Luftwaffe

[looft-vahf-uh]

noun

German.

1. air force.

Luftwaffe

/ ˈlʊftvafə /

noun

1. the German Air Force

Luftwaffe

1. The German air force in World War II. (See blitzkrieg and Battle of Britain.)

Word History and Origins

Origin of Luftwaffe¹

C20: German, literally: air weapon

Example Sentences

Germany this time is personified by a defendant: Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and second only to the Führer in the military command.

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The blitz by Germany’s Luftwaffe took more than 43,500 civilian lives in Britain.

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At 21, he was a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, a three-month period when air force personnel defended the skies against a large-scale assault by the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

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It was a cause of acute embarrassment for Berlin given that a brigadier general in the Luftwaffe appeared to allow spies into the secure call by dialling in on an insecure line.

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This kind of siren, so strongly associated in Britain with World War Two, is actually more than a century old, and has been used for all kinds of emergencies - not just Luftwaffe bombing raids.

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