to defend Germany.
11.
Hans Jeschonnek was born on 9 April 1899 in the Prussian town of Inowroclaw, the son of a teacher, Dr phil.
12.
Hans Jeschonnek had three brothers and a sister from his father's first marriage and four half-brothers from his father's second marriage.
13.
From 1905 until April 1908, Hans Jeschonnek attended the Burgerschule in Bromberg, present-day Bydgoszcz, and then for one year the local Gymnasium.
14.
Hans Jeschonnek was made a Leutnant ohne Patent in 1914 at the age of 15.
15.
Hans Jeschonnek transferred to the Luftstreitkrafte at 17.
16.
Hans Jeschonnek joined Jagdstaffel 40 on the Western Front and by time World War I ended, Jeschonnek had shot down two enemy aircraft and received the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Iron Cross 2nd Class.
17.
Hans Jeschonnek fought in the Silesian Uprisings as a member of the Reichswehrs 6th Cavalry Regiment.
18.
Hans Jeschonnek joined the Freikorps aerial detachments, Grenzschutz Fliegerabteilungen and flew in the same conflict.
19.
Hans Jeschonnek then worked under Kurt Student, Inspectorate of Arms Equipment in the Army Ordnance Department from 1923 to 1928 and studied at the General Staff.
20.
The lack of German equipment at this time allowed Hans Jeschonnek to visit a number of other countries and fly a number of Dutch, Swedish and Swiss aircraft.
21.
In 1928 he graduated from the Kriegsakademie first in his class and in April Hans Jeschonnek worked for Inspectorate 1, the aerial warfare branch of the Ministry of the Reichswehr under the command of Hellmuth Felmy from 1929.
22.
Hans Jeschonnek was one of 300 aviators, including 168 officers, who formed part of the embryonic air staff on 1 November 1930.
23.
Hans Jeschonnek held office as a section leader in the Truppenamt and Waffenamt until 1935.
24.
Hans Jeschonnek involved himself in the debate amongst officers in the Truppenamt in 1932 over the independence of military aviation.
25.
Hans Jeschonnek proposed dividing it into three branches, with the army taking control of the majority.
26.
Equord's opposition was answered in a paper by Hans Jeschonnek, which advocated the centralisation of all aviation, military and civilian, under one office.
27.
Concurrently, Hans Jeschonnek held a field command as officer commanding Kampfgeschwader 152.
28.
On 1 October 1936 Hans Jeschonnek was appointed Head of Training Group III of Air Administrative Area I in Greifswald.
29.
Hans Jeschonnek was able to take an active part in testing and evaluating aircraft that brought the Luftwaffe to the cutting-edge of aircraft technology.
30.
Hans Jeschonnek served as a section leader, with three serving officers, eleven former officers and 15 engineers with officer rank.
31.
Hans Jeschonnek became a strong proponent of the Schnellbomber concept while stationed there.
32.
On 20 April 1937 Hans Jeschonnek was promoted to Oberstleutnant and entered the Ministry of Aviation as Chief of Branch 1 of the General Staff.
33.
Hans Jeschonnek was a protege of Walther Wever chief of staff in the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe.
34.
Wever recognised his intelligence and talent; Hans Jeschonnek was considered the "wunderkind" of the General Staff.
35.
Hans Jeschonnek had nearly completed his tutelage under Wever, a gifted staff officer, in the area of leadership, training and organisation.
36.
Hans Jeschonnek played a peripheral part in the political intrigues in the Luftwaffe.
37.
Hans Jeschonnek showed a distinct lack of interest in these dull non-operational matters and, as a consequence, the chasm between the ambitions of the General Staff and Udet's production planners widened before the war started.
38.
On 1 February 1939, Jeschonnek replaced Hans-Jurgen Stumpff as the Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe.
39.
Hans Jeschonnek had the intelligence to hold such a senior rank, but his lack of experience of higher command, in either peace or wartime, in an increasingly complex and large organisation, meant he could not control it.
40.
Hans Jeschonnek underestimated the importance of technology upon operations and his denigration of engineers was typical of the Luftwaffe leadership from Goring down.
41.
Only five percent of the officers, not including Hans Jeschonnek, had technical degrees.
42.
Hans Jeschonnek never questioned Hitler's policies and took his Fuhrer's word on important matters.
43.
Hans Jeschonnek was a member of the Nazi Party, along with several others in the higher echelons of the Luftwaffe, which earned it a reputation as a Nazi service.
44.
Hans Jeschonnek lacked the personality to challenge Goring and could do little but deal with the consequences.
45.
Hans Jeschonnek communicated brief minutes of staff meetings to State Secretary Milch.
46.
Hans Jeschonnek's workload was reduced but it deprived him of direct influence upon training and slowed the Operations Staff's evaluation of combat experiences.
47.
Hans Jeschonnek appointed Oberstleutnant Otto Hoffmann von Waldau as head of operations in the General Staff.
48.
Hans Jeschonnek struggled to convince older officers that his view of air power was the right one.
49.
Hans Jeschonnek held the view future wars should be fought with high intensity and ended quickly.
50.
Hermann Plocher, chief of the operations staff, urged Hans Jeschonnek to reconsider and prepare for a long war but his superior rejected the warning.
51.
Hans Jeschonnek's willingness to take Hitler's assurances that a long war would not occur reflected his belief that Hitler was a political and military genius whose views aligned with his own preconceptions of how to fight future wars.
52.
Hans Jeschonnek had experienced the difficulty in level bombing with KG 152 and with Ernst Udet, became a strong advocate of the dive-bomber.
53.
Hans Jeschonnek was appointed head of technical departments including the Office of Air Armament, where he controlled research and development.
54.
Hans Jeschonnek had a tendency to be sarcastic and abrasive toward junior officers.
55.
Hans Jeschonnek was awkward at social events and preferred the company of a small number of intimates.
56.
When it was pointed out the Ju 88 did not have the necessary range and speed to evade defences and carry out strategic bombing, Hans Jeschonnek declined to discuss the matter further.
57.
Hans Jeschonnek saw air warfare predominantly in terms of combat aircraft.
58.
Hans Jeschonnek did nothing to develop transport aircraft or reconnaissance aeroplanes.
59.
Hans Jeschonnek was especially impressed by the effect the Luftwaffe had on ground operations in Spain.
60.
Hans Jeschonnek understood ground-support would be achieved primarily through aerial interdiction, but diverted vast resources to the close air support mission.
61.
In 1939, Hans Jeschonnek formed the "close battle division" under the command of Richthofen, the ground-support specialist.
62.
In June 1939 during the General Staff Ride, Hans Jeschonnek stated unequivocally that upon the declaration of hostilities the Luftwaffe should not direct all its power to destroying the enemy air force.
63.
Hans Jeschonnek's remarks were a repudiation of aerial doctrine established by his mentor, Wever and Helmuth Wilberg in the 1920s and 1930s, in Conduct of the Air War to which Jeschonnek had contributed.
64.
One analysis wrote that Hans Jeschonnek gave vacillating and contradictory directives at this time.
65.
Hans Jeschonnek had briefed Goring on the planned invasion on 25 April 1939.
66.
Hans Jeschonnek called the German Embassy in Moscow on the morning 1 September 1939 to request that the Soviet Union keep the Minsk radio station identifying itself, so that German bomber pilots could use it for navigational purposes.
67.
Hans Jeschonnek was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 27 October 1939, after Poland was defeated.
68.
Hans Jeschonnek proved to be very anxious to occupy the Netherlands; he approached Alfred Jodl on 6 February 1940, to suggest guaranteeing Belgian neutrality for assurances the Netherlands was to be was invaded, with Denmark and Norway.
69.
Hans Jeschonnek did not help and refused to release Heinkel He 111, Dornier Do 17, or the Dornier Do 217, then under development, for naval operations.
70.
Hans Jeschonnek was incensed that Luftwaffe units had been subordinated to the army.
71.
Jodl and Hans Jeschonnek were forced to work out a compromise whereby requests to combat forces by the army were filtered through the OKL, which issued the orders.
72.
Hans Jeschonnek fully supported Goring's boast that the Luftwaffe could destroy the pocket and prevent the Dunkirk evacuation.
73.
On 19 July 1940 Hans Jeschonnek was promoted to General der Flieger at the age of 40.
74.
Hans Jeschonnek regarded the air battle as won, and pressed Hitler for bombing campaign against London, to be enacted as a final blow.
75.
Hans Jeschonnek felt that military and civilian industries were located too far apart to achieve a collapse of morale by attacking the former.
76.
Hans Jeschonnek ordered that only military targets in London were to bombed.
77.
Hans Jeschonnek regarded London as a target before the commencement of Eagle, a view shared by other senior officers.
78.
Hans Jeschonnek responded that the German people would not under the same circumstances, but the British were weaker.
79.
Hans Jeschonnek refrained from offering the Italians large quantities of equipment for he, like other racially prejudiced officers, did not think the Italians capable of utilising German aircraft effectively.
80.
Hans Jeschonnek did agree to releasing the specialist maritime interdiction formation, Fliegerkorps X to Sicily.
81.
Until October 1940, Hans Jeschonnek ignored the development of aerial torpedoes.
82.
Hans Jeschonnek supported the use of paratrooper forces in the Battle of Crete and Kurt Student's desire to use Crete as a staging post for invasions of Cyprus and Suez canal regions.
83.
Hans Jeschonnek sent an Enigma machine message, intercepted by Ultra, enquiring into the whereabouts of his staff's son, a midshipman, on board.
84.
Hans Jeschonnek ordered Walter Junck, commanding Jagdfliegerfuhrer 3 in France, to Iraq to form Fliegerfuhrer Irak.
85.
The inadequacies of the Italians encouraged Hans Jeschonnek to propose Kesselring be sent to the Mediterranean to support the siege of Malta and the North African Campaign.
86.
Hans Jeschonnek's brothers served in the Kriegsmarine and he was sympathetic to the desire of the navy to have adequate air support in the Battle of the Atlantic.
87.
Hans Jeschonnek prevaricated and they did not become available until the summer.
88.
Hans Jeschonnek promised around 250 aircraft, but refused to reinforce the Channel region with fighter aircraft.
89.
Fink offered his resignation to Hans Jeschonnek if refused his way.
90.
On 27 February 1941, Hans Jeschonnek informed Franz Halder that the aircraft to airspace ratio was low and that only essential areas could be guaranteed air support.
91.
Udet, Goring and Hans Jeschonnek all shared a proportion of the blame.
92.
Milch told Hans Jeschonnek this signalled a reduction in productive capability in the aircraft industry; and more difficulties in finding labour and raw materials.
93.
In March 1942, Hans Jeschonnek objected to Milch's call for increases in fighter production.
94.
Hans Jeschonnek was firmly of the view that the defeat of the Soviet Union, not air defence, was the prerequisite to a successful prosecution of the war.
95.
Hans Jeschonnek's silence ensured the OKH received no air staff support in its effort to persuade Hitler to abandon Stalingrad and left the air arm with an impossible task of re-supplying the army in the pocket.
96.
Hans Jeschonnek assured Hitler that the Demyansk pocket could be repeated with adequate aircraft and airfields.
97.
Hans Jeschonnek quickly recognised his mistake when planning the technicalities of the air lift and urged Goring to warn Hitler the required tonnage could not be delivered, but his superior regarded it as too late and refused.
98.
Hans Jeschonnek noted to Goring, that non-combat losses were severely affecting combat readiness.
99.
Fritz Kless and Hans Jeschonnek created a Generalkommando to oversee the creation of a long-range bomber force.
100.
Hans Jeschonnek supported the Kursk offensive with the vast majority of German aerial strength in the conviction the Battle of Kursk would prove to be a major victory.
101.
Hans Jeschonnek was impressed so he sent Boetticher to see Hitler.
102.
Hans Jeschonnek requested a field command to escape the mounting pressure but was turned down.
103.
Hans Jeschonnek hoped that the growing night and day defences would fight off the Anglo-American offensive while the Wehrmacht regained the initiative in the Soviet Union.
104.
Hans Jeschonnek recognised the USAAF represented a different kind of threat than Bomber Command; the Americans were attempting to destroy specific targets.
105.
Hans Jeschonnek failed to recognise the warning signals that British air power was growing.
106.
Hans Jeschonnek still thought in terms of an offensive air force and preferred to strike back at British cities, to "fight terror with terror", a view consistent with Hitler's.
107.
German night-fighter strength was inadequate and neither Hans Jeschonnek nor Goring had any great sympathy for the arm.
108.
Hans Jeschonnek replaced Goring at briefings and frequently became the object of Hitler's criticism of the Luftwaffe.
109.
Hans Jeschonnek confided to Hans-Georg von Seidel that terrible mistakes had been made and continued to be.
110.
Hans Jeschonnek was acutely aware he was deeply involved in the failures of the Luftwaffe; Goring could not be blamed for everything.
111.
Hans Jeschonnek's adjutant informed Kesselring, just prior to the overthrow of Benito Mussolini, that he had needed to take a gun out of Jeschonnek's hand and warned that he might try it again.
112.
Meister then departed for a conference at which Hans Jeschonnek did not appear.
113.
Hans Jeschonnek's adjutant was holding breakfast for him, and another officer wished to make a report to him directly.
114.
When Hans Jeschonnek failed to arrive his adjutant went to look for him, but found him dead with a pistol at his side.
115.
Hans Jeschonnek left behind a memorandum, addressed ostensibly to Hitler, in which he called for a change in leadership of the Luftwaffe.
116.
Hans Jeschonnek belonged to the circle which believed in a great and victorious future.
117.
Hans Jeschonnek's feelings were intensified by his personal devotion to Hitler, whom he saw as a genius of first rank.
118.
Patriotic, sensitive, ambitious, and naturally optimistic, Hans Jeschonnek finally anticipated the approaching calamity.
119.
Hans Jeschonnek was buried, at his own request, in Camp Robinson on the shores of Lake Goldap, not far from the Rominter Heath.
120.
Hans Jeschonnek's resting place is still actively maintained by the German War Graves Commission, and there is a memorial stone with a plaque inscribed in both German and Polish.