While Bob and his classmates were busy training, the political situation in Europe steadily worsened. Making good on his promise to tear up the Treaty of Versailles, Adolf Hitler had re-militarized the Rhineland, forced the Czechoslovakian government to surrender the Sudetenland and was making bellicose noises toward Poland. This time, however, the international community at last seemed ready to call his bluff. In the spring of 1939, Bob was transferred to East Prussia to help set up a new fighter group, I/JG21, equipped with Bf 109Cs and Ds. He accepted the posting with a heavy heart; his new home at Gutenfeld, near the former royal city of Koenigsberg, was a world away from his native Black Forest. Later, however, when his former unit was decimated during the campaign against Britain, he regarded the move as having saved his life.In July, I/JG21 began to prepare for an unspecified mission. On August 31, his Staffel (squadron) was transferred to an advanced airfield at Rostken. At the mission briefing that evening, they were ordered to enter Polish airspace at 0335 on September 1 and destroy any Polish air forces they met. What proved to be the opening of WW Ⅱ was an anticlimax, as they encountered none.
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