Lipetsk Fighter-Pilot School

[Jopa79]

German pilots were secretly trained during the interwar years in Lipetsk, Soviet Union.

As the Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany from operating an air force, alternative methods were carried on to train and develop the future Luftwaffe. One of these methods was founding Kampffliegerschule Lipezk in the Soviet Union.

Although the clause on building and operating civilian aircraft was dropped in 1922, the clause prohibiting operating and producing military aircraft in Germany remained. As the events of the Occupation of the Ruhr took place, as an objection to the Belgian and French occupation troops, Germany ordered 100 Fokker aircraft from the Netherlands.

While the Occupation of Ruhr ended in 1924, Germany - didn't want to further violate the Versailles Treaty - was facing a problem, how to utilize the new aircraft. Surprisingly, the Soviet Union approached and showed interest, allowing Germans to develop aircraft and train pilots in the country. So, these two countries, both outcasts in the world community during then ended up signing a special agreement as the Soviet Union allowed German aircraft development and German pilot training in secrecy in the Soviet Union.

The closure of the German Lipetsk fighter-pilot school happened in the early 1930's as the political atmosphere changed, as well, the ideological differences between fascism and communism were too wide.

My questions here are:

• How this agreement benefited the Soviets, why they were so willing to provide an air-base on their own soil for German usage?
• How "secret" this event actually was? Didn't the Allies really have any clue about this program?
• If the Allies really didn't know about this, what did they think, when they found out that they couldn't supervise the rules set by their own?
• If the Allies already knew this, why didn't they set retaliatory measures, sanctions, etc.?

 

[Kovax]

This is merely the tip of the iceberg. Germany was developing aircraft and tank technology in conjunction with other countries by sending engineers to work for foreign manufacturers, while they were forbidden by terms of the Versailles Treaty to do such work in Germany. For example, German engineers working in Sweden assisted in the development of torsion bar suspension for tanks (Swedish M38, which was later licensed to Hungary as the Toldi), a suspension system which was later used on the Panther. When Hitler openly repudiated the treaty, those engineers mostly returned to Germany, and continued further development from there.

German aircraft produced during the 1930s often included mounting holes for machineguns and/or bomb racks, and could be converted for military use in a matter of hours. The Reading Air Museum (Reading, Pennsylvania, USA) has a ME-108 "fast mail carrier" with mounting brackets and spaces in the wings reserved for machineguns and ammo racks. It's "almost" an early Bf-109.

Most of the late interwar period German naval vessels were overweight compared to what they were officially proclaimed to be. It was "suspected", but I'm not sure if it was positively "known".

My assumption would be that the German fighter training school would have been part of a larger agreement which allowed several Soviet officer candidates to train in Germany alongside their German counterparts. Those German-trained officers included several soon to become famous names, such as Zhukov.

Basically, everyone knew that Germany was evading, circumventing, or outright violating the treaty for years, but each individual violation was hardly worth fighting a war over. It was the sum of all of those small measures taken together that was the real problem, and I don't know if anyone outside of Germany knew just how widespread and pervasive it was until it was apparent that war was inevitable, and then it was clear that the Allies weren't adequately prepared.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Most of the late interwar period German naval vessels were overweight compared to what they were officially proclaimed to be. It was "suspected", but I'm not sure if it was positively "known".

Italians did get conclusively caught on the Zaras when one had to dock at Gibraltar during SCW, but the German offenders were generally completed after the World War started.

 

[Jopa79]

Those German-trained officers included several soon to become famous names, such as Zhukov.

Hmm...I always thought Zhukov as a Frunze Military Academy-trained.

Edit: I think, I misunderstood you at first. You probably meant the German-trained Soviet officers would become such as Zhukov, without stating Zhukov himself was German-trained…silly me

 

[Herbert West]

Italians did get conclusively caught on the Zaras when one had to dock at Gibraltar during SCW, but the German offenders were generally completed after the World War started.

Plus, everyone cheated on the treaties. Some outright, by just building bigger ships, some when drawing the rules (see the UK)

 

[Victor1234]

Like Kovax said, it's best to look at Lipetsk as part of a larger deal. The Germans and Soviets both found themselves as diplomatic pariahs after WW1, and the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 started off a period where they tried to cooperate in many areas, not just this one. Aside from the airforce base, there were also other bases for tanks and chemical warfare in the Soviet Union.

The benefit to the Germans is clear, but for the Soviets, it would not only be a great experience for any of their officers who were trained there (it's my understanding that these schools trained both German and Soviet officers, although the obvious emphasis is on Germans, with the Soviet cadre taking the knowledge back to their regular military academies), but they also get to see the latest German designs and steal/be influenced by them for their own.

Especially considering how desperately the Civil War had gone (armored cars which were dropped early on the Western Front for being useless were pumped out of the Putilov works in Petrograd nonstop) and how the vast majority of officers in the Russian army with world war experience were dead/exiled, it's no surprise that in 1922, they felt the Germans had a lot to teach them about everything.

An interesting sidenote along the same spirit is the German cooperation with Nationalist China, which had an even greater economic/military training/equipment impact, but was purely for economic benefits and started by the Nazis after they ended ties with the Soviets. The alliance with Japan eventually forced them to end it, but not before Chiang Kai-shek's son became a Gerbirgsjaeger...

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

View attachment 737791
German pilots were secretly trained during the interwar years in Lipetsk, Soviet Union.

As the Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany from operating an air force, alternative methods were carried on to train and develop the future Luftwaffe. One of these methods was founding Kampffliegerschule Lipezk in the Soviet Union.

Although the clause on building and operating civilian aircraft was dropped in 1922, the clause prohibiting operating and producing military aircraft in Germany remained. As the events of the Occupation of the Ruhr took place, as an objection to the Belgian and French occupation troops, Germany ordered 100 Fokker aircraft from the Netherlands.

While the Occupation of Ruhr ended in 1924, Germany - didn't want to further violate the Versailles Treaty - was facing a problem, how to utilize the new aircraft. Surprisingly, the Soviet Union approached and showed interest, allowing Germans to develop aircraft and train pilots in the country. So, these two countries, both outcasts in the world community during then ended up signing a special agreement as the Soviet Union allowed German aircraft development and German pilot training in secrecy in the Soviet Union.

The closure of the German Lipetsk fighter-pilot school happened in the early 1930's as the political atmosphere changed, as well, the ideological differences between fascism and communism were too wide.

My questions here are:

• How this agreement benefited the Soviets, why they were so willing to provide an air-base on their own soil for German usage?
• How "secret" this event actually was? Didn't the Allies really have any clue about this program?
• If the Allies really didn't know about this, what did they think, when they found out that they couldn't supervise the rules set by their own?
• If the Allies already knew this, why didn't they set retaliatory measures, sanctions, etc.?

I will explain how this works using the Armor school as an example.

The Germans were housed and dined in a communal barracks with Russian staff without official Russian oversight or direct observers monitoring their every move. However, every Russian 'servant' working in the barracks and the grounds spoke German and were hand picked to listen in on the officer's conversations. The maid might have a college degree yet play stupid. What books were they reading. What was the topic of discussion over dinner. What truly excited them. All of these were typed up and submitted back to Russian command where a set of armor capable of defeating what was described begins.

Stauffenberg expands upon this in Labyrinth, that by listening to the questions asked by the Russian officers during their mutual 'alliance' so carefully patched together by Karl Haushofer; it was apparent to him the Russians were building something heavier than the Germans and wanted to know how effective it would be against Germany if push came to shove - in a polite and diplomatic fashion.