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Organizing for Total Warfare

Although exploring and testing a variety of airpower tactics and techniques, including in
combat during the Spanish Civil War,[11] the Luftwaffe's early architects also had long
since recognized the great importance organizational decisions served in building a combat
arm from the ground up. Consequently, the Luftwaffe proved well organized for a number
of air roles; including operating decisively against opponents lacking its concentrated
strength - an outgrowth from German experience during the First World War when Imperial
Germany countered its numerical deficiencies in the air by massing its available
aircraft.[12] For instance, the basic Luftwaffe formations consisted of the Staffel, Gruppe,
and Geschwader comprising approximately 12, 30, and 90 aircraft respectively. Such an
organizational framework was not all that different from those chosen by Germany's top
peer competitors. However, it was at the operational level, where the Luftwaffe turned its
hitting power into an organized fist far more potent than the spread out aerial assets
fielded by Germany's potential foes.

What the Luftwaffe did, was group the smaller formations into Fliegerkorps and
Luftflotten; air corps and air armies. Consequently, on September 1, 1939 the Luftwaffe
comprised 302 Staffeln organized into four Luftflotten.[13] Furthermore, the Luftflotten
were flexible and frequently broke off individual Fleigerkorps to support particular goals.
The Luftwaffe's air corps and air armies thus allowed Germany to later swarm over
Germany's more dispersed foes at critical points early in campaigns, in an aerial application
of concentrated striking power at the key point on the battlefield; a doctrine the Germans
termed Schwerpunkt.[14]