The Luftwaffe was the aerial warfare branch of Nazi Germany's military. It was formed on 26 February 1935 with 2,500 planes - defying the 1919 Treaty of Versailles - and its planes were gloriously paraded over Berlin as the people of Germany watched the powerful air force's debut. Adolf Hitler made his close ally Herman Goering the Luftwaffe's chief, and he oversaw its development into one of the best air forces in Europe. During the Spanish Civil War, its Condor Legion showed its fearsome power in its support of Nationalist Spain's forces, and it was infamous for its bombing of Guernica.
World War II was its finest hour, when it fought in the greatest air battle of all time, the Battle of Britain, from 1940 to 1941 after bombing the United Kingdom in the infamous "The Blitz" period. Germany's offensives into Poland, France, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union were all assisted by the Luftwaffe's bombing of enemy targets in Germany's Blitzkrieg strategy, and it had 119,871 planes and 3,400,000 personnel during the war. After the Battle of the Bulge, its attempts at gaining air superiority were forever thwarted, and it was disbanded after the end of the war in May 1945. Goering and many of its other generals were charged with war crimes such as the bombing of Rotterdam and strafing refugee camps a result of its brutal tactics, and Goering would kill himself before he could face trial; other generals were executed by firing squad.
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