Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (10 page)

There was very little in the way of trimmings with this prototype. In fact, its covering had been kept to a minimum so it was almost skeletal. Hanna could look straight down to the ground and see the machine’s three wheels, one at the front, two behind. Taking the control stick gingerly Hanna held it forward slightly and with a little injection of fuel found she could move the helicopter forward; if she pulled back so the machine moved back. With this fundamental knowledge grasped, Hanna revved the engine. Slowly, ever so slowly, the helicopter rose, then it went a little faster. Hanna gained confidence, revved again, she rose 30ft, 60, 150, 250 – 300ft! Ecstatic, Hanna eased off the throttle and hung almost motionless in the air except for the whirling propellers above her. She was flying a miracle; that was the only way she could describe it, hanging mid-air like the larks she had seen hovering over fields. The moment was breathtaking and over so soon.

Hanna continued to the next phase of the test; she moved the helicopter backwards, forwards, left, right, always returning precisely to the centre of the painted circle far below her. Then she lowered the helicopter, dropping almost vertically and landing exactly on the spot she had left. Karl Franke ran towards her and grabbed her hand. ‘No more test-flying with you, Hanna – my reputation won’t stand it!’ Others were curious about the helicopter. American flyer Charles Lindbergh was visiting Germany with his wife Anne and came to witness a demonstration. Hanna remarked that ‘[His] simplicity of manner won all hearts wherever he went.’ Well, maybe not all hearts. Hanna had been won over yet again by a man who would spark controversy with his suggested Nazi leanings.

The Lindberghs’ fascination with German aviation had distant origins. Even before her marriage to Charles, Anne had imagined going to Germany to learn to glide. At the time Germany truly was at the forefront of gliding and the rest of the world was only slowly catching on. News of record-breaking German glider flights inspired the British and Americans to try their hand. Charles was swept up in the excitement in 1930 when he went to California to fly in a Bowlus S-18 sailplane. Anne, now Mrs Lindbergh, had missed her earlier chance at gliding and followed her husband to California, determined not to miss out again. Having spent many hours flying a biplane under her husband’s instruction, Anne found the transfer to gliding natural enough and was soon ready for a solo flight. In a moment that had parallels with Hanna’s earlier glider flights, Anne was launched and soared for six minutes before descending into a bean field, much to the shock and astonishment of the locals. She was the first woman in the US, and only the tenth American, to earn a first-class glider pilot’s licence.

The glamour of the spotlight the Lindberghs’ were always under came at a price. Hounded by an aggressive media, they had found themselves a rural home far away from the busy urban realm. It was at this retreat that baby Charles disappeared, killed in a bungled kidnapping attempt. The horror of the event, followed not long after by the birth of another son, Jon, forced a change of perspective on Charles and he decided to migrate with his young family to Europe.

England became their home, but Charles was soon making visits to Germany at the behest of the US government, which was desperate for an aviation expert to take a look at the rapidly developing Luftwaffe. Charles Lindbergh had been suggested, partly because he was near to hand, and his arrival was eagerly anticipated by General Hermann Göring, who was enamoured with the idea of showing off his fledgling air force to an American legend. Charles arrived in the summer of 1936, and for ten days he was fawned over by the German aviation community, shown around factories, allowed to pilot military planes and introduced to scientists.

Hanna was as much an admirer as her German colleagues. She had heard of Charles and his achievements and, like many, was swept away by his movie-star good looks. When he first arrived she was performing aerial displays for the Olympics with Ernst Udet. She didn’t have many opportunities to meet him as he was ushered from one appointment to another. She was delighted, however, to know that an America had seen her country and been impressed.

Germany was a nation on the rise under Hitler when the Lindberghs had first arrived in Berlin in 1936. The city had then been buzzing with last-minute preparations for the Olympic Games that were due to open in less than two weeks. A new stadium large enough to seat 100,000 people dominated proceedings, adorned with physically perfect Aryan statues and two colossal pillars rising violently into the sky like stone Nazi salutes at the entrance. A recently installed closed-circuit television system and radio network could broadcast the games to forty-one countries. The grandeur of it all was impressive and the Lindberghs could not fail to notice the fantastic stadium and the excitement of the Berliners.

The Lindberghs were enchanted by Berlin. Göring entertained them, asking Anne about her flying and life with Charles. Wearing his excessive, highly ornamented personal uniform and already a man of exceptional girth, he leaned over Anne and wanted to know everything. He was so absorbed he failed to notice that his pet lion was urinating on his gold-braided trousers, though his pretty wife did and giggled as she watched over his conversation, wearing a large diamond and emerald swastika brooch. Anne left Germany impressed by the country’s vitality and strength; Charles loved its spirit and clearly superior aircraft technology. On returning to England the Lindberghs were asked to dine with fellow Nazi supporters Edward VIII and his mistress Wallis Simpson, and no doubt much of their conversation was devoted to praising Germany and Hitler.

When Charles returned, once again on a diplomatic mission to observe and report on the growing Luftwaffe, there was no doubt he should see the new helicopter. What better way to spread the word of the German invention than through an American legend? Hanna was ecstatic to be finally face-to-face with a man she had heard so much about. Lindbergh was a celebrity, but, just as importantly, he was an outsider who praised the Germany of the Nazi regime. That made Hanna want to shake his hand even more. Meeting him as he admired the helicopter was a dream come true. He was quiet and reserved, didn’t have a lot to say for himself, but his keen eyes could see the potential before him, and he smiled at the female test pilot. Hanna snapped a photograph of her idol.

Knowing the rest of the world would have trouble accepting that the Germans had created a working helicopter, Udet decided to have the machine demonstrated at the International Automobile Exhibition. Hanna was to fly it for one night only, but when the other, male, test pilot made a minor error during a performance, Göring was so alarmed that he insisted only Hanna fly it from then on. The limelight was not entirely to Hanna’s taste, surprisingly. She was receiving criticism from her fellow flyers for performing in a ‘circus act’ – as they deemed her demonstration. Rather unfair, considering many pilots earned their keep ‘barnstorming’ for the public. Perhaps her friends were already noticing that Hanna was becoming a willing puppet of the Nazi propaganda machine.

Barely a month after Hanna had shown the world what Germany could do, Hitler decided it was his turn. For years Austria had been a thorn in his side; now he moved to annex it into the German Reich. Hanna’s uncle, Richard Heuberger, was living in Austria at the time. Having lost his sight in the first war, he had become a history professor and was one of many supporters all for the Anschluss or annexation of Austria. At the time Austria had its own dictators, and Hitler almost seemed a welcome relief. While Heuberger was a little wary of the jumped-up corporal, his youngest son Helmut was an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth and ran into the street crying ‘Heil Hitler!’ when the troops arrived. Overall, the bloodless takeover was almost unanimously approved of by the Austrians (though the statistics were rigged to give the impression that 99 per cent of the population liked the manoeuvre).

Meanwhile, Hanna was headed for America. Udet had been invited to an International Air Race in Cleveland, Ohio, but he could not attend so he sent Hanna and others in his place. Hanna was ecstatic to see the country her hero Lindbergh came from. Her first sight of America filled her with awe: ‘There it was before me – the water-front of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the wall of sky-scrapers – that spectacle, so many times described, whose first sight never fails to thrill, amaze and stir the heart.’ There was only a week to enjoy the sights and sounds of New York. Hanna picked up a new phrase, ‘What a hell goes on here [
sic
]?’ and marvelled at the strange, vast city that stretched out around her. ‘Sky-scrapers three hundred yards high! That was the height I had flown for my pilot’s certificate …’ Overall, Hanna loved America. She praised the apparent equality between the sexes, the way women seemed to call the shots, the chivalry of the men and the polite manners of the various workers she encountered. Perhaps this was why she later came to talk so freely to the Americans about Hitler. Hanna had a strong respect for them, not limited to their flying achievements. One thing did disturb her, however: the use of scantily clad women during the official ceremonies of the air races. They hoisted flags and gave out prizes. Hanna found them entirely inappropriate. The country that had inspired Peter Riedel to vow never to return to Germany left a different impression on Hanna, ‘though it thrilled you … you felt oppressed by it, as if weighed down by some imponderable slab of stone.’

From a distance Udet was pleased at Hanna’s reception in America. She was warmly received and interviewed by various papers. Peter Riedel was also delighted. Now appointed assistant air attaché in Washington, he had told Udet that Hanna’s presence would give ‘American soaring a boost’. Hanna was a pawn once again, but she failed to realise it. So much promise lay ahead; after the races she had been invited to tour America, a prospect that ignited her enthusiasm. It wasn’t to be. After Austria, Hitler had set his sights on Czechoslovakia and by the September of 1938 matters were reaching fever pitch. A telegram recalled all flyers to Germany ahead of Hitler’s planned coup on the Czechoslovakian government. In October the Sudetenland was relegated to the Nazis. Czechoslovakia was doomed, sacrificed as much as anything by its Allies in Britain.

With all this trouble looming, Hanna put on her rose-tinted goggles once more. ‘The Germans did not want war, but justice,’ she told herself, assuming quite happily that Hitler wanted peace too. She was not alone in this delusion. On 30 September 1938 British prime minister Neville Chamberlain had told an anxious audience the settling of the Sudetenland crisis meant ‘peace for our time’. Hanna could no longer pretend that National Socialism was a flash in the pan, but she looked at it with as much positivity as she could muster. Like many Germans she felt there was much to be admired about the system; even post-war, Germans would state that National Socialism could have worked if only Hitler had not corrupted it. What is often forgotten is that the Nazi Party had reinvigorated Germany, boosting the economy, creating work for all, reducing the crippling poverty and unemployment that had been the country’s lot since the First World War. Hanna knew full well she would not have had so many opportunities in her life had it not been for the influence of National Socialism. There was a great deal, pre-1939, that the German people were grateful to the Nazis for.

In 1938 Hanna stated that Hitler had created ‘a progressive, dynamic, and prosperous nation, even the critics of Hitler had reluctantly to admit that he had done a creditable job in building up the nation and re-establishing her on the map of Europe’. That people shut their eyes to what was happening to Jews, Communists and political criminals was a matter of self-preservation. People had suffered poverty and depression so greatly that they were prepared to sacrifice a handful of people – who weren’t their people, after all – to continue to exist in an apparent idyll. Coupled with her enthusiasm, Hanna maintained a blind loyalty to authority. This was something that had been indoctrinated into her as a child: a leader should be followed to the bitter end as it was the only honourable thing to do. Hanna was not one to question this; in fact, she rarely questioned much unless it affected her immediately. In her mind there was little else to do, so she followed Hitler to the last moments. Anything else would have been betrayal and that would have been more painful to Hanna than any injury or insult she endured during her flying career.

Paris was just beginning to feel the tight clutch of winter in November 1938 as Ernst vom Rath, diplomat and long-standing member of the Nazi Party, was asked to speak to a young man who had entered the German embassy. Vom Rath descended from his office to meet a youth with dark hair and eyes, and a slight look of the American film star Buster Keaton about him. Herschel Grynszpan, the Polish Jew who had asked for a member of the German diplomatic staff, raised a gun without hesitation and shot vom Rath. Grynszpan fled among the screams of the secretaries as vom Rath collapsed bleeding to the floor. A short time later 29-year-old vom Rath died and his death was quickly being referred to in German circles as an assassination.

Why Grynszpan shot vom Rath no one has ever been able to say conclusively (Grynszpan fell into Nazi hands after the occupation of France and died in a concentration camp). Some thought he was upset over news his family were being deported from Germany back to Poland. Others hinted he had had a homosexual affair with vom Rath, but since most witnesses stated that he did not ask for vom Rath by name, it seems unlikely it was a targeted killing. Rather, Grynszpan was making a point – not that many Jews would have thanked him.

The death of vom Rath sparked the worst instance of violence against the Jews of the 1930s. Known as Kristallnacht
or the Night of Broken Glass, the retribution was both bloody and mindless. Shop windows were smashed and their goods destroyed; Jewish men, women and children were dragged from their beds; people were brutally beaten in the streets; there were deaths; synagogues were burned. No Jew was safe – there were reprisals in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland, fuelled by exaggeration of Grynszpan’s crime by the media. While it has never been proven that the riots were officially condoned, it is clear that little was done to stop them once they began. It was one of the worst cases of civilian disorder in German memory and many were stunned by the chaos and cruelty.