Robert Ritter Von Greim - Between The Wars

Between The Wars

After the war, Ritter von Greim was unsuccessful in finding a place in the Reichswehr, the 100,000-man army that the Versailles Treaty permitted Germany. As a result he focused on a career in law, and succeeded in passing Germany's rigorous law exams. However, he was asked by Chiang Kai-Shek's government to come to Canton, China to help build a Chinese air force. Ritter von Greim went with his family to China where he founded a flying school and initiated measures for the development of an air force. Ritter von Greim's opinion of his Chinese pupils was not high, perhaps because of the contemporary belief among Europeans that Orientals were unable to operate complicated machinery. He said in a letter that "The Chinese will never make good fliers, they have absolutely no fine touch with the stick". Even before the Nazis came to power, von Greim realized that his proper place was not in the expatriate community in China, but in Germany, and he returned to his native country.

Ritter von Greim was a participant in the 1923 putsch; as a convinced Nazi he "remained utterly committed to Hitler to the very end of the war".

In 1933, Ritter von Greim was asked by Hermann Göring to help rebuild the German Air Force and in 1934 was appointed to the command of the first fighter pilot school, following the closure of the secret flying school established near the city of Lipetsk in the Soviet Union during the closing days of the Weimar Republic. (Germany had been forbidden to have an air force under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, so it had to train pilots in secret.)

In 1938, he assumed command of the Luftwaffe department of research. Later, Ritter von Greim was awarded command of Jagdgeschwader 132 Richthofen (later JG 2), based in Döberitz, a fighter group named after Manfred von Richthofen.