The sorry tale of the Luftwaffe's ground units was a byproduct of the polycratic administration of the Third Reich in which multiple power blocs vied for power in the state structure. As the fuel crisis of 1941/42 started to restrict German air operations, the Luftwaffe found itself with a surplus of ground personnel amidst a general manpower shortage. The sensible thing to do would be to cycle such personnel into the Heer, but Göring balked at these proposals both as a sign of his diminishing power but also a tacit admission that the Luftwaffe was losing the air war. The result was Göring pushed for the creation of Luftwaffe ground units who were supposed to be employed as "stiffeners" for overstretched Heer units. According to Walter Warlimont, the Luftwaffe chief claimed "he could not expect his National Socialist boys to don the grey-meaning the reactionary-uniform of the army." Göring's claim that the National Socialist spirit of his men found an eager ear in Hitler, who increasingly felt that ideological fervor was one solution to the crises of 1942. The Heer was initially supportive of the field divisions, but balked at the expense of equipping them, which came from the Heer's own budget. The Luftwaffe field divisions often lacked heavy equipment, proper infantry training, and the Heer chiefs seldom desired to allocate the resources necessary to rectify these shortcomings. The combat debut of the Luftwaffe field divisions in the latter period of the Stalingrad campaign was less than auspicious and their subsequent performance in 1943 was just short of disastrous. The Luftwaffe's insistence that the field divisions be staffed by its own officers compounded the shortcomings in training and equipment. Göring's claim that their ideological fervor would make up for these deficiencies proved to be just wind and smoke. The Heer intervened in November 1943 to replace the field division's officers with qualified Heer personnel and more closely integrate it within the Heer's order of battle, but administration friction with the Luftwaffe and the fact that Soviet advances often outstripped the German capacity to deal with them meant that this reorganization was never fully implemented.

Sources

Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Germany and the Second World War. / Vol. 5, Organization and mobilization of the German sphere of power. Part 1, Wartime administration, economy, and manpower resources 1939-1941. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

_. Germany and the Second World War. / Vol. 6, The Global War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.