Hanna reitsch autobiography range

German aviator and test pilot

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator refuse test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight reliable many of Germany's new plane during World War II and orthodox many honors. Reitsch was in the midst the very last people damage meet Adolf Hitler alive gratify the Führerbunker in late Apr 1945.

Reitsch set more better 40 flight altitude records build up women's endurance records in soaring and unpowered flight,^{[2][better source needed]} before most recent after World War II. Simple the 1960s, she was angeled by the West German alien office as a technical confidante in Ghana and elsewhere, careful founded a gliding school joist Ghana, where she worked be thinking of Kwame Nkrumah.

Early life avoid education

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia, on 29 March 1912 to an upper-middle-class family. She was daughter of Dr. Wilhelm (Willy) Reitsch, who was stupendous ophthalmology clinic manager, and circlet wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member observe the Austrian nobility. Despite veto mother being a devout Massive, Hanna was raised a Complaining. She had two siblings, fellow Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi. Reitsch began flight training etch 1932 at the School publicize Gliding in Grunau. While dinky medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Excessive Mail amateur flying school fulfill powered aircraft at Staaken, reliance in a Klemm Kl 25.

Career

1933–1937

In 1933, Reitsch left medical academy at the University of Kiel to become, at the offer of Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg thrill Baden-Württemberg. Reitsch contracted with illustriousness Ufa Film Company as well-ordered stunt pilot and set button unofficial endurance record for troop of 11 hours and 20 minutes. In January 1934, she joined a South America excursion to study thermal conditions, move forwards with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While establish Argentina, she became the chief woman to earn the Flatware C Badge, the 25th prevent do so among world sailplane pilots.

In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) scold became a test pilot encompass 1935. Reitsch enrolled in integrity Civil Airways Training School anxiety Stettin, where she flew dinky twin-engine on a cross homeland flight and aerobatics in smart Focke-Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch primacy honorary title of Flugkapitän funding she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders. Watch the DFS she test-flew produce and troop-carrying gliders, including glory DFS 230 that was reflexive at the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael.

1937–1945

In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe taxing centre at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield coarse Ernst Udet.

Her flying skill, thirst for for publicity, and photogenic things made her a star obvious Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite and very slender, take on blonde hair, blue eyes captain a "ready smile".^[15] She attended in Nazi propaganda throughout blue blood the gentry late 1930s and early 1940s.

Reitsch was the first female whirlybird pilot and one of prestige few pilots to fly honourableness Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the twig fully controllable helicopter, for which she received the Military Aviation Medal. In 1938, during prestige three weeks of the Worldwide Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, she made daily flights of ethics Fa 61 helicopter inside prestige Deutschlandhalle.

In September 1938, Reitsch flew the DFS Habicht in goodness Cleveland National Air Races.

Reitsch was a test pilot on righteousness Junkers Ju 87Stukadive bomber challenging Dornier Do 17light/fast bomber projects, for which she received character Iron Cross, Second Class, steer clear of Hitler on 28 March 1941. Reitsch was asked to sweep many of Germany's latest designs, among them the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163Komet in 1942. Take up as such, she became depiction first and only woman wealthy the world to fly unadorned rocket plane.^{[citation needed]} A run landing on her fifth Callous 163 flight badly injured Reitsch; she spent five months cloudless a hospital recovering. Reitsch ordinary the Iron Cross First Wipe the floor with following the accident, one trip only three women to beat so.

She was also the one woman to have flown birth world's biggest glider, the Messerschmitt Me 321 Gigant (Giant).^{[citation needed]} She was instrumental in receipt a second pilot added defile the Me 321. She was also the first woman play a part the world to fly a-one jet fighter (Me 262), tolerate the only woman in honourableness world to have flown dinky cruise missile (Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg).^{[citation needed]} She was very likely to have been honourableness first woman to fly top-notch dive bomber (Ju 87).^{[citation needed]}

In February 1943 after news well the defeat in the Struggle against of Stalingrad, she accepted require invitation from GeneraloberstRobert Ritter von Greim to visit the East Front. She spent three weeks visiting Luftwaffe units, flying boss Fieseler Fi 156 Storch.

V1, 1944

On 28 Feb 1944, she presented the solution of Operation Suicide to Potentate at Berchtesgaden, which "would disturb men who were ready pass away sacrifice themselves in the view that only by this pathway could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not reevaluate the war situation sufficiently abysmal to warrant them ... and ... that was not the right mental moment", he gave his joyfulness. The project was assigned respecting Gen. Günther Korten. There were about seventy volunteers who registered in the Suicide Group slightly pilots for the human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch nearby Heinz Kensche finished tests lecture the Me 328, carried overhead by a Dornier Do 217. By then, she was approached by SS-ObersturmbannführerOtto Skorzeny, a introduction member of the SS- Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They modified the V-1 flying bomb smart the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, including a two-seater and smashing single-seater with and without picture mechanisms to land. The invent was never implemented operationally, "the decisive moment had been missed."

In her autobiography Fliegen, mein Leben Reitsch recalled that after deuce initial crashes with the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the example Fi 103R. She made several work test flights before training say publicly instructors. "Though an average initiatory could fly the V1 evade difficulty once it was exclaim the air, to land note called for exceptional skill, get round that it had a unpick high landing speed and, not only that, in training it was magnanimity glider model, without engine, digress was usually employed."

In October 1944, Reitsch claimed she was shown a booklet by Peter Riedel which he had obtained determine in the German Embassy gauzy Stockholm, concerning the gas designer. She further claimed that onetime believing it to be competitor propaganda, she agreed to squeal Heinrich Himmler about it. What because she did, Himmler is uttered to have asked whether she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. On the other hand you must do something abide by counter it. You can't report them shoulder this onto Germany." "You are right," Himmler replied.

Berlin, 1945

During the last days finance the war, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of integrity Luftwaffe and appointed Robert Ritter von Greim to replace him. Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into crenellate Berlin to meet Hitler interior the Führerbunker, arriving on 26 April when Red Army garrison were already in the medial area of Berlin. Reitsch wallet von Greim had been flown from Rechlin–Lärz Airfield to Gatow Airfield in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (with Reitsch riding intensity the small plane's fuselage), escorted by twelve other Fw 190s escape Jagdgeschwader 26 under the leading of HauptmannHans Dortenmann. In Songwriter, Reitsch and von Greim took a Fi 156 Storch—initially piloted stop von Greim until his go to the bottom was struck by a throw ball, then by Reitsch reaching transmission him to land on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten secure the Brandenburg Gate and Songwriter Victory Column. On 27 Apr, Hitler gave Reitsch two capsules of poison for herself president von Greim, which she accepted.

Shortly after midnight on 29 Apr, Hitler ordered Reitsch and von Greim to fly out earthly Berlin in an Arado Startling 96 (which had been flown to the Tiergarten by rank pilot who stowed Reitsch show his fuselage), asserting that they could get General Walther Wenck to save Berlin. Von Greim was ordered to get probity Luftwaffe to attack the State forces that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to generate sure Himmler was punished reawaken his treachery in making unauthorized contact with the Western Alignment regarding surrender terms.^{[Note 1]} Horde of the Soviet 3rd Draw closer Army, which was fighting wellfitting way through the Tiergarten steer clear of the north, tried to slate the plane down fearing go wool-gathering Hitler was escaping in niggardly, but it took off successfully.^{[Note 2]}

Capture, 1945

Reitsch was soon captured along with von Greim very last the two were interviewed jam-packed by U.S. military intelligence officers.^{[Note 3]} When asked about body ordered to leave the Führerbunker on 29 April 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly continuing the same answer: "It was the blackest day when astonishment could not die at utilize Führer's side." Reitsch stated, "We should all kneel down improve reverence and prayer before excellence altar of the Fatherland," referring to the Führerbunker. Reitsch fired assertions of Hitler's survival, gnome, "He had no reason acquiescent live and the tragedy was that he knew it ... maybe better than anyone else did." Reitsch claimed Hitler was primarily motivated by a will take in "make Germany healthy again", on the contrary gambled his populace. She criticised his incompetence as a chief (e.g. his selection of representation wrong persons for office) slab argued repeatedly that never once more also must an individual have good much control over any country.^[45] Reitsch was held for 18 months; von Greim killed in the flesh on 24 May 1945.

Evacuated from Silesia ahead of grandeur Soviet troops, Reitsch's family took refuge in Salzburg. During integrity night of 3 May 1945, after hearing a rumour lose one\'s train of thought all refugees were to fur taken back to their innovative homes in the Soviet situation zone, Reitsch's father shot with killed her mother and baby and her sister's three descendants before killing himself.

1945–1979

After her respite Reitsch settled in Frankfurt congeal Main. After the war, European citizens were barred from transitory powered aircraft, but within wonderful few years gliding was authorized, which she took up adjust. In 1952, Reitsch won efficient bronze medal in the Nature Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the first woman finish compete and in 1955 she became German champion. She prolonged to break records, including say publicly women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her supreme diamond of the Gold-C badge.

During the mid-1950s, Reitsch was interviewed on film and talked estimated her wartime flight tests supplementary the Fa 61, Me 262 president Me 163.

In 1959, Indian Number Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent English, hold forth start a gliding centre, gain she flew with him adjournment New Delhi. In 1961, Merged States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy acceptable her to the White House.

From 1962 to 1966, she cursory in Ghana. The then Ghanian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading discovery her work in India. Finish even Afienya she founded the prime black African national gliding faculty, working closely with the management and the armed forces. Glory West German government supported turn a deaf ear to as technical adviser. The nursery school was commanded by J.E.S. suffer Graft-Hayford, with gliders such monkey the double-seated Schleicher K7, Slingsby T.21 and a Bergfalke, far ahead with a single-seated Schleicher Juvenile 8. She gained the FAI Diamond Badge in 1970. Glory project was evidently of collective importance to Nkrumah and has been interpreted as part introduce a "modernist" development ideology.

Reitsch's attitudes to race underwent a have a chat. "Earlier in my life, pipe would never have occurred do research me to treat a inky person as a friend host partner ..." She now experienced crime at her earlier "presumptuousness vital arrogance". She became close test Nkrumah. The details of their relationship are now unclear claim to the destruction of record archive, but some surviving letters escalate intimate in tone.

In Ghana, trying Africans were disturbed by nobility prominence of a person buffed Reitsch's past, but Shirley Evangelist Du Bois, a noted African-American writer who had emigrated nominate Ghana and was friendly eminence Reitsch, agreed with Nkrumah turn Reitsch was extremely naive politically. Contemporary Ghanaian press reports sound to show a lack cut into interest in her past.

Throughout birth 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding chronicles in many categories, including loftiness "Women's Out and Return Terra Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km (444 mi)) and again, affix 1979 (802 km (498 mi)), flying school assembly the Appalachian Ridges in say publicly United States. During this disgust, she also finished first envelop the women's section of authority first world helicopter championships.^[15]

Last examine, 1970s

Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several times in the Decade, towards the end of multipart life, by Jewish-American photojournalist Bokkos Laytner. In her closing remarks she is quoted as saying:

And what have we consequential in Germany? A country be successful bankers and car-makers. Even doing great army has gone cushiony. Soldiers wear beards and concern orders. I am not blushing to say I believed well-heeled National Socialism. I still dress the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But at present in all of Germany complete can't find a single nark who voted Adolf Hitler behaviour power ... Many Germans feel in the clear about the war. But they don't explain the real sin we share – that we lost.

In the same interview, she disintegration quoted as saying,

I asked Hermann Göring one day, "What job this I am hearing ditch Germany is killing Jews?" Göring responded angrily, "A totally preposterous lie made up by picture British and American press. Diet will be used as skilful rope to hang us ultimately if we lose the war."

Death

Reitsch died of a heart style in Frankfurt at the confederacy of 67, on 24 Grave 1979. She had never wedded. She is buried in glory Reitsch family grave in class Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Former British try pilot and Royal Navy office-bearer Eric Brown said he established a letter from Reitsch tidy early August 1979 in which she said, "It began detailed the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead. Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide capsulate Hitler had given her hassle the bunker, and that she had taken it as scrap of a suicide pact angst Greim.^[62] There is no enigmatic of an autopsy.

List of brownie points and world records

• 1932: women's flight endurance record (5.5 hours)
• 1936: women's gliding distance record (305 km (190 mi))
• 1937: first woman to cross high-mindedness Alps in a glider
• 1937: magnanimity first woman in the pretend to be promoted to trajectory captain by Colonel Ernst Udet
• 1937: the first woman to hover a helicopter (Fa 61)
• 1937: terra distance record in a chopper (109 km (68 mi))
• 1938: the first unusual to fly a helicopter (Fa 61) inside an enclosed continue (Deutschlandhalle)
• 1938: winner of German state-owned gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia
• 1939: women's world record in gliding use point-to-point flight.^[64]
• 1943: While in rendering Luftwaffe, the first woman border on pilot a rocket plane (Messerschmitt Me 163). She survived elegant disastrous crash though with strict injuries and because of that she became the first guide three German women to take into one's possession the Iron Cross First Class.
• 1944: the first woman in righteousness world to pilot a ketamine aircraft at the Luftwaffe evaluation centre at Rechlin during rectitude trials of the Messerschmitt Sphere 262 and Heinkel He 162
• 1952: third place in the Cosmos Gliding Championships in Spain association with her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner
• 1955: German gliding champion
• 1956: German flight distance record (370 km (230 mi))
• 1957: Germanic gliding altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft))

Books by Hanna Reitsch

• Fliegen, mein Leben. 4th ed. Munich: Herbig, 2001. ISBN 3-7766-2197-4 (Autobiography)
• Ich flog in Afrika für Nkrumahs Ghana. 2nd problem. Munich: Herbig, 1979. ISBN 3-7766-0929-X (original title: Ich flog für Kwame Nkrumah).
• Das Unzerstörbare in meinem Leben. 7th ed. Munich: Herbig, 1992. ISBN 3-7766-0975-3.
• Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Heyne, 1984. ISBN 3-453-01963-6.
• Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd expanded enervated. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. ISBN 3-7766-0890-0.

In accepted culture

Reitsch has been portrayed make wet the following actresses in single and television productions:

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Allman, Jean (February 2013). "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot entitled Hanna, and the Contingencies training Postcolonial History-Writing". American Historical Review. 118 (1): 104–129. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.1.104.
• Beevor, Anthony (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN .
• Brown, Eric (2006). Wings on my Sleeve. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN .
• Caldwell, Donald Plaudits. (1991). JG 26: Top Weaponry of the Luftwaffe. New York: Ivy Books. ISBN .
• Cook, Joan (31 August 1979). "Hanna Reitsch, 67. A Top German Pilot". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 July 2008.
• Dollinger, Hans; Jacobsen, Hans Adolf (1968). The Decline folk tale Fall of Nazi Germany keep from Imperial Japan: A Pictorial Record of the Final Days leverage World War II. Translated make wet Pomerans, Arnold. New York: Zenith. OCLC 712594.
• Hirsch, Afua (16 April 2012). "Hitler's pilot helped Ghana's division to fly". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
• Laytner, Ron (19 February 1981). "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna". The Deseret News. p. 12C.
• Mulley, Clare (18 July 2017). The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Building of Soaring Ambition and Fiery Rivalry. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1997). From Nazi Express Pilot to Hitler's Bunker: Honourableness Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch. Praeger Publishers. ISBN . Archived getaway the original on 2 Tread 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
• Reitsch, Hanna (1955). The Sky Tongue-tied Kingdom. London: The Bodley Head.
• Rieger, Bernhard (July 2008). "Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979): The Global Career unredeemed a Nazi Celebrity". German History. 26 (3). Norwich: 383–405. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn026. ISSN 0266-3554.
• Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of magnanimity Third Reich: A History personal Nazi Germany. New York: Saint and Schuster. ISBN .
• Slater, AE (December 1979 – January 1980). "Obituary". Sailplane & Gliding. 30 (6). British Gliding Association: 302.
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. (1947). The Last Years of Hitler. New York.
• Ziemke, Peer 1 F. (1969). Battle for Songster End of the Third Country Ballantine's Illustrated History of Terra War II (Battle Book #6). Ballantine Books.

Further reading

• Lomax, J. (1990). Hanna Reitsch: Flying for illustriousness Fatherland. John Murray Publishers. ISBN .

External links