Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (29 page)

Hanna left Ghana as soon as she could and went to Guinea. Nkrumah had fled there himself shortly after the coup. He had made attempts to restore himself to power in Ghana, giving broadcasts to his people from the safety of Guinea. The new government made it a criminal offence to listen to any of Nkrumah’s speeches and ultimately he gave up on the broadcasts, realising they served little purpose. His people knew where he was, anyway. He would focus on writing about his struggle and use that as a weapon.

When Hanna arrived she was travelling incognito with her hair dyed as a disguise. She came to offer her support to Nkrumah and to give him her own eyewitness account of the coup. She warned him about returning too soon for there had been great scenes of celebration and general chaos after the power change – not comforting words for a deposed president. ‘[Her] lurid, superficial descriptions were tactless. She seemed to imply that because she had seen some people applauding the soldiers in Accra that the Ghanaian people as a whole had turned against Nkrumah,’ June Milne, Nkrumah’s research assistant and publisher, wrote angrily.

Hanna did not stay long in Guinea and though she left with assurances she would come to Nkrumah’s aid if ever he needed it, she never visited nor saw him again.

12

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LONE

Hanna was now 54, not so very old, but the toils of war, illness and test flying had aged her. She was also beginning to feel very alone. Wolf Hirth had died in an air crash in 1959, and a year later Heini Dittmar had joined him. Peter Riedel was living in America and so many others had not survived the war. Hanna wondered what was left for her. Her last energies had been thrown into the abortive Ghanaian gliding school, which was now a lost dream. She had a small flat in Frankfurt, but she was not entirely happy there. When she could, she sneaked away to fly. She had her own glider now and in the air at least she felt free. Maybe sometimes she dreamed of ending her days this way, crashing to the ground like Hirth and Dittmar. In 1970 she flew over the Austrian Alps, setting a women’s alpine gliding record, which was an unexpected bonus, since she flew these days purely for pleasure.

The German public still viewed her with suspicion, though time had dimmed some of the controversy and there were some who now celebrated her, albeit tentatively, as a pioneer of women’s flying. Others still criticised her for her poor political choices. Her time with Nkrumah had not improved this; some felt Hanna was not happy unless serving a dictator. So many years ago Hanna had refused to leave her Germany, believing she could serve a purpose reinvigorating it. Now she realised that was a vain hope. No one wanted Hitler’s heroine telling them how wrong the Nazi regime was, it was hypocritical and it drew resentment. Finding Germany harder and harder to live in, Hanna made the decision to spend part of her time in Austria, where at least she felt free from the resentful stares of her contemporaries.

That same year Hanna attended the Golden Jubilee of the Wasserkuppe. She had not flown at the competition since falling out with the Aero Club, but she would not miss this grand occasion for the world. Guest of honour at the event was US astronaut and keen amateur glider pilot Neil Armstrong. When Hanna had visited America in the 1960s, Armstrong had been in the audience at one of her lectures; now he was an American hero and the first man to set foot on the moon. Hanna dined with Armstrong and her fellow Germans and discussed the tiny museum that had been arranged to celebrate the Wasserkuppe. They all agreed it was rather poor and before long Hanna and a friend were discussing building a bigger one. From then on it was a matter of funding.

Hanna suggested a glider mail flight – in the early days of aviation airmail had been a popular novelty and people paid large sums to have a postcard delivered by air. Fifty years on traditional airmail would not raise any interest, but the idea of using gliders to deliver special commemorative postcards was another matter. A stamp company agreed to support the venture and pay 5 marks each for 2,000 postcards, as long as Hanna signed them all. It seemed an agreeable arrangement until Hanna discovered how long it took to write 2,000 signatures. ‘I never want to write my own name again,’ she grumbled afterwards. She also passed around a hat at her lectures and donated money from the sale of signed copies of her book. The funds gradually grew, but it would be years, long after Hanna’s death, before the gliding museum was finally opened in 1987.

In 1971 Hanna took part in a helicopter competition; this breached her personal ban on flying in German competitions since her split from the Aero Club, but her justification was that a helicopter was not a plane. Only six women entered the competition and Hanna came first in the women’s class. There was also a helicopter slalom and Hanna went over and over the course in her mind while her fellow competitors went to lunch, practising how she would bend her knees and move her arms. This mental exercise paid off as she came second. She was placed sixth in the overall competition. In 1972 Hanna travelled to American at the invitation of the SETP (Society of Experimental Test Pilots), who wanted to make her an honorary member. She had been invited the year before, but it clashed with the helicopter competitions so she could not go. The invitation was prestigious since women had never been asked to become members of the society before 1971. To her delight, Hanna was also awarded Pilot of the Year in Arizona. She beamed with pleasure and fought back tears. The SETP award dinner was held at the Beverley Hilton in Beverley Hills, California and Hanna was sat beside Barron Hilton, owner of the hotel chain. She could hardly believe that in such prestigious company and surrounded by 2,000 other aviators she was deemed the star attraction. Barron Hilton later wanted to name a flying competition after Hanna – the Hanna Reitsch Cup – though it never happened.

Hanna was once more walking on air when she returned to Austria, and, once again, no sooner was she home than her positivity was shattered. A new film had just come out starring Alec Guinness as Hitler and portraying the final days in the bunker. Said to be based on Hugh Trevor-Roper’s book, as usual in the movies the director and scriptwriter had used artistic licence to make the film more enticing to an audience. Naturally Hanna was featured in her typical role of Nazi dreamer, based far more on post-war interpretations of her time in the bunker than actual fact. Most eyewitness accounts of Hanna’s appearance in Hitler’s underground lair back up her own contention that she rarely saw Hitler and spent most of her time with von Greim or the Goebbels children. Nor do these accounts portray her as a sycophantic ninny intent on sacrificing herself on the altar of Nazism. Hanna had not been consulted before the film was made and she complained bitterly afterwards. But by now she had complained so often that few were listening.

In fact, Hanna’s obsession with criticism often made her complain about trivial or silly things. Worse was her criticism of the collective guilt still being thrust on Germany when other countries had, in her eyes, committed equally heinous crimes. Why was Germany still being punished thirty years on? Why were war criminals still being held in prison? Hanna’s ranting, which was as much driven by irritation at her own constant defamation as moral outrage, hardly improved her standing with the British. Only in America was she appreciated for her role as a pioneer female pilot. In 1975 SETP invited her again, to give a talk to an audience of 2,000 about her experiences with the Me 163 and manned V1 flying bomb.

Flying honours did not eliminate the isolation and anxiety Hanna felt whenever she was in Germany. Frankfurt had become a city of unrest. Her flat was in an area where some of the worst violence took place. The police instructed her that they could not guarantee her safety on the streets and advised she take taxis rather than walk. Frankfurt was in serious need of redevelopment, but when speculators bought up old houses to demolish them and build high-rise flats there was a spate of riots. Protestors squatted in the houses either side of Hanna’s flat.

Anxiety became an overwhelming part of Hanna’s life. After an attempted break-in at her flat she took to carrying a small pistol in her handbag. The continued violence and fear was too much and in 1973 she was fortunate to find another flat in a better part of the city. She could never have afforded it had not the landlord been a fan of her achievements. The day Hanna moved a car was overturned outside her old flat and set on fire. Hanna had to wonder what had happened to Germany. She decorated her new flat with black and white pictures of the Alps and gliders, family photos, a watercolour painting by Otto Fuchs while in Libya and portraits of von Greim and the priest Volkmar, who had recently died and left Hanna even more bereft. Flying trophies, wall hangings and mementoes from her various travels abroad helped to make her at home. The big windows of the flat overlooked a tree-filled garden and a church clock tower. When she felt lonely Hanna could feed the birds on her balcony. She set to work on her next book, another autobiography that aimed to debunk many of the myths that had grown up around her. She called it
Ups and Downs
, which was appropriate as the last decades of her life had proceeded very much in that fashion, as had her moods. Hanna swung from enthusiasm to depression far more easily these days than when younger; in some regards she now mirrored her father at the same stage in his life. She threw herself into as many activities as possible to dispel the mental gloom and still flew whenever she could, but for every glory there always seemed to be somebody ready to throw back at her those dark days of 1945. Emy had shown considerable foresight when she worried about her daughter receiving two Iron Crosses and Nazi accolades; she had recognised the predicament her daughter might face one day. Unfortunately, she was not around to help.

Controversy dogged Hanna. In 1978 she and Hans Baur attended a public tribute to German pioneering pilot Hermann Köhl, a known anti-Nazi who had been banned from public speaking by Göring in 1934. Köhl had died in 1938, making the event the fortieth anniversary of his death and a big gathering was expected. That Hanna and Baur were invited as VIPs was a bad oversight – former followers of Hitler attending a tribute to an anti-Nazi was obviously going to produce bad press. Hanna, as usual, picked up most of the flak.

Meanwhile, she was trying to promote women in gliding. Women had never been prominent in the sport, but in recent years there seemed to be even fewer. Hanna often found herself with only a handful of female pilots at competitions. She aimed to reinvigorate the sport among women and the only way she knew of doing this was to prove herself as a female pilot. Hanna took to the air and was once more breaking records: in 1978 she set a new women’s world record flying over the Alps for ten hours. The feud with the Aero Club also at last came to an end after its new president wrote to Hanna to congratulate her. Hanna decided it was time to put the past behind her.

As usual, the past had other ideas. Hanna was invited to give a lecture at Bremen, a city with a strong communist element, particularly among students at the university. Typically oblivious, Hanna could not understand why they might object to a lecture by her on gliding. The organiser of the lecture feared protests, but after weeks of negotiations it was agreed that the lecture would go ahead. The 8 November 1978 was booked. No one appeared to remember the significance of that date. Forty years ago that night the horrors of Kristallnacht had been about to erupt. Though Hanna had not been involved and, indeed, had protested against the violence, her name remained blackened by her later association with Hitler, and many felt it was in poor taste that she should give a lecture the day before such a poignant anniversary. Even the mayor of Bremen was aghast at the audacity of the event. What Hanna did not know was that the organiser behind the lecture was a hard-core nationalist, part of a movement closely associated with fascism. The organisation she was due to speak to was the Stahlhelm Youth, which many considered a barely disguised reinvention of the Hitler Youth. The reaction against the lecture was therefore quite natural.

For once Hanna realised the danger in time. She cancelled her appearance at almost the same time as the organiser was doing the same. The public was not so easily mollified. The usual statements about Hanna began to circulate, adding to her negative press but representing her as more of a Nazi than she ever really was. Hanna once again went into action, accusing people of slander and demanding a public apology. The event had tarnished her reputation. She had hoped to sell copies of her book, and now she wondered if shops would begin to remove it from their shelves. She retreated to Salzburg mournful, confused as to why everything she did turned out so badly. By her parents’ grave she asked herself where it had all gone so wrong.

The torment continued. In 1979 Hanna was accused of anti-Semitism in her writing. She took the accuser, and the evangelical church he represented, to court for slander and won her case. But the press coverage raked up old dirt again. Hanna wanted a public apology. It was refused and a new feud looked likely to begin. Again her friends begged her to drop the matter and again Hanna refused because it went against her honour. The constant antagonism drove Hanna into a depression. She brushed it off briefly for a trip to America, where she stayed several weeks in Pennsylvania, writing another book and flying. She even attempted, and succeeded, to set a new world record. Unfortunately, it was claimed that her flight had not been correctly monitored or recorded. The controversy descended into another war of words that would last months.

Back in Frankfurt Hanna was feeling unwell. The strain of all these arguments and her hectic schedule were becoming too much. Suddenly she dreaded public speaking, but could not renege on the promises she had made. On 22 August Hanna told a friend over the phone that she was having pains in her chest. The next day Joachim Küttner rang to ask if she would like to meet him at the airport, as she had so often done in the past. ‘I really have a problem – I need you – I need your help,’ Hanna said over the phone. ‘But I don’t think I can come – you come here.’ Küttner failed to realise the seriousness of the situation. He only had limited time and said he would call on Hanna another time. After all, it was not unknown for Hanna to react dramatically to the most mundane of problems. Her request for help was probably nothing. That night Hanna dined with a guest who thought she looked exhausted and worn out. A thought ran through his head: ‘My God, how long can she keep this up?’