The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries

by Clare Mulley

  Stettin was one of a number of thinly disguised military bases where the students’ blue uniforms would turn out to be remarkably similar to those of the Luftwaffe, revealed the following year. ‘The school was staffed,’ Hanna said, ‘by officers to whom a woman on an airfield was like a red rag to a bull.’43 Despite causing much hilarity as she joined the morning drill line-up, her slight, feminine frame inevitably ‘disturbing the splendours of the masculine silhouette’, as she put it, Hanna quickly proved her capabilities and was accepted by her peers. Most of the flying suits were too large, and she needed cushions to boost her height in the cockpit, but she learned to fly loops, turns and rolls in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44, a two-seat open biplane known as the Stieglitz, or Goldfinch, and carefully concealed her initial sickness by throwing up neatly into one of her gloves. Back at Darmstadt, Hanna could now fly one of the six heavier Heinkels. These were military reconnaissance aircraft that had been stripped of their armaments and issued with civil registrations for use at flying displays, and for meteorological night flights at the institute. Since these machines had been issued first to DVL, it is likely that Hanna was now literally sitting in Melitta’s old seat.

  In 1935 Hanna officially became an experimental glider test pilot. The first aircraft she was required to test was a new glider being built at the institute known as the DFS Kranich, or Crane. All went well, and next followed the See Adler, or Sea Eagle, the world’s first waterborne glider, whose gull wings were designed to stay high above the spray and waves. This didn’t always work. After being dragged right under the surface of a lake by the weight of her tow rope during an early test, Hanna and the See Adler eventually lifted off only when pulled into the air by a Dornier flying boat.

  Daily letters from her mother brought Hanna considerable comfort during these dangerous trials, reassuring her that she was in God’s hands, if also slightly irritating her with constant warnings about ‘the blindness of vanity and overweening pride’. Where they did see eye to eye was in their shared belief that Hanna’s work was all ‘in the cause of Germany and the saving of human lives’44

  According to Peter Riedel, Hanna quickly became ‘a quite outstanding pilot’ who, he could not resist adding, was ‘capable of equalling or surpassing the best men’45 Apart from Melitta, who was keeping her head down at DVL, Hanna was the only other woman testing such exciting prototype aircraft. As a result, she started receiving invitations to represent Germany at flight events overseas. In Finland she performed gliding demonstrations to engage the country’s young people in the sport. But en route to Portugal she caused controversy when bad weather forced her to land at a French military airfield without permission. The discovery of a camera on board led to accusations that Hanna was a spy. ‘White with rage’, she vociferously denied the claims, believing that not only she, but also her country, were being maligned46 Eventually the French Ministry of Aviation ordered her release. Delighted to leave ‘the tensions of the outside world’ behind her once again, she flew on to Lisbon, and happily abandoned herself to her ‘one overmastering desire – to soar in the beauty of flight’47

  ‘Hitler wanted the Germans to become a nation of aviators,’ the wife of Hanna’s friend Karl Baur, a Messerschmitt test pilot, later wrote. ‘If there was some kind of celebration in a city, an air show was a must.’48 Karl worked with Hanna to develop an aerobatic programme, and she was soon busy on the demonstration circuit at regional flight days around Germany, performing aerobatics to entertain the crowds. Although his wife thought Hanna was ‘a young fragile-looking girl’, Karl was impressed by the energy she put into her performances, and recognized her as ‘a very talented, enthusiastic pilot’49

  Hanna was now typically flying alongside other stars of the German aviation scene like Elly Beinhorn with her incredibly fast Me 108 Taifun (Typhoon), and Ernst Udet, who stunned the crowds with his sensational open biplane act of swooping down low enough to pick up a handkerchief from the ground with the tip of its wing. Since the Great War, Udet had made a career out of performing aerobatics and mock air battles with his friend and fellow veteran Robert Ritter von Greim, who he considered ‘a splendid pilot’50 Having starred in several films, Udet was now a huge celebrity, ‘but in all of this there was a secret longing to see the spirit which inspired us become a real power in the nation’, he wrote in his 1935 memoir. ‘We were soldiers without a flag’ until 1933, when, he added, ‘for old soldiers, life is again worth living’51

  Increasingly in the public eye, Hanna was herself becoming a minor celebrity. In 1934 she went from a few mentions in the gliding news to being the title story, and even the cover girl of magazines that featured her sitting in her open cockpit, grinning for the camera, her blonde curls tucked into her close-fitting flying cap, her goggles resting above. She even appeared, wearing a glamorous fur-collared flying jacket, on a gold-embossed Gabarty cigarette card for their collectable ‘Modern Beauties’ series, and no doubt in Germany she and Elly Beinhorn were the women most closely associated with Caron’s ‘En Avion’ perfume, launched in 1932.* Hanna was a natural performer, and silent film footage from this time shows her looking relaxed and fabulous in her flying kit, shading her eyes from the sun and laughing as she gamely bats aside the feather duster being brandished by a handsome young man. With the duster propped in the nose of her glider, more men arrive to joke around with her. It all looks very jolly. In another scene, Hanna, now in a pretty white blouse and neck scarf, goofs about for the camera with a giant cuddly-toy dog dressed in jacket and trousers. Despite the constant sexism, Hanna can afford to laugh generously because she knows that she can fly all these men out of the sky. By the time she pulls her goggles down over her eyes and is strapped into her cockpit, around fifteen men – some in uniform – are gathered to watch her take off. Her elegant white glider dips out of sight and then rises, magnificently, above them all.

  Hanna was publicly associating with the dynamic new regime, and beginning to rise with them, but she did not completely support all their policies. One of her flying friends, Dr Joachim Küttner, had been classified as ‘half Jewish’. Küttner had joined Hanna on her official visit to Finland, and now they were both sent to Sweden with Peter Riedel to perform aerobatic displays. While there, Hanna asked Walter Stender, an aviation engineering friend, whether he could help Küttner find work overseas. Stender declined, commenting only that her desire to help a Jew was a ‘noble and dangerous idea’52 In fact it is unlikely that Hanna was putting herself in great danger by canvassing for Küttner at this time, but her concern does show both that she was aware of growing, state-sanctioned anti-Semitism, and that it did not sit entirely comfortably with her. Nevertheless, she chose to make an exception to help a colleague rather than challenge the general rule. ‘She didn’t see these cases as symptomatic of anything,’ a friend later argued. ‘She saw them as isolated incidents that could be cleared up by a personal intervention . . . she wasn’t able to see an evil principle in all of this.’53

  In February 1936, Hanna was delighted to join Peter again, performing gliding aerobatics at the opening of the Winter Olympics held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a couple of small villages in the Bavarian mountains. It was a fun event, taking off and landing on the frozen lake where the figure skating would soon take place. Udet was also there, flying alongside Hitler’s personal pilot, Hans Baur, and others, in a rally for engine-powered planes. Unfortunately for the Olympic competitors, Ga-Pa, as the site was soon known, had suffered from unseasonably light snowfall, but the towns were almost buried beneath an avalanche of swastikas on posters, flags and bunting. This new signage replaced the anti-Jewish notices that had been temporarily removed before the arrival of the international teams, press and spectators in tacit admission that other nations might not understand Nazi race policy. The Winter Olympics were being used to give the regime legitimacy. Despite attracting fewer foreign visitors than expected and some critical press reports from the likes of William Shirer, the bureau chief of the American Univer
sal News Service, they would prove extremely effective. Had the games been officially boycotted internationally, or even had visitors left with a dim impression of the new regime, it is possible that Hitler might not have risked launching his expansionist foreign policy quite so soon. As it was, a month after the games opened, German troops marched into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

  That spring, back at the Darmstadt Research Centre for Gliding, Hanna started to test glider air brakes. These could be fitted to prevent a speeding glider from exceeding the structural limit of its frame, even when diving vertically, before the pilot could regain control. It was terrifying work as the whole glider would shudder when the prototype air brakes were used, and Hanna reported wedging herself against the sides of the cockpit in order to keep control. Modification and eventual success were an important aeronautical milestone. Perhaps not coincidentally, these air brakes were being developed at the same time as the Luftwaffe’s research into the possibility of dive-bombing with Stukas was stepped up.

  Here, for the first time, Hanna’s and Melitta’s work began to overlap. Melitta had already carried out experiments on adjustable propellers and their behaviour in ‘headlong descent’ – in other words, during dives – and Hanna was now testing dive-brakes. There is no question that by now these two exceptional women would have known of each other. Test pilots formed a close and supportive community and Hanna and Melitta were the only women at their respective institutes: a source of curiosity and gossip for the men, and of potential support for each other. Furthermore, they had several close friends in common, from Peter Riedel and Elly Beinhorn to the famous veteran Ernst Udet. However, neither Hanna nor Melitta made any public reference to the other, as if refusing to recognize another woman working in the same field.

  In March, Hanna successfully demonstrated glider brakes to a number of Luftwaffe generals including Udet, who would soon be appointed chief of the Luftwaffe’s technical office. Udet’s friend, Robert Ritter von Greim, was also present. Greim was one of the very few people to have piloted a plane carrying Hitler. In 1920, he had flown Hitler through rough weather to Berlin for the Kapp Putsch. When the Luftwaffe was publicly launched in 1935, Göring named Greim as the first squadron leader and now, at forty-four, he was rapidly rising through the ranks. Both the new technology and the female test pilot made a deep impression on Greim and the other men.

  Not long after, Hanna was notified that she was to be awarded the honorary title of Flugkapitän, or flight captain, the first German woman ever to be accorded such a distinction. Despite claiming to place ‘no value on decorations’, Hanna was thrilled54 Before the month was over, Göring had also presented her with a special women’s version of the Combined Pilot’s and Observer’s Badge in gold with diamonds, along with a signed photograph of himself dedicated to ‘The Captain of the Air, Hanna Reitsch’. As if not to be outdone, two days later, on Hanna’s twenty-fourth birthday, Udet gave her a brooch in the form of a golden propeller overlaid with a swastika of blue sapphires, with his own dedication engraved on the reverse. Hanna was clearly the female pilot to know in the Third Reich, and both she and Melitta were fully aware of it.

  The Winter Olympics had been a major date on the 1936 calendar, but the main event of the year would be the Berlin Olympics that August. The games had been awarded to Germany in 1931, but because of the severe economic depression nothing had been done at the Olympic site. Within three years of taking power the Nazis had built a monumental stadium to showcase their revitalized nation to the world. Sport in Nazi Germany, with its focus on physically ‘perfect’ young people, was inseparable from nationalism and the idea of racial superiority. Despite some international protest against Berlin as host city – the first time in history that an Olympic boycott was discussed – by July 1936 the German capital was draped not only in scarlet, white and black, but also with Olympic flags. Above the stadium the Hindenburg airship, its tail fins painted with swastikas, proudly trailed an Olympic banner from its gondola. New trees were planted along Unter den Linden, new rail links stretched beneath the city, and the National Socialist architectural style, designed to impress and inspire, was showcased in the massive new stadium as the capital geared up for the arrival of nearly 4,500 participants and 150,000 foreign spectators.* An estimated one million Berliners came out simply to watch Hitler’s journey to the games. ‘Berlin was ready for the festivities,’ the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl noted in her diary, ‘and the town burned with Olympic fever.’55 Although Udet was banned from flying above the races to take film footage, Riefenstahl planned to get good aerial shots from cameras attached to hydrogen-filled balloons. Ironically, though, none of her footage captured the aerial elements of the games.

  Germany had petitioned for gliding to be accepted as an Olympic sport but, after months of deliberation, the International Olympic Committee had rejected the proposal.* In order still to showcase German capabilities in the sky, an Olympiade Grossflugtag or ‘Olympic Great Flight Day’ was organized at Tempelhof airfield for 31 July, the day before the official opening of the games. There were to be tethered hot-air balloons; formation flying by glider pilots; the men’s aerobatics championship finals; and aerial displays by different models of pre-war planes, light aircraft and other engine-powered planes; and it was Melitta – not Hanna – who was booked for the programme. Melitta was to perform a daring stunt flying in a Heinkel He 70 Blitz (Lightning), a plane once used as a light bomber and for aerial reconnaissance. Her display would follow a group of parachutists and some daylight fireworks, and come just before Elly Beinhorn was to wow the crowds in her Messerschmitt Me 108: a plane she had named the Taifun because it ‘sounded international, powerful’56 All the aircraft were emblazoned with swastikas; this was political theatre at its most spectacular.

  Melitta’s thoughts on being involved in this huge public relations exercise are not recorded. However, hosting the games was a long-awaited honour for Germany and few people saw their country’s impressive preparations in anything other than a positive light. Since Melitta regarded Germany as far greater than the current regime, she may have felt proud to have been selected, justifying her participation to herself in these terms rather than seeing the games for what they had become: a homage to Nazi Germany and the Führer, deliberately staged with an eye to world opinion. She must also have known that to refuse any such invitation could be seen as anti-German, and would have been extremely risky at a time when she was still waiting to hear about her personal legal status.

  In the event, the weather was terrible. Heavy clouds hung overhead. It was wet, and an unseasonably fierce wind whipped summer hats off heads, set banners flapping and sent clouds of dust into watering eyes. Nevertheless, Hitler, square and stocky in his brown uniform, accompanied by Umberto II, the last king of Italy, attended the Grossflugtag, along with crowds in the tens of thousands. Events started badly. Forty of the 150 participating aircraft had to withdraw because of the weather or engine trouble. ‘It was hell,’ one of the pilots commented in an interview57 Yet Melitta’s performance was spectacular. Her outstanding aerial acrobatics, control and accuracy generated huge applause and lasting admiration, as well as drawing considerable new attention to her.

  Hanna was also expected to play her part during the Summer Olympics. Gliding had been accepted as a ‘demonstration sport’, and a display was scheduled for 4 August at Berlin-Staaken airfield. Although no official contest took place and no prizes were presented, the weather was better and pilots from seven countries took part, with Hanna a member of the strong German team. Unfortunately gliding proved to be the only sport that brought the games a fatality, when an Austrian sailplane crashed after damaging its wing.

  Among those watching the displays was a seventeen-year-old Scot. Eric Brown was the son of one of the British air force veterans invited to the games by Udet and the German Fighter Pilots’ Association for a ‘shindig’, as Eric put it, with their former enemies58 Udet woul
d instil in Eric a lifelong love of flying. Taking him up for a spin, he only nonchalantly checked that Eric was well strapped in before rolling the plane onto its back as they started their approach to land. Eric, who momentarily thought ‘the silly old fool’s had a heart attack’, was speechless, but Udet ‘roared with laughter’59 Once back on the ground, Udet gave the teenager a slap on the back with the old pilots’ greeting, ‘Hals- und Beinbruch!’ – ‘Break a neck and a leg!’ He then told him to learn to fly, and to learn German. He was ‘a good mentor for someone who wanted an adventurous life’, Eric said, and Hanna no doubt agreed60 Udet introduced them on the airfield. Hanna was a ‘remarkable lady, tiny sort’, Eric commented, adding that she ‘flew a glider like an angel’61 Twenty minutes later he had her down as ‘an intense, strong-minded woman, filled with ambition and determination’62 Like many others, however, Eric underestimated Hanna’s ability. When he learned that she wanted to test-fly engine-powered planes he felt she had ‘no hope’, as she would never have ‘the physical strength to take on a large aircraft’63 Hanna would soon prove him wrong.

  It is hard to know which of these Olympic aerial events, the Grossflugtag or the gliding demonstration, was the more prestigious. Either way, there must have been some awkward moments at the parties and official receptions during the games, and later at Berlin’s Haus der Flieger, or House of Aviators, established by Göring as a meeting place for flight officials and pilots. Hanna was soon talking derisively about Melitta’s skills as a pilot, while Melitta, it was said, chose never to speak of Hanna, even refusing to have a cup of tea with her. It was perhaps inevitable that some gossips would define the relationship between two such brilliant female pilots as rivalry. But although there is no reason to think that Hanna knew of Melitta’s Jewish ancestry at this point, there were many other reasons why the two might not have struck up a friendship. Hanna was vivacious, quick to laugh, and seemingly refused to take life seriously, and yet she had an eye for opportunity and a steely determination to succeed in her chosen career, whatever the obstacles. She could not bear Melitta’s apparent sense of superiority and entitlement. The more considered Melitta was just as dedicated to her vocation, but believed in the old conservative virtues of modesty, study and hard work. For her, respect had to be earned, and she could not consider Hanna, who had no grasp of aeronautical engineering, as her peer. To see such rapid success go to anyone who had less knowledge and experience must have been trying, but to see it happen to someone who appeared so closely to represent and reflect the rise of the new regime must have been a particular challenge.