Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (18 page)

Hanna’s restoration to health was followed by a visit to Göring, who invited her to his over-furnished house in Obersalzberg. Externally Göring was still projecting the image of a man confident of victory; privately he was working on worst-case scenario plans to evacuate his collection of art and antiquities. At lunch Hanna discovered to her horror that Göring believed that the Me 163, so recently the cause of her life-threatening injuries, was already in mass production. Whether he had been told this or had just made the assumption was not clear; what was apparent was that he had consoled himself with the notion of the new secret weapon about to save Germany. In some regards Göring and Hanna shared a common condition of being able to fool themselves into believing everything would be all right. Hanna was distressed to think Göring was so misled and tried to explain that the Komet was nowhere near the production level he thought. Her words fell on deaf ears. In fact, Göring was furious with her for bursting his bubble. He stormed out of the room, only returning at his wife’s insistence. Afterwards he refused to talk to Hanna on the subject of the Komet and he never invited her again.

Hanna’s brush with death had left a lasting impression upon her; not least because she now realised it held no fear for her. Strangely the experience had almost immunised her to the normal human horror of annihilation. She was walking through life almost numb. It was at this point that her thoughts turned to one of the most desperate schemes of the war – suicide flights, or, in other words, the deliberate ramming of enemy aircraft.

‘I wouldn’t have rammed anyone. It’s sheer idiocy. Life mayn’t be much, but one does cling to it after all,’ commented one Luftwaffe pilot while a prisoner of war, completely unaware the British were recording his every word. It was June 1942, and even at this early stage in the war suicide missions were being discussed among pilots. If you couldn’t shoot down a plane, then ramming it might be the only option for taking out an enemy combatant. Unfortunately, chances of pilot survival during such actions were minimal.

By 1943 the increasing success of the Allies was threatening both morale and Germany’s hopes for victory. Thoughts were turned to alternative means of eradicating the British danger; if a decisive strategic hit could be dealt, perhaps that would cripple the attacking power of the RAF? If nothing else it might buy the Germans a breathing space. In August 1943 Hanna sat in a canteen with Luftwaffe doctor Theo Benzinger and glider pilot Heinrich Lange discussing the changing tides of the war. The idea came up that if manned V1 flying bombs were launched they could be aimed at highly specific targets and strike a decisive blow against the Allies’ ability to continue fighting. Hanna revelled in the idea, which was formalised in a memo by Benzinger and Lange:

The military situation justifies and demands that naval targets be fought with extreme means like manned missiles whose pilot voluntarily sacrifices his life. [This would represent] a form of warfare that is fully new in Europe.

Benzinger and Lange reasoned that as German pilots were losing their lives in huge numbers anyway, they might as well take out a large number of the enemy in the process. The memo was passed to Field Marshal Erhard Milch in September 1943. At this point the Japanese kamikaze pilot was unknown and with the air situation looking bad and Göring constantly criticising the Luftwaffe for cowardice and lack of results, suicide missions held a certain appeal. Milch conferred with his subordinates and plans were drawn up to load planes with explosives and crash them into enemy warships and bomber formations. Milch, however, baulked at the idea of a true suicide mission; wouldn’t it be better, he argued, if pilots dived at enemy targets but then ejected and parachuted to safety before the actual impact? Even so the Luftwaffe commanders were unconvinced by the idea. Wasting good pilots on one-off missions did not appeal and there was still optimism that with new planes and advances in technology Germany would regain control of the air.

Hanna was disappointed. It is hard to fathom why a young woman would so eagerly push for her own and other pilots’ deaths, but Hanna’s very recent brain injury may well have played a part. Hanna later rationalised her behaviour by imposing a humanitarian angle on her actions. If manned missiles could strike at important, non-civilian targets and cripple the British, then it would spare a lot of lives, she argued. It would also enable Germany to negotiate peace on its terms, if it so wished. Hanna justified herself by saying that the sacrifice of a single German pilot would spare hundreds of civilian lives. A manned missile would hit a target precisely, not accidentally take out neighbouring houses or miss completely and massacre the local population, as was so often the case with bombing.

There was another draw towards the ultimate sacrifice: Glory. Hanna had sought success and accolades since she first jumped into a glider. She was always fighting to be the best, to prove herself, often in the face of derision. Unlike in Russia, there were no German female fighter pilots. If Hanna wanted to make her mark in this war, if she wanted to be remembered and glorified forever, she had to be more than just a test pilot. Manned missiles presented a golden opportunity; Hanna could die a hero, she would never be forgotten. Fuelled by a heady mix of patriotism, Nazi fervour and dreams of idolisation, Hanna was completely prepared to fly and die for the Reich.

Then something changed her mind; perhaps her return to health and the freedom to fly had rekindled her love for life. In any case Hanna backed out from personally participating in suicide missions. In some regards this is not entirely surprising – Hanna had no experience of combat flying, though nor did many of the volunteer suicide pilots. Exactly what changed her mind remains personal to Hanna. She made the excuse that she was of more use alive as a conduit between the team and Hitler and Himmler, than flying to her death. In this Hanna dramatically over-inflated her own importance. She was neither that influential nor that close to either the Führer or his Reichsführer. Hanna honestly believed her opinion mattered to these men, a delusion that was both egotistical and frustrating to her colleagues and friends. The irony was that Hanna would later criticise the head of the project for refusing to fly on a suicide mission, when she herself had done just the same.

There was still one stumbling block: Hitler himself. Hanna visited the Führer at the Berghof. During a conversation which Hanna recalled years later, she mentioned the suicide squads she was helping to organise. Hitler was appalled. What was the point, he wondered in horror, of German heroes crashing to their deaths and being unable to savour the glory they had achieved? Hitler was forever keen on the image of warrior celebrity, but for that you needed a living, breathing person who could be paraded before crowds, adorned with medals and could give interviews to inspire others. Dead pilots couldn’t do that. What if, pondered Hitler, the missiles were manned by lunatics or criminals? Then they would be disposing of undesirables who could regain some honour for themselves and their families by making a last sacrifice. But no, that wouldn’t work: they might be incapable of flying, or might try to escape their fate. Hitler rejected the idea, but that did not prevent his subordinates trying to circumvent his orders. In July 1944 he had to intervene personally to stop a plan to load thirty-nine Fw 190 fighter-bombers with explosives and crash them into an Allied armada in the Baie de la Seine.

Hanna left Hitler, despairing. It was not the first time she had perceived her leader struggling with the reins of power. He ranted at her in lengthy monologues on the psychology of the suicide idea and how it was not the right moment to convince the public to let its young men deliberately fly to their deaths (not that they had been doing much different recently). Hanna listened but realised that much of Hitler’s raving was irrelevant to the subject at hand. He was enjoying hearing his own voice, his ramblings were just that – rambling. When she tried to point out the need for desperate measures Hitler told her not to worry for the new jet fighters would tip the war in Germany’s favour. Hanna’s heart sank as it had done when she sat in Göring’s dining room. For the first time she realised how distant from reality Hitler truly was: ‘[he] was living in some remote and nebulous world of his own and the appalling implications of this discovery suddenly burst upon me.’ Hanna could hold her tongue no longer. If others would not tell Hitler the truth, she would. ‘Mein Führer, you are speaking of the grandchild of an embryo.’ Hitler stared at her in astonishment. His adjutant’s face fixed in an expression of horror. Hanna refused to recognise the danger and carried on, speaking fast, as she explained how far off jet-engine aircraft really were. Hitler seemed to stare at her a long time. When he spoke, it was with clipped sentences and stony glances. She had spoiled his good humour, but Hanna resolutely pressed on. ‘At least let us make experiments with the type of aircraft we would use in the suicide missions. Then, when you think the moment is right, you can announce them and they will be ready to fly.’ Hitler slowly agreed, mainly to be rid of Hanna. He cut the interview short and left her to tell her friends the good news.

The notion of suicide flights had not been born out of thin air; there was a very recent precedent – which Hitler was still sore over: the Russians. Russian pilots, often flying antiquated planes, had a habit of ramming an enemy plane in desperation to take it out of the air. Stories about these air tactics and the scare value they had on German pilots had filtered through the Luftwaffe and made an impression. There were even a number of female Russian pilots prepared, as Hanna had been initially, to sacrifice themselves for the good of their country. On 12 September 1941 Ukrainian pilot Ekaterina Ivanova flew her Su-2 into a Messerschmitt Bf 109, ripping it in half. Out of ammo and fighting seven German planes, it was an act of desperation that cost her her life, but it was remembered by both the Germans and the Russians. The Soviets had a nasty tendency to ram planes with seeming disregard for their lives. They even had a name for this flying tactic – the
taran
.

Lilya Litvyak used a variation of the
taran
on a Messerschmitt Bf 109 when she found herself surrounded and with a shrapnel wound in her leg. Lilya was flying the woeful Yak-1, made from plywood because aluminium was difficult to get in quantity. Against Messerschmitts firing 30mm cannons, it was like a gnat attacking a lion. Desperate to escape the onslaught, Lilya tried one of the most daring moves in the Russian flyers’ arsenal. She slipped to the side of the enemy planes, standing the Yak-1 on its tail to pull it as high as she could as fast as she could. The Yak-1’s engine struggled valiantly to lift her into the sky, her plane’s body was ripped by cannon fire and she was fighting the blood loss and pain from her leg. Just as the engine seemed about to stall, she rolled over and dived straight at the marauding Messerschmitts. Height turned into acceleration, the Yak-1 roared straight down at two Luftwaffe pilots, Franz Müller and Karl-Otto Harloff. Terror seized them as the mad Russian pilot plunged towards them in a deadly dive. Naturally they had heard tales of the
taran
and equally naturally they ducked their planes. Lilya had never intended to ram another plane; she had, however, intended to frighten them. As the Messerschmitts ducked, Lilya pulled out of her dive and opened fire with her 20mm cannon. Müller and Harloff were both caught and went down, their mighty Messerschmitts defeated by a flimsy, torn flying plywood box. Lilya made her escape while the other pilots were recovering from the shock; she lived to fight another day. Lilya had performed the
sokolin udar
, the Falcon Blow, a manoeuvre similar to the
taran
, but not suicidal. The Falcon Blow relied on the Luftwaffe’s fear of the Soviet proclivity for fatal ramming attacks.

The impact these Russian tactics had on Luftwaffe morale was worsened by the terrible fighting situation in the east that faced the Germans. Hanna would have been aware of the psychological effects of such actions, the anxieties they caused pilots and the feeling that it was difficult, if not impossible, to defeat an enemy who was prepared to sacrifice himself to kill you, particularly as it seemed as though the Russians had an endless supply of men (if of nothing else!). Adding all these factors together, the idea of a German suicide squad became more and more feasible, and even vital, as the war dragged on. Hitler handed development of the suicide squads to the Reich Air Ministry. One of the men involved was Heinz Kensche who, as luck would have it, had already volunteered for Hanna’s idea (and would subsequently reject the notion of personally flying, much to Hanna’s dismay). While the necessary administrative work began and designs were formulated, Hanna received a request that she visit the Eastern Front from none other than Ritter von Greim, now colonel general. Von Greim was fighting a losing battle commanding an air fleet in the middle sector and trying to supply air support for the troops with insufficient aircraft. Times were desperate and his men were constantly wavering between hope and defeatism. Von Greim hoped that a visit from a woman who had received military decorations might give morale a good boost; all his men knew the name Hanna Reitsch. Hanna agreed at once. She had great respect for von Greim: ‘Both officers and men … looked upon him as a father,’ she remarked, and it wouldn’t be far from the truth to say she shared their view.

Hanna made her way east in November 1943. She found von Greim in his headquarters in the woods near Orscha, where the thunder of guns echoed continuously, day and night. It was like a scene from the First World War, where men ate, slept and manned their positions under the constant noise of shelling. The endless barrage wreaked havoc on the men’s nerves and mental stamina. At dawn von Greim flew Hanna in a Fieseler Storch to his advanced Ack-Ack positions. The Russian winter was beginning to take hold and the cockpit was freezing. They hedge-hopped to avoid detection, finally abandoning the plane for an armoured car which took them close to the front. For the last few metres there was no option but to leave the vehicle and run crouching across fields and open ground, hoping to avoid being spotted by the enemy. What had induced von Greim to bring a civilian into such a situation? Hanna could have been injured or killed at any moment – only extreme desperation could have brought him to such a decision.