Birds of Prey. Philip W. Blood

Image 3: European Bison in Białowieźa.

      Source: Author, 2009.

Once completed, the hunter began the Totenwacht (guard the dead), an hour-long vigil over the carcass. During this hour the hunter was expected to reflect on the sublime kill and recall past hunts with all their joys and miseries. The carcass was then included in the total tally for the final rituals. The dead carcasses were arranged in order of nobility, size, and by rank, like soldiers on a parade ground. If it was a large tally, braziers and flaming torches were added to the ambience of the moment. The results of the day’s hunt were then read aloud. The horns sounded several more tunes, announcing the end of the hunt at which point the hunters and their guests would raise their right arms in the Hitler Gruss (Nazi salute). Then followed the final horn sounding the Halali (tally-ho). After the ceremonies were over the hunters retired to the dining room to partake in the Tot-trinken (toast to the kill). The antlers were placed on tables, with candles and more sprigs added for decoration. Dinner was then served by silver service.35

Deconstructing Frevert’s invention is not difficult. David Dalby has explained the Bruchzeichen was a French ceremony. He claimed when German nobles were offered the ritual in the Middle Ages, they expressed no interest.36 The Letzter Bissen originated in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1922), which was conveniently published in German in translation in 1928.37 Frevert’s justification, was the Totenwacht had increasingly appealed to hunters in the two decades since circa 1916. This had associations with the widespread death cults and ceremonies that emerged during the Great War. Frevert confessed two music scores were composed for the book by Professor Cleving (Berlin). They were the Muffel tot and the Halali.38 Gritzbach, Göring’s Nazi biographer, claimed the Jagdliches Brauchtum restored the ‘heroic realism’ and traditions of the past. He enthused over the combination of faith in Urwald (primaeval wilderness) and its relationship to Germanic hunting customs. He believed Frevert’s efforts would form the common etiquette for all German hunters.39 The institutionalisation of the Jagdliches Brauchtum brought uniformity, while the reinvention of customs and traditions helped assimilate Nazi ritualism within the hunt. Ceremonies were devised that honoured the dead and invoked pagan pre-Christian style rituals that had never been associated with German hunt lore.40 The death ceremony was an invention and few in history have been quite so blatant. This bizarre story of the invention, however, found its way into Nazi ceremonies and rituals that preceded the Holocaust. To paraphrase Hobsbawm, ‘nothing appears more ancient, and linked with an immemorial past than the customs’ of the German hunt. In 1970 the German hunt handbook still referred to the ideas of Oberforstmeister Frevert and Scherping.41 Hosbawm opined that customs are not a brake on innovation and precedent can be changed when appearing to bring about ‘social continuity and natural law’.42 Like Faust, Frevert had made a pact with the devil.

      II. The Blue

The Luftwaffe uniform colour was blue-grey. The colour selection was to distinguish the Luftwaffe uniform from the grey-green of the army and Kriegsmarine. ‘The Blue’, unlike state forestry was a ‘new’ Nazi elite. From the outset it was as an institution burdened with internal tensions and riddled with mediocre leadership. A postwar narrative of Luftwaffe history was manufactured by Adolf Galland’s based upon his memories and fantasies. In The First and the Last (1950) Galland effectively rganizatio his political involvement in the Nazi state. He acknowledged Göring as the founder of the Luftwaffe, but was reluctant to discuss the deeper Nazi pedigree. He also recognised that Göring had allocated forty per cent of total rearmament costs to the Luftwaffe, while he was responsible for the Third Reich’s economy.43 His most serious criticism was also toward Göring, as ‘supreme commander’, for surrounding himself with his Great War cronies. Galland claimed they shared a common failing of not understanding modern aviation.44 Where Galland was less forthcoming was how the Luftwaffe had been incubated through the RFA’s paramilitary structure. The Luftwaffe’s rganization, air bases, depots, manpower, structure and ideology were acquired from RFA resources. Galland dropped a hint of this relationship in reference to the Elchwald estate that served as the headquarters for his command. Göring turned over his palatial lodges into Luftwaffe headquarters for the duration of the war. The RFA facilitated the rapid rganization of the Luftwaffe across the estates and bases in East Prussia.

The reasons for Galland’s myth-making are not difficult to deconstruct. Stephan Bungay argued the Luftwaffe was as much political as it was a military rganization.45 He pointed to the Göring and Ernst Udet (1896–1941) relationship, as the champions of the warrior-hero ethos. They introduced the notion of ‘romantic amateurism’ as the ideological glue of the officer corps. Bungay believed this stunted the Luftwaffe’s military development. The Luftwaffe had been raised from a broad cross-section of the population, unlike the army it was recruited nationally rather by state like the army.46 Bungay focusing aircrew noted that by 1939 the officer corps had reached 15,000 comprising of pilots, army officers, and the technical services. In basic training, the Luftwaffe instilled an attitude of common experience and service. During the Spanish Civil War, according to Bungay, the German aces became poisoned by ‘romantic amateurism’. Galland was a typical example of this clique. He was known to have recommended the removal of radios as unnecessary in the cockpit of fighting aeroplanes, in a dubious challenge to modernity.47 Bungay was deeply critical of Göring, Udet, Galland and others but blamed this on traits of the ‘Herrenvolk’ and the temporary loyalty of the pack that followed whoever was leader.48 There was a persuasive argument but not entirely accurate and misunderstood the nature of Nazism. The deteriorating fortunes of war encouraged a rise in the cliques but their loyalty to Hitler never waivered.