Background
Hugo Sperrle was born on 7 February 1885 in Ludwigsburg, Württemberg, the son of a brewer.
military General Field Marshal
Hugo Sperrle was born on 7 February 1885 in Ludwigsburg, Württemberg, the son of a brewer.
An officer in the Württemberg infantry, he was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1913 and transferred to a military academy. During World War I he served in the air force and in 1919 commanded the air detachment of a Freikorps. In 1925 he was appointed to the Reichswehr Ministry and between 1929 and 1933 held various regimental commands. Transferred back to the air force and appointed Brigadier in 1935 in command of Luftkreis V, Munich, Sperrle became one of the leading figures in the Luftwaffe. In 1936-7 he led the Condor Legion (the German interventionist force during the Spanish Civil War), letting loose his bombers on Guernica and other Spanish towns and villages.
In November 1937 he was rewarded with promotion to the rank of General of Fliers. The following year he was made Commander of Air Force Group 3, based in Munich. Involved in the air attacks on France, Sperrle was awarded the Knight's Cross in May 1940 and in July of the same year he was appointed General Field Marshal of the air force. In charge of air operations against Great Britain during 1940-1, he emphasized the need to defeat the Royal Air Force if German bombers were to launch successful attacks on British targets. After commanding all the air forces in North Africa, in support of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Sperrle was put in charge of the anti-invasion air forces in western Europe in 1944 which were expecting an Allied landing in Normandy.
He set up his headquarters in the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, a former palace of Marie de Medici.
Tried at the end of the war, the massively built Sperrle was acquitted of all war crimes by the Allied court at Nuremberg.
He died in Munich, where he was buried on 7 April 1953.