Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (28 page)

Back in West Germany her feud with the Aero Club had not ended. There had been talk while she was away that she was suffering from religious mania, or a mental breakdown. Hanna was hurt by the suggestions. She had indeed brought back spiritual ideas from India, largely meditation and yoga, but these by no means implied she was mentally unstable. Hanna had no prospects of flying in Germany, so she travelled further afield. She was welcomed in Finland, where so many years before she had encouraged gliding, and six months later, at the suggestion of Wernher von Braun, she visited America and was received at the White House by President Kennedy. She also met the ‘Whirly Girls’, an international association of women helicopter pilots founded in 1955. Hanna discovered she had the honour of being Whirly Girl No 1 because she had been the first woman to fly a helicopter. For these women Hanna was a pioneer and there was no talk of her later, unfortunate, associations.

Not all was forgotten, however. Hanna was invited to give a talk at the space centre where von Braun and another old friend, Joachim Küttner, were working on US space rockets. She was present at the launch of the second Saturn rocket – a monstrous, roaring thing that made the rockets Hanna had once flown seem impossibly small – before giving a lecture about her time in India. She was perturbed to find a swastika draped over the reading desk. It was hastily removed and it was the only indication that someone was unhappy about her presence.

America was restored in Hanna’s opinion. She left with a feeling of warmth and friendliness. At home again, she was still feuding with the Aero Club, but her contributions to aviation were finally accepted by some of the German aviation community and she was presented with a glider all of her own. This meant more than medals or titles. The glider meant Hanna could fly whenever she wanted without having to rely on the generosity of friends loaning their planes to her.

The problem of Hanna’s public reception in Germany remained, however. She was unpopular; it was as simple as that. At an aviation reception she was completely ignored by all except Peter Riedel, whom she had not seen in years. Riedel had defected to the US and was also very unpopular in Germany. He too was ignored by the rest of the party-goers. Despondent, the neglected pair left together. Riedel accepted his ostracism as the price he paid for leaving Germany. Hanna, however, could not bear it. Being shunned ate into her and every time she went abroad and felt restored the return to Germany crushed her again. An offer to go to Ghana seemed the perfect antidote to the depression that had once again settled on Hanna. She was personally invited by President Kwame Nkrumah of whom she knew nothing except that people were calling him a dictator. All she knew about Ghana was that it was once under British control and known as the Gold Coast, and a part of it had been a German colony. Hanna was swayed by the prospect of opportunity in Africa and was encouraged by the German government, who wanted to establish good relations with Ghana. The move would prove politically dangerous for Hanna, not least because she was now dealing direct with a communist power – the same ideology she had begged Nehru to avoid at all costs.

Kwame Nkrumah had started as an idealist and, at first, had seemed a promising prospect for establishing an independent Ghana. Talk of independence had been circulating for years and had spawned the UGCC (United Gold Coast Convention), which was exploring options for Ghana to gain its freedom from British rule. In 1947 Nkrumah was asked to become general secretary to the UGCC. He promoted civil disobedience and strikes to make the voice of the people heard. The British had made a tentative suggestion to offer a constitution under which those with sufficient wages and property could vote. Nkrumah was appalled: independence meant
all
the people could vote, not just the rich, who were often white and favoured the British. A combination of increased resistance and international protest concluded the matter with the British deciding to leave. A British organised election saw Nkrumah’s party, the CPP (Convention People’s Party), gain power even though its leader was in prison. When Nkrumah was released he was instructed to form a government and in 1952 the constitution was amended to include the role of prime minister – Nkrumah himself.

Initially Nkrumah looked like he had promise. Admittedly he had to learn to govern ‘on the job’, as well as to unify the four territories of the Gold Coast and gain full independence from Britain, which retained a tentative hold. In 1957 Nkrumah declared Ghana independent and was proclaimed by some as the ‘redeemer’. In 1960 he announced that Ghana would become a republic with a new constitution and in April of that year he was declared president. In those early years of Nkrumah’s rule, forestry, fishing and cattle breeding expanded, cocoa (Ghana’s main export) production doubled and the construction of a dam provided hydro-electricity for the nearby towns as well as the new aluminium plant. Government funding went into building schools and roads, while free health care and education was introduced. With all this promise of progress it is not surprising that Nkrumah paid a visit to US president Kennedy in 1961; a photograph from the time shows them laughing together.

The dark side of Nkrumah’s power was well concealed, at least at first. Nkrumah believed in socialism and Pan-Africanism (the unity of Africans around the globe to create solidarity). He very rapidly began to conceive of this as a religion, not just an ideology. In 1961, while he was building roads and schools, he was also building the Kwame Nkrumah Ideology Institute, where Ghanaian civil servants were trained in his personal beliefs and taught to promote Pan-Africanism. Before long this brainwashing moved into the colleges, where all students were expected to attend a two-week ‘ideological orientation’ at the institute: ‘trainees should be made to realize the party’s ideology is religion, and should be practised faithfully and fervently,’ stated Nkrumah.

Further warning signs were everywhere. In 1954 there had been a cocoa boom and the price had soared. Cocoa farmers expected to benefit, but Nkrumah increased levies on the farmers so that the money went to him. He used it to fund various government projects, but in the process alienated a large chunk of his former supporters. Paranoia now seeped into the Nkrumah regime. There had been a gold miners’ strike in 1955, so Nkrumah made strikes illegal, which was ironic since Nkrumah had protested against the British banning strikes! He wanted industrial progress and so opposed industrial democracy. He began to fear his opponents, so created a new law that anyone could be arrested, detained and charged with treason without trial. Prisoners thus detained had only one option – a direct appeal to Nkrumah, or else they languished in jail. When railway workers went on strike in 1961 he had the strike leaders and opposition politicians arrested. The good of the nation, he told his outraged opponents, superseded the good of the individual workers, including decent pay.

When Hanna arrived in Ghana there was already a great backlash against Nkrumah, not least from the British press, who were reporting on his authoritarian behaviour – not without a little glee. One of Nkrumah’s closest supporters at the time was the journalist Kofi Batsa, who defended his president in his book
The Spark
(1985):

The British press had always attempted to paint a picture of Nkrumah as a dangerous and militant communist revolutionary. [The British] went out of their way to associate the overwhelmingly exciting atmosphere of nationalism and patriotism with communism … if my hero Kwame Nkrumah was responsible for importing communism into the Gold Coast, then communism, I thought, must be a good thing.

As usual, Hanna was oblivious to the political crisis surrounding her new saviour. Her first meeting with Nkrumah filled her with hope. He was elegantly dressed, well mannered and spoke optimistically about teaching his people to glide. When Hanna suggested gliding was an ideal way to ‘train the character’ of young Ghanaians (or rather to mould them into loyal followers like pre-war Germans), Nkrumah could not have been more enthusiastic. His idealism, however, had blinded him to the practical situation.

What remained of Ghana’s only gliding club, established in 1957 largely for the British and European residents as the local Africans showed no interest, was a small airfield serving as pasture most of the time for the local villagers’ cattle. Rent for the site was paid in gin to the chiefs and the cattle only caused a problem on weekends when the few remaining flying members wanted to go up. To get airborne one relied on an old length of fence wire and the struggling engine of a Chevrolet which acted as tow. It was not particularly promising. Hanna spent some time working on proposals for the establishment of a true gliding school and submitted these to Nkrumah before returning to Germany. Promises were made to begin building work, including proper hangars. The diplomats in West Germany were pleased with Hanna’s work: they were still eyeing up the potential of good relations with the African president. To further matters they invited Ghana to send a group of young men to Germany to gain experience of flying and mechanics in the heartland of gliding, the hope being they would return to Africa and share their knowledge.

Hanna met the new arrivals and was disheartened to discover they were all young and inexperienced. Nevertheless, she was able to train them in gliding and basic mechanics, but it was out of the question to expect these young men to train others successfully. West Germany offered to send two assistants with Hanna when she returned to Ghana. Again Hanna faced disappointment when she arrived in Africa. Very little had been done to the airfield except to partially build a new club house for the British. It was hopeless. Hanna went to Nkrumah and demanded something be done. He agreed and Hanna was to supervise the work. What she failed to appreciate was the cost required to establish an airfield. She was asking for vast sums of money beyond the means of a new country, particularly as they would be better used on practical projects rather than an exercise in gliding whose value was debatable. The British flyers, who felt they had a better grasp of internal politics and funding than Hanna (a reasonable assessment), argued over her expenditure. Hanna flew at their representatives with predictable fury – Nkrumah wanted a top-class training school and Nkrumah was going to get it! She got her wish, at the expense of friendship with the British flyers, thereby further demoting herself in general British opinion.

Weeks turned into months; the buildings grew, but enthusiasm for gliding among the native population did not. Young Ghanaians were recruited for training but failed to see the point; they resented being asked to work during the heat of the day and were so uninterested that being grounded for a misdemeanour was deemed a privilege rather than a punishment. Hanna caused further antagonism by fencing off the airfield and preventing the grazing of the cattle. When she cut down a tree her students were horrified – it was sacred and only a gory ritual could ‘heal’ the wound in the land and in local goodwill.

From a personal perspective, Hanna’s reputation was in serious danger. She had again aligned herself with a man many considered a dictator. Hanna failed to see this, but other Germans were more aware of the unpleasant side of Nkrumah’s regime. As international opinion slowly turned against him, so Germany wanted less to do with the Ghanaian president. During her time in Ghana Hanna saw three West German diplomats come and go; none of them she particularly liked and at least two of them held the opinion that Hanna was representing the old, Nazi Germany in her activities, even if unconsciously. Hanna’s dogmatic attitude towards the school, largely based on her deep desire to fly and promote gliding there now that she was scorned in Germany, brought her into conflict with more and more people. Some felt she was trying to raise a neo-Nazi culture through the school, pointing out how her youthful flyers bore echoes of the Hitler Youth. It was not Hanna’s fault that her first volunteers had been chosen from the ranks of the Young Pioneers, a political youth movement, but it did have unfortunate connotations. Worse was that Hanna could see no wrong in Nkrumah and had an over-inflated sense of her own importance in his party. She did a good job of upsetting both those who supported Nkrumah and those who were against him, but then Hanna had invariably been better at making enemies than friends.

Why did Hanna set herself up to fail in such a way? Bitterness played a part: bitterness with Germany, with the Aero Club, with a world that would not forgive her. She was angry and to console herself focused on the gliding school to the point where it became the all-absorbing focus of her life. Nothing, therefore, could be allowed to destroy it. Her loyalty to Nkrumah was misplaced, but it came from desperation. He was a lifeline, he provided her with a way of making her name in gliding, an escape from the shame and guilt laid upon her in Germany. She needed him to succeed, because if he didn’t, what was left for her?

Hanna remained hopeful. By 1965 the school was showing some promise. Well-trained Ghanaian instructors proved the gliding school could work and though she had had to relinquish some of her grander schemes for the club, it was mostly built and ready for use. After a brief stay in Germany over Christmas Hanna returned to Ghana in 1966, oblivious to the disaster about to befall Nkrumah. ‘The word “coup” should not be used to describe what took place in Ghana on 24 February 1966. On that day, Ghana was captured by traitors among the army and police who were inspired and helped by neo-colonialists and certain reactionary elements among our own population,’ wrote Nkrumah bitterly in the years after he was deposed.

Nkrumah was on his way to Hanoi to see President Ho Chi Minh, armed with proposals for ending the war in Vietnam, when news reached him that his country had been seized in a military coup. He was in Peking when the Chinese ambassador approached him: ‘Mr President, I have bad news. There has been a coup d’etat in Ghana.’ Nkrumah was so stunned he didn’t believe his ears: ‘What did you say?’ ‘A coup d’etat in Ghana.’ ‘Impossible,’ declared Nkrumah. But it was very possible. Ghana was no longer under his control, and Hanna was no longer welcome. It would not be long before her gliding school was shut down. Nkrumah fumed: ‘The school, recognised as among the best in the world, was providing valuable initial flying training for members of the Young Pioneers, Army and Air Force Cadets, and for trainees from other African countries.’ Nkrumah was rather optimistic in his assessment of the school. In any case, the new power in Ghana felt no need to continue to indulge Hanna and her gliding.