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

by Clare Mulley

  Over the next few weeks Hanna completed another eight or ten test flights, although ‘not without their awkward moments’, she admitted.65 Once, caught in sudden turbulence, the rear of her V-1 grazed the Heinkel as she pulled away, crumpling and twisting its tail with a loud rending noise. Fortunately the main fuselage was undamaged, and she managed to land safely. During another test, with the two-seater training version, the sack of sand providing ballast in the empty seat shifted as she dived, blocking the controls so that she could not pull up. Cutting the engine, she dived more steeply until the sack slumped aside and she could grab the controls to level out at the last moment. The hard landing splintered the skids and hull, but Hanna emerged unscathed. For later tests, a water tank was lodged in the hull to simulate the weight of a war-head. Theoretically, pulling a lever allowed the water to be jettisoned through a drain before landing, so that the weight would not smash the fragile skids on touchdown. At 18,000 feet, however, Hanna discovered that the drainage system had frozen solid. She was trapped in what was now an overloaded glider, heading towards the ground at more than 500 mph.* ‘In a frenzy of desperation,’ she wrote, ‘I gripped and clawed at the lever until my fingers were bleeding.’66 Only as the skids approached the landing strip did the lever finally connect, and the water gush out over the ground. Moments later she landed safely. She was, she confessed, ‘extremely lucky’.67 She was also very courageous and highly skilled. At least two other pilots in the development programme were killed.

  Hanna’s V-1 tests took the best part of the spring. It was the end of May before she was training volunteer pilots in the two-seater model. On 6 June 1944, the date known to the Allies as D-Day, almost 160,000 mainly British, American and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a heavily fortified fifty-mile stretch of the Normandy coast. The action was so unexpected that Hitler was hosting the wedding of Eva Braun’s sister in Austria. ‘Enemy air superiority was clear-cut,’ his Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, wrote. ‘Their aircraft patrolled the skies almost unmolested, and our troops were unable to move by day.’68 Within a week, Operation Self-Sacrifice pilots were recalled for defensive duties. ‘The invasion had begun . . .’ wrote Hanna, and ‘bore all our efforts into oblivion’.69 Manned V-1 flying bombs would never be put into operational use as Hanna had envisaged. ‘The decisive moment had been missed,’ she wrote bitterly, blaming Göring and the Nazi leadership for failing to appreciate that the proposed operation ‘was no stunt’.70 ‘And so’, she concluded, ‘died an idea that was born of fervent and holy idealism, only to be misused and mismanaged at every turn by people who never understood how men could give up their lives simply for an idea.’71

  Alexander and Melitta woke together at their apartment in Würzburg on D-Day. They had arrived from Lautlingen the night before, with a side of venison from a buck they had shot in the beautiful wooded hills behind the family schloss. Fahrner had pulled off another small miracle: Alexander had been appointed as a National Socialist ideological education officer, based in Athens. At first he was loath to accept the post, knowing that strings had once again been pulled. On reporting for duty, he expressed his unsuitability, only to be told that the post was non-negotiable. With two free weeks before he had to leave, Alexander spent as much time as possible with Melitta. They hunted rabbits at Gatow, and deer at Lautlingen. In the evenings Alexander served a ‘daily reading of Homer’ to his wife, along with the venison.72 But with news of the Allied landings, they were recalled to Berlin. Melitta flew them; Alexander was being dispatched to Greece and she was needed at the Air Warfare Academy. ‘Invasion!’ she wrote, allowing a rare exclamation mark to enter her diary.73

  Despite the many demands upon her, on the evening of D-Day Melitta made time to ring Berthold. All but the most fanatical Nazi officers now concluded that defeat was almost inevitable, and Hitler’s denial and ongoing mismanagement would only drag out the conflict, resulting in the complete destruction of Germany.* The Allies had refused to engage with requests from well-placed conspirators to negotiate a separate peace excluding Russia. Now they were approaching from the west, and Stalin’s Red Army from the east. If the resistance were to act, it had to be soon. ‘The assassination must be attempted at all costs,’ Henning von Tresckow argued. ‘What matters is that the German Widerstand will, before the eyes of the world and before history, have made the decisive step.’74 The following day, Melitta was in touch with Berthold again, as well as Werner von Haeften and Friedrich Olbricht: all key conspirators. Claus, she noted without elaborating, was at Hitler’s headquarters.

  This was Claus’s first military briefing in the presence of Hitler, and his first visit to the Berghof. He was not impressed. The Führer kept glancing around furtively. When he grasped Claus’s hand between both his own, Claus felt him shaking involuntarily, and later his maps quivered as he shuffled them around. Himmler, Keitel, Speer and Göring were also present. Göring was clearly wearing make-up, Claus noted with distaste. The atmosphere was poisonous, he felt, and all the men, with the possible exception of Speer, were ‘psychopaths’.75 Speer felt that they had ‘hit it off’*76. ‘In spite of his war injuries . . . Stauffenberg had preserved a youthful charm,’ he later wrote. ‘He was curiously poetic and at the same time precise.’77 At that moment Claus was interested in the precise details of the security arrangements around Hitler. Among his observations, he noted that ‘in the Führer’s immediate entourage, one had considerable freedom of movement’.78

  That evening Melitta talked late into the night with Berthold. He left only at lunchtime the next day. Later she met Paul, who had just flown in from Rechlin. Together they walked along the quiet shoreline of the lake, deep in discussion, before heading in for a fortifying supper, coffee, cognac and vermouth. The Wannsee was the porous barrier that divided Melitta’s two worlds. On one side she developed flight technology with the Luftwaffe; on the other, she conspired against the Nazi regime with her in-laws. Within a week she had sailed over again to meet Claus at Berthold’s Tristanstrasse house where they both now lived and slept, and which had become a key meeting place for members of the conspiracy. Over supper, Claus gave Melitta his ‘report from [Hitler’s] headquarters’.79 ‘She was one of the very few people he trusted without reservation,’ his daughter, Konstanze, later wrote.80

  Klara, who was providing domestic help now that Melitta was running her own research institute, must have wondered how her sister made the time to keep meeting these friends. Melitta was too busy to see much of Klara and, when she thought about her at all, only vaguely worried that she was left ‘at rather a loose end’.81 On top of her work with Junkers, Melitta was now commissioned to consider the technical challenges of converting Germany’s first operational jet, the Messerschmitt Me 262, into a fighter-bomber. This was a pet project of Hitler’s but the Me 262 was totally unsuitable and, in any case, mass production was still many months away. ‘It was disturbing now to observe how [Hitler’s] contact with reality was tending to slip away,’ Nicolaus von Below wrote.82

  On 16 June, Melitta recorded the ‘use of vengeance weapons’ in her diary.83 The first unmanned V-1 buzz bomb had been deployed against London the day before, hitting a railway bridge as well as a number of houses, and killing six people.* In addition to the smoke and dust, for a moment it left a beautiful white semicircle in the sky above, a pressure wave, ‘rather like a white rainbow’.84 This was one of several range-finding tests, and a full assault followed. Although London was surrounded by ‘a wall of balloons . . . to ward off the buzz bombs’, as the strategically grouped blimps were described by one female ATA pilot, thousands of V-1s got through.85

  One of the first destroyed the Aldershot house belonging to the Scottish pilot Eric Brown. Brown’s wife was unhurt, but their cleaner lost an eye. After this Eric, now a test pilot at Farnborough, felt he had a ‘special interest’ in helping to improve the performance of RAF front-line fighters, so that they might intercept the low-flying V-1s.86 They could not be shot down ov
er built-up areas, and could not be blown up ‘because you’d fly straight into the debris’, Eric realized. Instead he helped to develop a booster system that could get a fighter alongside a V-1 for a short spurt, so that they could tip it off course by ‘nudging its wings using air pressure and not actually touching’.87* Meanwhile, the Allied raids on Germany were stepped up. ‘Many waves of planes flew very low,’ the former diplomat, now conspirator, Ulrich von Hassell noted in his diary. ‘The heaviest daylight raid yet . . . a number of barracks, an orphanage, several kindergartens, et cetera, were hit, with heartbreaking losses. This looks like an answer to the “robot” bombs.’88*

  The day after the first V-1 hit London, a new refrain started to appear in Melitta’s diary: ‘Night flights Storch’.89 Melitta’s official work involved test flights with various Junkers at night, but she had never previously recorded night flights in her Fieseler Storch. She was evidently testing the machine, but as it was a low-speed observation plane, fun to fly but not used in combat, these flights cannot be explained by service requirements.* According to Paul, Melitta had already told him about her potential role providing return transport after an assassination attempt. Paul knew that Claus could trust Melitta ‘absolutely’. Not only was she sympathetic to his political aims, she was also a brilliant pilot. Above all, were she to turn up somewhere unexpectedly, Paul believed that ‘a woman of Litta’s reputation would appear relatively harmless even in the highest Luftwaffe circles’.90

  But Paul still had misgivings about Melitta’s involvement. Planes were increasingly hard to get hold of. If Melitta were to fly to Claus without attracting attention, it would have to be in the Storch, the only plane she had free access to when not working. But a standard Storch could not fly the 300 miles from East Prussia back to Berlin without landing for fuel en route. After an assassination attempt, Paul argued, they were highly likely to be ‘discovered and arrested’ at any such stop.91

  Melitta knew the capabilities of different aircraft better than Paul, and he felt that ‘she was probably aware that the plan with the Fieseler Storch had almost no prospect of success’. He argued it was her duty to let Claus know, so that he could secure the use of a fast Luftwaffe communications plane instead. But Melitta ‘was not prepared to tell Claus’. Instead, in Paul’s dramatic retelling of their conversation, she insisted that ‘when I am called, I’ll be there. I am not afraid of death.’92 Perhaps Melitta had modified the Storch, or added auxiliary fuel tanks, as between 17 and 26 June she recorded at least five night flights in it, without further explanation. She also undertook a 200-mile return flight to Rechlin, despite bad weather. On Tuesday 27 June, however, she met Paul again. ‘Evening, Paul, late, depressing,’ she recorded tersely.93 The ‘depressing’ was not explained but, after this, there were no more night flights in the Storch.

  Claus spent his last weekend at Bamberg with his family, between 24 and 26 June. Nina was packing to take the children to Lautlingen for the summer and was surprised that he seemed so unenthusiastic about their trip. ‘It is no longer about the Führer, nor about the Fatherland, nor about my wife and my four children,’ he told his fellow conspirators a few days later. ‘It is now about the whole German nation . . .’94 On 6 July, he was back at the Berghof, in his new capacity as chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the Reserve Army. That day he sat at the round table in the main salon, keeping his ‘remarkably plump briefcase’, Speer noted, beside him.95 Claus was carrying a bomb but did not prime it after it became clear that Hitler would not be joined by other senior leaders.

  A week later Claus was pushing for another attempt. ‘The aim is to preserve the Reich!’ he argued. ‘It is necessary to save Germany from unconditional surrender and from total occupation.’96 On 11 July he was ordered to the Berghof to brief Hitler on the availability of replacement troops for the Western Front. As he walked towards his waiting plane at Rangsdorf airfield, near Berlin, Claus met Otto Skorzeny, who was on his way to board a flight to France. The would-be assassin and the ardent Nazi greeted each other politely, and stopped to talk for a moment. Later, Skorzeny reflected on how calm and friendly Claus had seemed. Claus had been carrying explosives, but again postponed the attempt when he learned Himmler would not be present. His aim was to eliminate Hitler, Himmler and Göring in one operation, so as to better support the chances of the military coup that would follow under the Valkyrie plans.

  The following day Claus met with members of the coup’s proposed future administration. It was hot. The diplomat Hans Gisevius recalled that Claus pulled open his uniform jacket, and sat slumped with ‘his arms dangling limply and his legs in their heavy top-boots sprawled out in front of him’, while he ‘wiped the perspiration from his forehead, brushing it back into his tangle of hair’.97 Nevertheless, when he started to speak, Claus ‘took over the conversation almost at once’.98 Melitta was not present. It was better that she did not know any unnecessary details. Berthold was pessimistic about their chances of success. ‘The worst thing is knowing that we cannot succeed,’ he told Mika, ‘and yet that we have to do it for our country, and for our children.’99 For Berthold, Claus, Melitta and the others, just as much as for Hanna, the foreseeable future entailed high risk of self-sacrifice.

  On Saturday 15 July, Claus flew back to the Wolf’s Lair. At one point he was photographed standing to attention as Hitler greeted a colleague beside him, but that evening he was back in Berlin without having used his bomb. Nina knew that ‘renewed attempts were always being made’, and Melitta was also on tenterhooks.100 Every day she went to work, determined to help the fight against the Allied bombers, while desperate for news of her brother-in-law’s own bomb attack against the Nazi leadership. Her position was almost impossible. ‘Miserable, exhausted,’ she scrawled on the night of the 15th, her own meetings having run on until four in the morning.101 A few hours later she was up and crossing the Wannsee by steamboat to meet with Claus and Berthold at their Tristanstrasse house. It was a Sunday, but Claus already had other visitors. He could only finally meet Melitta after dinner, and he left soon afterwards. ‘Everything had to be done at night and by word of mouth, one could never make a telephone call or write a letter,’ the wife of another resister later wrote. ‘Everything was based on personal night-time contacts.’102 By now Melitta had missed the last boat back, so she stayed at Tristanstrasse overnight, talking with Berthold. ‘Bad,’ she wrote simply in her diary.103 Early the next morning, after seeing Claus once more, she raced back to Gatow, throwing herself into work meetings so she would not be missed.

  On 18 July Melitta spoke with Paul again, arranging to meet him that evening. ‘Storch organized etc.’, she wrote, then, ‘air-raid alarm, very late’.104 The Allies were bombing Peenemünde again in their ongoing assault against the V-weapons, as well as other targets. Melitta saw Paul again twice the next day, in between her experimental-centre work. ‘Tired,’ she wrote sparingly.105 It is not known whether she was yet aware that Claus had arranged another pilot through Eduard Wagner, Hitler’s quartermaster general, who had joined the conspirators. That night Werner von Haeften called his brother to tell him that he had finally ‘found an apartment for mother’.106 It was their agreed code that the attempt was going ahead. At Tristanstrasse, Claus showed Berthold his plastic high explosives, which he then wrapped in a clean shirt and slid inside his briefcase. Later he tried to call Nina, but the phone lines were down following a bombing raid.

  For Melitta, 20 July 1944 began with a Junkers Ju 88 workshop flight, followed by technical work on a Junkers Ju 87. It was another hot, sultry day, and she knew she would soon be sweating as she rushed between the workshops and the airfield. Claus and Berthold had been up since dawn. ‘Even this early in the morning, the heat was unbearable,’ Gisevius recorded.107 Claus and Haeften, serving as his military aide, were needed at one of Hitler’s daily conferences at the Wolf’s Lair, now just fifty miles from the advancing Red Army. Their plane slipped in over the birch and pine forest later that morning, and wa
s quickly camouflaged under grey-green nets by ground crew. Waved through the outer gates near the marshes by sentries wearing mosquito nets over their heads, they drove between minefields and past gun emplacements to a second gate in an electric fence. A final gate, a mile further on, led to Hitler’s personal HQ, hidden inside the depths of the forest. As both men had passes, they were not searched.

  It was now Claus learned that the conference had been brought forward to accommodate a visit from Mussolini later in the day. It had also been moved to a wooden guest hut, which was cooler than the underground bunker.* On the pretext of needing to change his sweat-stained shirt before meeting his Führer, Claus hurried to prime the bomb that was still hidden in his briefcase. Although he had a specially adapted pair of pliers, with only three fingers on his remaining hand it was a struggle to set the device and, having been interrupted once, he did not have time to prime the secondary explosives smuggled in by Haeften. At 12.35 Claus entered the claustrophobic conference room with his briefcase under his arm. ‘He stood there quite erect,’ one general later recalled, ‘the picture of a classical soldier.’108 Then he took the chair that Hitler motioned to, just one seat to his right, and placed his case under the table, as close to the Führer as possible. Moments later he excused himself to take a telephone call.