Kurt Student
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Kurt Student (May 12, 1890-July 1, 1978) was a German Luftwaffe General who fought as a pilot on the Eastern Front during the First World War and as the commander of the German Fallschirmjäger (parachute) troops during the Second World War.
[edit] Biography
Student was born at Birkholz, in current Saxony-Anhalt.
He joined the German Air Force in 1913. He initially served on the Galician front, then on the Western Front in AOK 3 and Jasta 9 (from October 1916) squadrons. He scored 6 victories over the French aircraft in 1916-1917. See [[1]]
During the interwar period Student tried to keep the Luftwaffe from becoming technologically obsolete. He became involved in gliding, since Germany was forbidden to have any military planes under the Treaty of Versailles, but gliding was not forbidden. He also attended the Red Army Air Forces maneovres, where he first came in contact with the idea of airborne operations. After Hitler came to power in Germany, Student was appointed by Hermann Göring to be the head of the Luftwaffe's training schools, a position which became official when the Luftwaffe was officially formed [ie was no longer secret] in 1935. In 1938, he was given command of all airborne and air-landing troops, namely the 7th Air Division, Germany's first Fallschirmjäger division.
Although he played no part in the invasion of Poland, his troops proved their value during the Blitzkrieg of 1940 in the Low Countries, where troops under his command captured the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael (he himself was accidentally shot by one of his own men around this time). In 1941 he directed the capture of Crete from his HQ in Athens.[1] The operation was successful, but incurred so many casualties that Hitler forbade future airborne operations.
In 1943 he planned Unternehmen Eiche, the successful spectacular raid of a special Luftwaffe unit (landing with gliders and STOL aircraft on a hilltop), to free Benito Mussolini. The well-known SS-commander Otto Skorzeny took part in this operation.
He was transferred to Italy and later to France, where he was involved in the defence of Normandy in 1944. He was put in charge of the First Paratroop Army and took part in countering the allied Operation Market Garden, near Arnhem. After a brief time at the Eastern Front in Mecklenburg in 1945, he was captured by the British in Schleswig-Holstein in April of that same year. He was freed in 1948.
[edit] References
- ^ In January 1941 he is known to have proposed a similar operation against forces in Northern Ireland along the same lines of Plan Kathleen, at the time Göring told him that his focus should be on the airborne conquest of Gibraltar via Operation Felix.
