"Richard Schlemm" 7th Air Division's Fallschirmjager

During World War II the Luftwaffe raised a variety of Fallschirmjager units. These infantrymen were part of the air force rather than the regular army. Starting from a small collection of Fallschirmjager battalions at the beginning of the war, the Luftwaffe built up a division-sized unit of three Fallschirmjager regiments plus supporting arms and air assets, known as the 7th Air Division.

Later in the war the 7th Air Division's Fallschirmjager assets were reorganized and used as the core of a new series of elite Luftwaffe infantry divisions. These formations were organized and equipped as motorized infantry divisions, and often played a "fire brigade" role on the western front. Their constituents were often encountered on the battlefield as ad hoc battle groups detached from a division or organized from miscellaneous available assets.

After mid-1944 Fallschirmjager troops were no longer trained as parachutists due to the realities of the strategic situation, but they still retained the Fallschirmjager honorific. Near the end of the war the series of new Fallschirmjager divisions extended to over a dozen, with a concomitant reduction in quality in the higher-numbered units of the series.

Fallschirmjager participated in many famous battles, including the airborne seizure of Fort Eben-Emael and airdrops in Norway in 1940, and the defense of Carentan during the Battle of Normandy in 1944. Their most famous airdrop was in the Battle of Crete in 1941, where the entire 7th Air Division division was deployed along with other assets such as the German 22nd Air Landing Division.
 
During the Battle of Monte Cassino, the 1st Fallschirmjager Division, operating as ordinary infantry, held out for months against repeated assaults and heavy bombardment and earned the nickname "Green Devils" by the Allied forces for their tenacious defense, though they were finally forced out of the position by Polish and French Moroccan forces.
 

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