The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries
Page 11
In the 1930s all pilots were courageous. ‘The planes were not reliable,’ Elly Beinhorn’s son admitted. ‘Bits broke off, there were emergency landings.’59 The great risks associated with flight meant that there was deep comradeship among pilots. Jutta knew that Melitta did not share the political views of many of her colleagues but understood that, despite this, ‘she always felt very strongly connected to her fellow pilots’. Since so few women flew, this rule applied even more to them. ‘She always had a good relationship with other female pilots, and never saw them as competitors,’ Jutta continued. ‘If she met with the opposite sentiment from them, she disarmed it with hearty laughter; to do otherwise was simply not in her nature.’60
Although based at separate institutes, Melitta and Hanna were both working on the development of Stukas and their paths inevitably crossed at their respective airfields. Sharing many close contacts in sporting aviation as well as in the Luftwaffe, they sometimes also found themselves invited to the same public and private events. Most of the time they ignored each other or, if pushed, exchanged polite nods or terse work conversations. In fact, they shared so little small talk that neither was aware they had spent much of their childhoods in neighbouring parts of Germany and had both gone to school in Hirschberg.
Hanna hated the fact that Melitta was the better-qualified pilot of the two of them, and a highly respected engineer to boot, and she bridled at Melitta’s air of intellectual superiority – something probably not helped by Melitta’s ‘hearty laughter’ when met with a difference of opinion. As a result, on occasion Hanna was ‘heard to belittle’ Melitta’s achievements, and later told friends that Melitta ‘developed instruments that were used to seek and shoot at targets from a flying plane, as she told me . . . She tested them by nosedives [but] she never had the job to test planes, only to test instruments.’61 Hanna also resented Melitta’s social status as a countess, and disliked the way that she seemed to prefer being treated as an honorary man at work in her trouser suits, and a countess at home, rather than carving a space for herself as a new type of professional woman. Completely missing the fundamental discrimination of the Nazi regime, to Hanna, Melitta embodied the old values, hierarchies and prejudices that she felt it was time to sweep away. With nine years between them, Melitta ‘was much older than me, though’, Hanna reflected more happily.62
Melitta, meanwhile, rarely mentioned Hanna in conversation, as if refusing to acknowledge her as in any way an equal. To her mind Hanna might have a good instinct for flying gliders and a degree of charisma, but she had no apparent scientific or political understanding. For Melitta, Hanna represented the blithe focus on self-promotion that had enabled the Nazis to cast aside the conservative traditions of her country. Above all, as Melitta ‘made no secret of her oppositional views’, Richard Perlia remembered, while Hanna was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi regime, neither woman wanted to spend much time, or be associated, with the other.63
At the close of 1937, Hanna celebrated the wonderful year that had seen her promoted into the previously all-male club of flight captains by presenting her parents with a finely sculpted bronze eagle with outstretched wings. A plaque on its green marble plinth informed them that this was a gift in gratitude for their patience and faith in her dreams, ‘presented by their daughter, Flugkapitän Hanna’.64 It must have weighed heavily on Dr Willy Reitsch’s shelf, given his steady opposition to his daughter’s chosen career, but to Hanna it was a joyful marker of her evident success. Melitta’s family mantelpieces were laden with more traditional, and yet more personal, trophies: the handsome busts of Alexander, Claus, and other friends and relatives that she had sculpted in clay and cast in bronze.* For Hanna the public was personal, and recognition was the measure of her life; for Melitta the private was all too public.
On New Year’s Eve 1937, Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine produced a film entitled Deutsche Luftgeltung, meaning (German Air Retribution). Four beautifully shot reels presented aerobatic displays above military bands in glorious sunshine, and the sound of soldiers’ formation marching echoing loudly as Hitler inspects his troops. Hanna appears in several scenes, dressed in a white shirt and pale trench coat, her hairband failing to control her windswept curls. All smiles, she holds a flight chart while a tanned young man in shirtsleeves and sunglasses walks beside her. The scene looks like an aspirational fashion shoot. Then there are gliders taking off in the countryside, their shadows crossing a lake, pine forests and snowy cloud-wreathed mountain peaks. Noble music plays. Here is Hanna again, laughing gaily. Hot-air balloons open reel two, which covers that year’s Nuremberg Rally. Planes flying in formation cast the rippling shadow of swastikas over the contours of the crowds. ‘Comrades!’ Göring addresses the nation at the end of the film. ‘The year 1937 was a year of building up our air force. I thank you for your willing sacrifices, your diligence and your faith, by which we have achieved our given goal. The year 1938 will bring new requirements of us all. We will fulfil these through our faith and devotion to the Führer, to our people and to the Fatherland.’65
5
HOVERING
1938
After years of poverty and uncertainty, at the beginning of 1938 Germany was, in Hanna’s words, a ‘dynamic and prosperous nation’, at last ‘seeing bread and making progress’.1 Five years into Nazi rule, the country was flourishing. Unemployment was down, exports were up, national pride had been restored, and Hitler was enjoying the adulation of the majority of the German people – as well as some rather more apprehensive admiration from overseas. Although presenting the German Führer as a ‘grim figure’ in his biographical volume Great Contemporaries, Winston Churchill, then a backbench MP, conceded that Hitler had ‘succeeded in restoring Germany to the most powerful position in Europe’.2 At the same time, the young John F. Kennedy, then motoring through Germany, jotted in his diary that ‘the new autostradas . . . are the finest roads in the world’, although rather wasted outside America, he felt. Kennedy went on to visit a ‘terribly interesting’ exhibition on the development of aviation at the Deutsche Museum in Munich, before exploring the local nightclubs, which were, he recorded cautiously, ‘a bit different’.3 Nightlife in the big German cities was no longer as politically uninhibited as it had been during the Weimar cabaret years, but was still impressive, with live music, troupes of dancing girls and an earnest sense of optimism that reflected the mood of the country as a whole.
Hitler claimed that his country’s economic problems had been solved by motorization. Germany had not only invested in the autobahns, it was now a world leader in aircraft and general motor technology. Melitta and her colleagues had been showcasing German engine-powered aeroplanes overseas for several years. Now German auto-engineering had also gained a world-class reputation, and in 1938 the country’s car exports, on their own, would exceed its entire car production levels for 1932. These were the years when Germany dominated the European Grands Prix with superstar drivers like Bernd Rosemeyer and Rudolf Caracciola. At the end of January 1938, however, a tragedy on the autobahn seemed to some like a bad portent. It was also an incident that would bring Hanna and Melitta together once more.
Three years earlier, Bernd Rosemeyer had met Melitta and Hanna’s mutual friend, the acclaimed pilot Elly Beinhorn, at the Czechoslovakian Grand Prix. Elly had congratulated the new world champion, garlanded with a huge wreath of oak leaves, on his victory. They danced together that night, and were married the following year. Footage shows them laughing and kissing, him in pale overalls, her in a polka-dot dress, headscarf and sunglasses. A true celebrity couple, both handsome and talented, although ‘not interested in glamour’ they were the toast of Nazi Germany, and a reluctant Rosemeyer soon found himself ordered to join the SS.4 ‘He had to be in the Party to get a licence to race,’ his son Bernd later claimed.5 Ten weeks after young Bernd was born, Rosemeyer achieved a new world land speed record on the autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Moments later he lost control of his beautiful custom-ma
de Auto Union Type C car, which skidded and became airborne before crashing into a bridge embankment. Thrown from the car, Rosemeyer died at the roadside. Hanna and Melitta rallied around Elly as condolences from prominent Nazis, including Hitler himself, poured in. But Elly struggled to grieve for her husband in private, as Rosemeyer was not granted the simple, non-political funeral that she had requested. Instead, SS troopers carried his coffin and several Party members ‘came to be seen’, even giving public speeches at the graveside.6 According to the accounts of some of the mourners, Elly walked away in protest.
A week after Rosemeyer’s funeral, Hanna was required to perform another public relations exercise. That February, Germany was showcasing a range of Mercedes-Benz sports cars as well as revealing plans for the forthcoming ‘Volkswagen’ to an international audience at the prestigious Berlin Motor Show. ‘The story of the Berlin exhibition since National Socialism came to power,’ the national press fawned, ‘has been an uninterrupted triumph.’7 Hitler wanted to use the 1938 show as more than a trade fair. It was to be a demonstration of German engineering excellence for unprecedented numbers of visitors. For this he needed a star attraction. Hanna was booked to head the programme: she was to be the first person in the world to fly a helicopter inside a building.
The theme of the motor show was Germany’s lost colonies: ‘at that time a much ventilated grievance’, Hanna noted. In preparation, the great Deutschlandhalle sports stadium, then the world’s largest arena, had been furnished with palm trees, flamingos, a carpet of sand and, in Hanna’s words, ‘a Negro village and other exotic paraphernalia’.8 This was the scene she was to rise above in the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter: a symbol of German power and control.
At first Hanna was scheduled to make only the inaugural flight, after which the chief Focke-Wulf pilot, Karl Bode, was to take over. During a demonstration for Luftwaffe generals, however, knowing that the helicopter’s sensitivity meant any slight miscalculation could take him sweeping into the audience, Bode refused to risk rising more than a few feet above the ground. It was safe, but hardly impressive enough for the crowds who would be looking down from the galleries of steeply tiered seating. Then, through no fault of Bode’s, one of the propellers broke. ‘It was dreadful,’ Hanna told Elly. ‘There were splinters from the rotor blade flying around and the flamingos were all creating.’9 Once the blades had been replaced, Hanna took her turn. With typical insouciance, she lifted the helicopter well above the recommended height and hovered in the gods. Göring quickly ordered that she was to make all the motor show flights. Bode never forgave her.
Hanna’s delight at winning another promotion quickly turned to dismay, however, when she saw the publicity for the show. Huge, garishly coloured posters presented the list of attractions as Dancing Girls, Fakirs, Clowns, Blackamoors and – last item – Hanna Reitsch will fly the helicopter.10 Hanna had no issue with the cultural agenda – even after she discovered, to her evident surprise, that the ‘negroes’ who sat around the helicopter reading newspapers between rehearsals spoke perfect German. ‘Most of them had been born in a circus troupe,’ she commented on this apparent absurdity, ‘and knew less, even, about the jungle than I!’11 However, although she could never be described as publicity-shy, Hanna resented the way that such ‘variety hall’-style billing, as she saw it, presented her as part of some socially dubious sideshow rather than rightly affiliating her with the main act: the triumphant rise of National Socialism. Hanna felt that both she and the serious business of flying had been debased. The prospect of the show now ‘appalled’ her, she told friends bitterly, but with Göring watching and the reputation of German technology at stake, there was nothing for it but to give the performance of her life.12
Everything went well during rehearsals. Hanna circled the banks of empty seating closely enough to give the audience a good view of her sitting at the controls in her puffy white shirtsleeves, her fair curls tucked into her leather flying cap. Then, picking up on the ‘atmosphere of almost solemn tension’ as she stepped up to the helicopter on the opening night, she was struck by the name painted on its silver fuselage, the Deutschland, and her heart ‘lifted in greeting to my country’.13 But when Hanna revved up the rotors she was horrified to discover that the machine refused to lift. The reputation of the Reich, her own career and, Hanna must have realized, possibly even her liberty, hung stuttering in the spotlights just a few inches above the floor. Surrounding her, watching every manoeuvre of both machine and pilot through a growing cloud of dirt and sand, were some 8,000 spectators, including many representatives of the international press.
Hanna was certain that the problem was caused by the helicopter’s normally aspirated engine being starved of air by the breathing of the vast audience. Painful minutes passed while the technicians debated, but then the great hall’s doors were opened. Hanna and the Deutschland immediately ‘shot up to about twenty feet’ and slowly rotated on the spot.14 At first ‘the audience followed the flight intently’, but such a controlled display held little drama and the applause grew desultory.15 At the end of the demonstration Hanna neatly lowered the machine with her head held high, executed a perfectly timed, stiff-armed Nazi salute, and landed safely on her mark. She had practised this countless times for Udet while he sat comfortably ensconced in an armchair, puffing at a cigar.
Hanna was vindicated, but the helicopter performance was still not the outstanding success that Udet had promised, and that both Göring and Hitler had expected. Hanna herself felt that the audience had grown bored. Among the seated crowd was Eric Brown, the son of the British Great War pilot who had first met Hanna at the 1936 Olympics. Since then, the two of them had exchanged a few letters. Now the young Scotsman was studying in Germany and was one of Udet’s guests at the motor show. Eric felt that Hanna ‘did extraordinarily well’ and claimed that her ‘very mediocre reception’ was chiefly ‘because she had blown all the ladies’ hats off and disturbed everyone’s hair’.16 Whatever the cause, Hanna was quick to distance herself from the event, claiming that Udet had ‘grossly overestimated the capacity of the general public to appreciate a purely technical achievement’.17 For a pilot and showman of Udet’s experience it was damning criticism from his rather nontechnical young starlet.
That evening Hanna renewed her acquaintance with Eric at a lavish party in Udet’s small but well-appointed apartment in the most fashionable part of Berlin. Since the Olympics, the Great War ace had taken Eric under his wing, often inviting him over for a glass of wine and to meet some of the Luftwaffe people who constantly seemed to drift through in a fug of tobacco smoke. Udet was a ‘cigar-smoking, champagne-drinking sort of chap’, Eric noted with evident admiration. He ‘had many lady friends’, and indeed, ‘regarded the whole world as his friend’.18 But watching the German hero with his petite young protégée, Eric saw that Udet was ‘quite overcome’ by Hanna.19 To Eric, Hanna was ‘pretty, but not beautiful’.20 He decided that Udet was not so much romantically struck by her, more that he simply admired a kindred spirit, ‘someone like himself, who was born to fly’.21 Hanna, however, Eric increasingly came to believe, was very ambitious, calculating, even pushy, deliberately manipulating Udet, and ‘wrapping him round her little finger’ to further her own career.22
Eric later admitted that he had been superficially drawn to the Nazi Party. He admired Udet and found Nazi Germany exciting, with its passion for aviation, dynamic leaders and mass rallies.23 Picking up on his apparent sympathy, when Hanna talked with Eric it was constantly about her support for National Socialism. ‘She felt strongly that the Treaty of Versailles had stripped Germany of pride as a nation,’ Eric recalled, ‘and that the only way to get this back was to support Hitler.’24 While Eric greatly respected Hanna’s skills and courage, he began to realize that he ‘did not care for her particularly as a personality, and certainly not for her politics’.25 As he steered their conversations round to safer subjects, he noticed that Hanna never spoke about other women, and ‘only cared for men a
s a tool to achieve her objectives’.26 Although they would stay in touch, Eric would later coolly characterize his relationship with Hanna as ‘a semi-professional friendship’.27
That night, however, Eric and Hanna shared sympathetic glances at the after-show party, when Udet announced his favourite party game: inviting guests to fire a small .22 calibre pistol over their shoulders at a round target fixed to the wall behind them, seen only through a mirror. According to Eric, ‘Hanna regarded it all as a superfluous sideshow,’ but she went along with it anyhow.28 They both did; there was little else to be done with good grace. To add to the challenge, neither Eric nor Hanna was tall enough to make use of the mirror on the wall, so they had to take their turns using a hand-held shaving mirror. Udet, naturally, was a ‘terribly good’ shot, but both Hanna and Eric also managed to hit the fringes of the target. Several of the other guests were not so fortunate, plugging their bullets into the wall, laughing as if they were simply playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. It was turning into a ‘riotous evening’ but there would be no complaints from the neighbours of a leading – and very popular – Nazi general.29 ‘Heady stuff’, Eric remembered, but ‘typical of the mood pervading Nazi Berlin’.30
That mood was no respecter of boundaries. On 12 March, Hitler announced the Anschluss: the unification of Austria and Germany, or the German annexation of its neighbour. Austria’s chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, had been planning a referendum, expecting the people to support Austrian independence, but before this could take place the Austrian Nazi Party orchestrated a coup d’état. Wehrmacht troops entered the country as power was officially transferred to Germany.